Handle a bare numeric token on the command line a bit more gracefully.

[open-adventure.git] / notes.adoc

diff --git a/notes.adoc b/notes.adoc
index aea93d014bc6f594c54deae09c62608bfea48423..c1b5c849603b61edc93074c9b4db53ae8749a3dd 100644 (file)
--- a/notes.adoc
+++ b/notes.adoc
@@ -11,7 +11,9 @@ The principal maintainers of this code are Eric S. Raymond and Jason
 Ninneman.  Eric received Don Woods's encouragement to update and ship
 the game; Jason signed on early in the process to help. The assistance
 of Peje Nilsson in restructuring some particularly grotty gotos is
 Ninneman.  Eric received Don Woods's encouragement to update and ship
 the game; Jason signed on early in the process to help. The assistance
 of Peje Nilsson in restructuring some particularly grotty gotos is

-gratefully acknowledged. Petr Voropaev contributed fuzz testing.
+gratefully acknowledged. Petr Voropaev contributed fuzz testing and
+code cleanups. Aaron Traas did a lot of painstaking work to improve
+test coverage.

 
 == Nomenclature ==
 
 
 == Nomenclature ==
 


@@ -28,22 +30,54 @@ with the BSD Games version.
 == Philosophy ==
 
 Extreme care has been taken not to make changes that would alter the
 == Philosophy ==
 
 Extreme care has been taken not to make changes that would alter the

-logic of the game as we received it from Don Woods.  By policy, all
-user-visible changes must be revertible with the -o (oldstyle) option.
+logic of the game as we received it from Don Woods, except to fix
+glitches that were clearly bugs.  By policy, all user-visible
+changes to gameplay must be revertible with the -o (oldstyle) option.

 
 

-It is a goal of this project to exactly preserve the *behavior* of
-430-point Adventure, but the implementation of it is fair game for
-improvement. In particular, we are concerned to move it to a form that
-is (a) readable, and (b) friendly to forward translation to future
-languages.  It has already survived a move from FORTRAN to C; a future
-as a Python or Go translation seems possible, even probable.
+It is a goal of this project to exactly preserve the *intended
+behavior* of 430-point Adventure, but the implementation of it is fair
+game for improvement. In particular, we are concerned to move it to a
+form that is (a) readable, and (b) friendly to forward translation to
+future languages.  It has already survived a move from FORTRAN to C; a
+future as a Python or Go translation seems possible, even probable.

 
 == Functional changes ==
 
 
 == Functional changes ==
 

+Bug fixes:
+
+* Reading the relocated Witt's End sign in the endgame didn't work right.
+
+* Behavior when saying the giant's magic words outside his room wasn't
+  quite correct - the game responded as though the player were in
+  the room ("...can't you read?"). The new message is "Well, that was
+  remarkably pointless."
+ 
+* Attempting to extinguish an unlit urn caused it to lose its oil.
+
+* "A crystal bridge now spans the fissure." (progressive present) was
+  incorrect most places it appeared and has been replaced by "A crystal 
+  bridge spans the fissure." (timeless present).
+
+* Under odd circumstances (dropping rug or vase outdoors) the game could
+  say "floor" when it should say "ground" (or "dirt", or something).
+

 By default, advent issues "> " as a command prompt.  This feature
 became common in many variants after the original 350-point version,
 but was never backported into Crowther & Woods's main line before now.
 By default, advent issues "> " as a command prompt.  This feature
 became common in many variants after the original 350-point version,
 but was never backported into Crowther & Woods's main line before now.

-The "-o" (oldstyle) version reverts the behavior.
+The "-o" (oldstyle) option reverts the behavior.
+
+There is a set of standard one-letter command aliases conventional in modern
+text adventure games; 'l' and 'x'; for 'look' (or 'examine'), 'z' to do nothing
+for a turn, 'i' for 'inventory', 'g' for 'get', and 'd' for 'drop'.  The 'd'
+alias collides with 'd' for 'down', but the others have been implemented.
+The "-o" (oldstyle) option disables them.
+
+Unrecognized words are no longer truncated to 5 characters and
+uppercased when they are echoed. The "-o" (oldstyle) option restores
+this behavior.
+
+Typing a numeric liteteral to the command prompt no longer triggers a
+fatal error. This change is reverted by the oldstyle option. 

 
 A "seed" command has been added.  This is not intended for human use
 but as a way for game logs to set the PRNG (pseudorandom-number generator) so
 
 A "seed" command has been added.  This is not intended for human use
 but as a way for game logs to set the PRNG (pseudorandom-number generator) so


@@ -60,11 +94,11 @@ Using "seed" and -l, the distribution now includes a regression-test
 suite for the game.  Any log captured with -l (and thus containing
 a "seed" command) will replay reliably, including random events.
 
 suite for the game.  Any log captured with -l (and thus containing
 a "seed" command) will replay reliably, including random events.
 

