minimally at first and then adding complexity as need arises. Again,
this means that you won't be able to compile for testing purposes after
the addition of every code snippet, so, if you're typing in the game as
-you read, you’ll need to check the advice in "Compile-as-you-go" on page
-255.
+you read, you’ll need to check the advice in :ref:`compile-as-you-go`.
A lot of what goes into this game we have already seen; you may deduce
from this that the game design business is fairly repetitious and that
.. pull-quote::
- "Impersonating mild mannered John Covarth, assistant help boy at
- an Impersonating insignificant drugstore, you suddenly STOP
- when your acute hearing deciphers a stray radio call from the
- POLICE. There’s some MADMAN attacking the population in Granary
- Park! You must change into your Captain FATE costume fast...!"
+ "Impersonating mild mannered John Covarth, assistant help boy at an
+ insignificant drugstore, you suddenly STOP when your acute hearing
+ deciphers a stray radio call from the POLICE. There’s some MADMAN
+ attacking the population in Granary Park! You must change into your
+ Captain FATE costume fast...!"
which won't be so easy to do. In this short example, players will win
when they manage to change into their super-hero costume and fly away to
The game starts with meek John Covarth walking down the street. We set
up the game as usual:
-.. code-block:: inform6
+.. code-block:: inform
!% -SD
!============================================================================
Almost everything is familar, apart from a few details:
-.. code-block:: inform6
+.. code-block:: inform
Constant MANUAL_PRONOUNS;
Constant MAX_SCORE 2;
of an equals sign ``=`` is optional with ``Constant``; these two lines
have identical effect:
-.. code-block:: inform6..
+.. code-block:: inform
Constant ROOM_SCORE 1;
Inform provides for displaying strings of text. Until now, we have shown
you:
-.. code-block:: inform6
+.. code-block:: inform
print "And now for something completely different...^"; return true;
...
example games, this happens quite a lot, so there is a yet shorter way
of achieving the same result:
-.. code-block:: inform6
+.. code-block:: inform
"And now for something completely different...";
You'll notice that -- unusually for a room -- our ``street`` object has
a ``name`` property:
-.. code-block:: inform6
+.. code-block:: inform
Room street "On the street"
with name 'city' 'buildings' 'skyscrapers' 'shops' 'apartments' 'cars',
big box on the sidewalk; therefore we define a ``container`` set in the
street, which players may enter:
-.. code-block:: inform6
+.. code-block:: inform
Appliance booth "phone booth" street
with name 'old' 'red' 'picturesque' 'phone' 'booth' 'cabin'
connection to the as-yet-undefined café room and a default message for
the movement which is not allowed):
-.. code-block:: inform6
+.. code-block:: inform
Room street "On the street"
with name city' 'buildings' 'skyscrapers' 'shops' 'apartments' 'cars',
"No time now for exploring! You'll move much faster in your
Captain FATE costume.";
-.. todo::
-
- Notice how the syntax coloring thinks that the exclaimation point
- above is a comment. This is another problem with the built-in inform6
- syntax colorer.
-
That takes care of entering the booth. But what about leaving it?
Players may type EXIT or OUT while they are inside an enterable
container and the interpreter will oblige but, again, they might type
inside the booth) and to the north we have the café. We may provide for
this condition in the room's ``before`` property:
-.. code-block:: inform6
+.. code-block:: inform
before [;
Go:
also refer to the café, so we express our bafflement and force the
player to try something else:
-.. code-block:: inform6
+.. code-block:: inform
n_to cafe,
s_to [; <<Enter booth>>; ],
can’t see outside the container, only the inside_description is
displayed. Take for instance the following (simplified) example:
-.. code-block:: inform6
+.. code-block:: inform
Room stage "On stage"
with description
value: instead of a string, we write an embedded routine. Here's the
(almost) finished room:
-.. code-block:: inform6
+.. code-block:: inform
Room street "On the street"
with name 'city' 'buildings' 'skyscrapers' 'shops' 'apartments' 'cars',
The description while inside the booth mentions the sidewalk, which
might invite the player to EXAMINE it. No problem:
-.. code-block:: inform6
+.. code-block:: inform
Appliance "sidewalk" street
with name sidewalk' 'pavement' 'street',
looks from the *inside*); but while we are on the street we need
something else to describe it:
-.. code-block:: inform6
+.. code-block:: inform
Appliance outside_of_cafe "Benny's cafe" street
with name 'benny^s' 'cafe' 'entrance',
],
has enterable proper;
-.. todo::
-
- Figure out how to set off this entire note section as an indented block
-
-NOTE : although the text of our guide calls Benny's establishment a
-"café" -- note the acute "e" -- the game itself simplifies this to
-"cafe". We do this for clarity, not because Inform doesn't support
-accented characters. The *Inform Designer's Manual* explains in detail
-how to display these characters in "§1.11 *How text is printed*" and
-provides the whole Z-machine character set in Table 2. In our case, we
-could have displayed this::
+.. note::
- The town's favourite for a quick snack, Benny's café has a 50's ROCKETSHIP look.
