Re: Need reviews of HLA Adventure

NoDot wrote:
>
> Jim Carlock wrote:
> > I was thinking some application created the ".hla" file...
>
> Oh, great! When did you last drop into ALA?

He spends enough time in a.l.a that I'm surprised he didn't
think it was supposed to be a weapon! :)

The .hla file *is* created by an application - the text
editor of your choice. The input file is the human brain...
we hope.

> > So .hla is a text script currently.
>
> No, it isn't.

Well *any* source code file could be thought of as a
"script". The assembler... compiler... even interpreter
could be thought of as a "script processor" - like bash, but
with a different syntax (unless you're using Rick Hohensee's
"Shasm" - in which case it *is* bash).

That isn't the way *I* usually think of it, but Jim's not as
far off as it sounds at first.

He got off on the wrong foot by trying to assemble an .asm
file that shouldn't have been there *until* he'd run HLA. At
that point, HLA should have run the assembler automatically.
He never would have seen the .asm file, unless he'd bothered
to look... Unless something went wrong - which it did, in
this case: a "line too long".

Paul asked for feedback on his game. Jim was good enough to
download it and take a look. Instead of just playing the
game (the executable is in the zip file), he decided to look
at HLA too. If he'd been a complete newbie, he could have
downloaded "fhlasetup.exe", run that, and been set to go.
But since he had Masm, he went with that - and it didn't
have the "grunt" to assemble the file HLA produced. I don't
know my Masm versions, but I suspect a newer version would
do it.

Jim may still not "get" what HLA's doing, if he feels that
the files produced from this "script" should have a
date/time independent of the time they were produced - But
he'll get there. I have a suspicion he won't wind up liking
HLA, but at least he's looked at it, and knows what it is
that he likes, or doesn't.

Best,
Frank
.

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