-The adventure.text file is no longer required at runtime.  Instead, it
-is compiled at build time to a source module containing C structures,
-which is then linked to the advent binary. There is an adventure.yaml file
-as well; this is also compiled to C code, and will eventually replace
-adventure.text altogether.
+The adventure.text file is no longer required at runtime.  Instead, an
+adventure.yaml file is compiled at build time to a source module
+containing C structures, which is then linked to the advent
+binary.  The YAML is drastically easier to read and edit than
+the old ad-hoc format of adventure.txt.

 
 The game-save format has changed.  This was done to simplify the
 FORTRAN-derived code that formerly implemented the save/restore
 
 The game-save format has changed.  This was done to simplify the
 FORTRAN-derived code that formerly implemented the save/restore


@@ -73,8 +107,8 @@ necessarily pretty ugly by modern standards. Encryption and
 checksumming have been discarded - it's pointless to try
 tamper-proofing saves when everyone has the source code.
 
 checksumming have been discarded - it's pointless to try
 tamper-proofing saves when everyone has the source code.
 

-A -r command-line been added. When it is given (with a file path
-argument) it is functionally equivalent to a RESTORE command.
+A -r command-line option has been added. When it is given (with a file
+path argument) it is functionally equivalent to a RESTORE command.

 
 == Translation ==
 
 
 == Translation ==
 


@@ -85,14 +119,9 @@ ugly and quite unreadable.
 Jason Ninneman and I have moved it to what is almost, but not quite,
 idiomatic modern C.  We refactored the right way, checking correctness
 against a comprehensive test suite that we built first and verified
 Jason Ninneman and I have moved it to what is almost, but not quite,
 idiomatic modern C.  We refactored the right way, checking correctness
 against a comprehensive test suite that we built first and verified

-with coverage tools (we now have over 90% coverage, with the remaining
-confined to exception cases that are very difficult to reach). This is
+with coverage tools (there is effectively 100% code coverage). This is

 what you are running when you do "make check".
 
 what you are running when you do "make check".
 

-In the process we found and fixed a few minor bugs. Most notably, reading
-the relocated Witt's End sign in the endgame didn't work. Behavior when
-saying the giant's magic words outside his room wasn't quite right either.
-

 The move to modern C entailed some structural changes.  The most
 important was the refactoring of over 350 gotos into if/loop/break
 structures.  We also abolished almost all shared globals; the main one
 The move to modern C entailed some structural changes.  The most
 important was the refactoring of over 350 gotos into if/loop/break
 structures.  We also abolished almost all shared globals; the main one


@@ -107,14 +136,14 @@ of sixbit code points in a restricted character set, packed 5 to a
 verb was one of these words, and what would be string operations in a
 more recent language were all done on sequences of these words.
 
 verb was one of these words, and what would be string operations in a
 more recent language were all done on sequences of these words.
 

-We are still in the process of removing all this bit-packing cruft
-in favor of proper C strings.  C strings may be a weak and leaky
-abstraction, but this is one of the rare cases in which they are
-an obvious improvement over what they're displacing... 
+We have removed all this bit-packing cruft in favor of proper C
+strings.  C strings may be a weak and leaky abstraction, but this is
+one of the rare cases in which they are an obvious improvement over
+what they're displacing...

 
 We have also conducted extensive fuzz testing on the game using
 afl (American Fuzzy Lop).  We've found and fixed some crashers in
 
 We have also conducted extensive fuzz testing on the game using
 afl (American Fuzzy Lop).  We've found and fixed some crashers in

-our new code (which occasionally uses malloc(3)) but none as yet
+our new code (which occasionally uses malloc(3)), but none as yet

 in Don's old code (which didn't).
 
 The code falls short of being fully modern C in the following
 in Don's old code (which didn't).
 
 The code falls short of being fully modern C in the following


@@ -136,13 +165,18 @@ ways:
   to fix it because doing so would (a) be quite difficult, and (b)
   compromise forward-portability to other languages.
 
   to fix it because doing so would (a) be quite difficult, and (b)
   compromise forward-portability to other languages.
 

-* Much of the code still uses FORTRAN-style uppercase names.
-
-* The code still assumes one-origin array indexing.  Thus, arrays are
-  a cell larger than they strictly need to be and cell 0 is unused.
+* Much of the code still assumes one-origin array indexing.  Thus,
+  arrays are a cell larger than they strictly need to be and cell 0 is
+  unused.

 
 * The code is still mostly typeless, slinging around machine longs
   like a FORTRAN or BCPL program.  Some (incomplete) effort has been made
   to introduce semantic types.
 
 
 * The code is still mostly typeless, slinging around machine longs
   like a FORTRAN or BCPL program.  Some (incomplete) effort has been made
   to introduce semantic types.
 

+We have made exactly one minor architectural change.  In addition to the
+old code's per-object state-description messages, we now have a per-object
+message series for state *changes*.  This makes it possible to pull a fair
+amount of text out of the arbitrary-messages list and associate those
+mesages with the objects that conceptually own them.
+

 // end
 // end