some progress summer

Since the last post, I helped that friend with that problem (GAME'S LOOKING GOOD, JIZ) and made some Roodylib progress (fixed some bugs, redesigned some stuff, and incorporated one or two new extensions).  I have an out-of-town friend coming in this week, and I'd been meaning to recompile all of my old games with my default menu code and just try to make them look as consistent as possible.

I've actually been meaning to do this for years, but this friend really doesn't know anything about IF so I kept putting it off because I wanted the consistency between games to be perfect...  and honestly, I usually like to give a middle finger to perfection.  It's too damn  hard to finish projects in the first place.

Still, applying something like Roodylib to old code is always interesting.  It's getting to the point where the library application is a lot more seamless than it used to be, and I even found the culprit in my update to Christopher Tate's "converse" extension that was keeping it from working straight out of the box.  That's been irking me for years, but now that it's fixed, my version is just about ready for public release, I think.

Anyhow, despite all of that Roodylib work, I'm getting to the point where I feel I need to give more attention to my WIPs.  One disappointment was the reminder that all of them are missing some big mid-game chunk of design.  The plan is to sit down with some flowchart software one day and stare at the screen until inspiration strikes.

But hey, it's summer and the days are beautiful, so it's been hard to make IF a priority.  Have to enjoy these few months of sun and warmth that we get, so I'm trying to get out as much as possible.  Frolicking, even.

So much frolicking.

Roodylib 4.1.2

I'm several months late in helping someone code a scene in their game, so me being me, that means I went and got Roodylib ready for a new release!  SORRY, JIZ!

The three main elements of this new update are:

• Incorporated the accessibility code mentioned one or two posts back into Roodylib and made them available by default.  I may add another accessibility feature at some point- some kind of spelling system for uncommon words (as discussed on the intfiction.org forums)
• Code supporting Nikos Chantziaras' Hugor opcodes system
• Incorporated "newmenu.h" into Roodylib so one doesn't have to include the extra file.  I added mouseclick support to menus sometime within the last handful of months, too.

Roodylib 4.1.2

Latest Hugo Notepad++ Bundle

Hugo Notepad++ Add-on

"sandbox" modes

After completing Michael Berlyn's Suspended, a player is given a special command that allows configuration of the main game- moving robots here and there, changing the timer, etc.  I heard about this feature many years before I actually beat Suspended.  At the time, it sounded like overkill for a game that I had bashed my head against (although in hindsight, it's really not the Herculean effort I thought it was).

I have to admit that, having beaten the game and finally being familiar with how things fit together, the extra challenge mode seemed like a cool idea.  Wow, a player could really make this game as hard or easy as they want to; I could see a fun optimization puzzle emerging.  I have to admit that I never actually played much with this extra mode, but it was cool to see and finally understand.

I've pondered nice ways to provide a similar experience for players, and the easiest answer I came up with was to give the player a magic word when the game is completed that turns on debugging mode.  They'd be able to look at the object tree, move objects or the player around, or even control how daemons run.  I thought this would be a fun way to share the innards of the game with the player; for some reason, having game source available doesn't provide the same thrill unless it's, say, in Hugo and I'm applying new Roodylib functionality to it or something for my own curiosity.

Today's code sample supplies this magic word debugging system.



Now I just need to write a game that players would want to dig into!

general update and "bags of holding"

Some interesting news in Hugoville.  Nikos Chantziaras has added an opcode system to Hugor, allowing for some special behavior here and there.  Unfortunately, along with posting here about stuff more often, I've been meaning to update the Roodylib documentation to cover all of the new stuff and put out a new release.  So, more news down the road!

In the meantime, I thought I'd share some code examples I put together the other month; well, one now, one next time I write here.

Today's bit of code will be for what IF lingo calls a "bag of holding."  I'd say they were first popularized in late era commercial IF although they first showed up a bit earlier than that.  Players still had set carrying capacities so object-management was required, but one object in the game- usually a bag or knapsack- could carry a limitless number of objects.  As soon as you couldn't pick up anything more, you'd stick stuff in the bag of holding and, yay, looting can recommence!

Bags of holding got even cooler when the game would automatically stick stuff in them for you.  Today's code sample will be an automatic bag of holding system in Hugo.



Just set the bag_of_holding global to your bag of holding object, and there you go!  Now, admittedly, this system is pretty simple. It only allows for swapping one object that, when moved, will create enough space for the new object. I considered writing another pass if the first one didn't find a suitable most, but I figured that this behavior would fit most games.  If a game has large variance in object sizes, the large objects probably should get special treatment through before routines and such.  Plus, it's always kind of ugly when you try to pick something up and then half of your inventory is moved to the bag of holding so I didn't want to encourage that.

Announcing the Hugo Notepad++ add-on

Some people were unable to use my standalone Notepad++ package because they already had Notepad++ installed.  I finally got around to putting together a package adding (most of) its functionality.  Just download the following file and follow the instructions in the .pdf file!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_4ZXs4Z_yoWclhaOFFYQ3JScjg/view?usp=sharing

It includes the compiler, an interpreter, and library files, so once installed, you'll be ready to start writing your Hugo game!  As mentioned in the .pdf, all of the new commands will be under the Macros tab when you're done.

new ZIL blog

Just a quick note that I've started an additional blog where I'll write about my experience exploring ZIL, the language used to write the Infocom games:

ZIL Crazy After All These Years

Feel free to tag along!

Updates in Accessibility

I spoke about accessibility in the last post.  It was brought to my attention that NVDA, another screen reader, does in fact work with some Hugo interpreters.  This was exciting news as I could finally test my new accessibility code.

For one thing, I was pleased to discover that my option to disallow screen-clearing was in fact justified; in-game screen clearing occasionally causes NVDA to lose track of the text.  For the meantime, I'm taking the "clear every turn" option out until I learn of screen reader software that might work with.  I'm also pretty pleased with the switching-the-prompt command; "Your command..." sounds a lot better than "greater than."

If anyone wants to try NVDA out themselves, you can download it at http://www.nvaccess.org/download/

You can get the add-on someone wrote for several IF interpreters at http://jeff.tdrealms.com/Add-Ons/IfInterpreters-1.1.nvda-addon

I found finding the place to install the add-on in NVDA was a bit of a search, but dig enough, and you'll find it.

The add-on specifically targets the winglk Hugo interpreter which can be downloaded at http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/programming/hugo/executables/hugov31_winglk.zip

Lastly, download any of the following games, compiled with Roodylib's new accessibility code.  Now, they're not my games (I'd much rather have people play something good) so please don't redistribute; these are just for personal use.

Spur: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_4ZXs4Z_yoWOFg2b2FUZVBXeTQ/view?usp=sharing
Guilty Bastards: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_4ZXs4Z_yoWNG5TX1BMem9TWmc/view?usp=sharing
Down: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_4ZXs4Z_yoWZkVtUndXQ0VUcGs/view?usp=sharing

Accessibility commands are listed if someone types the suggested "INFO" command.

Moving your mouse reverts NVDA to "hover over words" mode, so for best uninterrupted behavior, leave your mouse alone.

These accessibility commands will be on by default in future releases of Roodylib.