+ Although the text of our guide calls Benny's establishment a "café"
+ -- note the acute "e" -- the game itself simplifies this to "cafe".
+ We do this for clarity, not because Inform doesn't support accented
+ characters. The *Inform Designer's Manual* explains in detail how to
+ display these characters in "§1.11 *How text is printed*" and
+ provides the whole Z-machine character set in Table 2. In our case,
+ we could have displayed this::
-by defining the ``description`` property as any of these:
+ The town's favourite for a quick snack, Benny's café has a 50's ROCKETSHIP look.
-.. code-block:: inform6
+ by defining the ``description`` property as any of these:
- description
- "The town's favourite for a quick snack, Benny's caf@'e has a 50's
- ROCKETSHIP look.",
+ .. code-block:: inform
- description
- "The town's favourite for a quick snack, Benny's caf@@170 has a 50's
- ROCKETSHIP look.",
+ description
+ "The town's favourite for a quick snack, Benny's caf@'e has a 50's
+ ROCKETSHIP look.",
- description
- "The town's favourite for a quick snack, Benny's caf@{E9} has a 50's
- ROCKETSHIP look.",
+ description
+ "The town's favourite for a quick snack, Benny's caf@@170 has a 50's
+ ROCKETSHIP look.",
-However, all three forms are harder to read than the vanilla "cafe", so
-we've opted for the simple life.
+ description
+ "The town's favourite for a quick snack, Benny's caf@{E9} has a 50's
+ ROCKETSHIP look.",
-.. todo::
-
- Indented block ends here
+ However, all three forms are harder to read than the vanilla "cafe", so
+ we've opted for the simple life.
Unlike the sidewalk object, we offer more than a mere description. Since
the player may try ENTER CAFE as a reasonable way of access -- which
in just one place of our code, because this helps clarity. To achieve
this, we redirect the street's ``n_to`` property thus:
-.. code-block:: inform6
+.. code-block:: inform
n_to [; <<Enter outside_of_cafe>>; ],
-You may think that this is unnecessary madness, but a word to the wise:
-in a large game, you want action handling going on just in one place
-when possible, because it will help you to keep track of where things
-are a-happening if something goes *ploof* (as, believe us, it will; see
-"Debugging your game" on page 197). You don't need to be a
-perfectionist, just cautious.
-
-A booth in this kind of situation is an open invitation for the player
-to step inside and try to change into Captain Fate's costume. We won't
-let this happen -- the player isn't Clark Kent, after all; later we'll
-explain how we forbid this action -- and that will force the player to
-go inside the café, looking for a discreet place to disrobe; but first,
-let''s freeze John Covarth outside Benny''s and reflect about a
-fundamental truth.
+You may think that this is unnecessary madness, but a word to the wise: in
+a large game, you want action handling going on just in one place when
+possible, because it will help you to keep track of where things are
+a-happening if something goes *ploof* (as, believe us, it will; see
+:doc:`16`). You don't need to be a perfectionist, just cautious.
+
+A booth in this kind of situation is an open invitation for the player to
+step inside and try to change into Captain Fate's costume. We won't let
+this happen -- the player isn't Clark Kent, after all; later we'll explain
+how we forbid this action -- and that will force the player to go inside
+the café, looking for a discreet place to disrobe; but first, let's freeze
+John Covarth outside Benny's and reflect about a fundamental truth.
A hero is not an ordinary person
================================
nicety that many players regard as important. For this mission, we make
use of the ``LibraryMessages`` object.
-.. code-block:: inform6
+.. code-block:: inform
Include "Parser";
number of the message to be displayed, so you can change the default
with a test like this:
-.. code-block:: inform6
+.. code-block:: inform
if (lm_n == 39)
"That's not something you need to refer to in order to SAVE the day.";
-.. todo::
-
- That block of code above should be colored. Is there a defect in the
- syntax coloring code?
-
where 39 is the number for the standard message "That's not something
you need to refer to in the course of this game" -- displayed when the
player mentions a noun which is listed in a room's name property, as we
did for the ``street``.
-.. todo::
-
- Begin big chunk of indented text. Also, NOTE should be in bigcaps.
-
-NOTE : remember that when we are testing for different values of the
-same variable, we can also use the switch statement. For the Miscellany
-entry, the following code would work just as nicely:
-
-.. code-block:: inform6
-
- ...
- Miscellany:
- switch (lm_n) {
- 19:
- if (clothes has worn)
- "In your secret identity's outfit, you manage most
- efficaciously to look like a two-cent loser, a
- good-for-nothing wimp.";
- else
- "Now that you are wearing your costume, you project
- the image of power UNBOUND, of ballooned,
- multicoloured MUSCLE, of DASHING yet MODEST chic.";
- 38:
- "That's not a verb you need to SUCCESSFULLY save the day.";
- 39:
- "That's not something you need to refer to in order to SAVE the day.";
- }
-
-.. todo::
-
- End big indented chunk
+.. note::
+
+ Remember that when we are testing for different values of the
+ same variable, we can also use the switch statement. For the
+ Miscellany entry, the following code would work just as nicely:
+
+ .. code-block:: inform
+
+ ...
+ Miscellany:
+ switch (lm_n) {
+ 19:
+ if (clothes has worn)
+ "In your secret identity's outfit, you manage most
+ efficaciously to look like a two-cent loser, a
+ good-for-nothing wimp.";
+ else
+ "Now that you are wearing your costume, you project
+ the image of power UNBOUND, of ballooned,
+ multicoloured MUSCLE, of DASHING yet MODEST chic.";
+ 38:
+ "That's not a verb you need to SUCCESSFULLY save the day.";
+ 39:
+ "That's not something you need to refer to in order to SAVE the day.";
+ }
Not surprisingly, the default message for self-examination: "As good
looking as ever" is a ``Miscellany`` entry -- it's number 19 -- so we
.. todo::
- Begin big indented chunk. That "whatever new look" needs to be italicized.
+ That "whatever new look" below needs to be italicized and bolded for
+ LaTeX.
-NOTE: going back to our example, an alternative approach would be to set
-the variable ``player.description`` in the ``Initialise`` routine (as we
-did with "William Tell") to the "ordinary clothes" string, and then
-later change it as the need arises. It is a variable, after all, and you
-can alter its value with another statement like ``player.description =
-*whatever new look*`` anywhere in your code. This alternative solution
-might be better if we intended changing the description of the player
-many times through the game. Since we plan to have only two states, the
-``LibraryMessages`` approach will do just fine.
-
-.. todo::
+.. note::
- End big indented chunk
+ Going back to our example, an alternative approach would be to set
+ the variable ``player.description`` in the ``Initialise`` routine (as we
+ did with "William Tell") to the "ordinary clothes" string, and then
+ later change it as the need arises. It is a variable, after all, and you
+ can alter its value with another statement like ``player.description =``
+ *whatever new look* anywhere in your code. This alternative solution
+ might be better if we intended changing the description of the player
+ many times through the game. Since we plan to have only two states, the
+ ``LibraryMessages`` approach will do just fine.
A final warning: as we explained when extending the standard verb
grammars, you *could* edit the appropriate library file and change all
your library file will probably not be right for the next game. Use of
the ``LibraryMessages`` object is strongly advised.
-If you're typing in the game, you'll probably want to read the brief
-section on "Compile-as-you-go" on page 255 prior to performing a test
-compile. Once everything's correct, it’s time that our hero entered that
-enticing café.
+If you're typing in the game, you'll probably want to read the brief
+section on :ref:`compile-as-you-go` prior to performing a test compile.
+Once everything's correct, it’s time that our hero entered that enticing
+café.
projects / ibg.git / blobdiff