Re: Just spent 5 hours bug fixing HLA Adventure (my head's about to roll off!)

Things become more interesting if you take in sight, sounds, smells, feeling,
taste, direction of movement (your muscles will start to ache if you're
climbing a mountain and the sense of exhaustion may be overcoming if you
proceed to climb higher). Exhaustion is a sense like the other five senses.
There might even be a sense of warning, whereby you sense danger but
perhaps can't identify the source... something just isn't right.

DIRECTIONS OF MOVEMENT (10 different directions):

1
8 2
7 3
6 4
5

9 = up
a = down

WHEN IN ONE AREA, the views to each of the different directions,
the sounds coming from each direction, the lighting, the smells, the
tastes, the movements should be accounted for to provide a very
intensely interactive world.

look north
look up

MAP

1 2 3 4 5 6
7 8 9 a b c
d e f g h i
j k l m n o
p q r s t u

views

1
you are in dark forest and you see light to the east, a mountain to
the south and a cliff to the southeast. the sound of waves comes
from the east, crashing roughly against a shore. the smell of the
forest is lightly intermingled with the smell of dead fish and
a salty spray.

7
you walk over a mountainous path climbing up and away, the treeline
thinning as you move up the mountainside sound. the sound of birds
flying high above echoes errily as you climb higher. the smell of
pine fills the air. the air grows cooler as you climb higher
(grows warmer as you move down).

MOVEMENT THROUGH AREAS
If you moved from 1 to 7, you are climbing. Exhaustion can be a factor,
if such is desired. Going from 7 to 1 would be easier. The feelings and
sights going from one area to another provide a way to capitalize upon
using senses to provide a realistic environment. Edgar Allen Poe... if
you're into creating feelings of haunt...

It requires a little more thought and imagination, and an imagination of
a "world" where you can taste the ocean spray, feel the water spray,
hear the sounds of the waves, smell the fish, crabs or whatever lives
there, feel the weather, etc. It requires a MAP. A complete MAP.

Start out with a small description of each area, then build upon that
to present something that more interesting. Imagery (imagining deeply
that YOU are in that area) provides an opportunity to apply creativity.
_Create_ _your_ _world_... Feel the world... Hear the sounds...
Smell the world... Taste the world... WALK through the world...
FLY through the world... FLOAT through the world... SWIM through
the world...

Being that a text-based world provides an opportunity to describe a
world, the use of senses, the use of time (day or night will affect what
can be seen if you're so inclined to implement time), provides
opportunities to entertain, so the reader FEELS like they are IN your
WORLD.

I haven't helped with the coding, but I sense the birth of a world.

As far as coding goes I see two or more descriptions for each area...

Views from another area... you could possibly have ten different
views from other areas.... and time plays into it (night and day)
the views could be 20 for each area. Most game designers won't
take the time to build such a world, but it could be done using a
lot of generic descriptions. A linked list pointing to a table of views
would work quite well.

If the user were to type:

LOOK NORTH
LOOK SOUTH
LOOK SOUTHEAST

Table of descriptions:
0001) There's a forest to the north.
0002) The forest thins to the north east. The sound of waves can
be heard coming from that direction. The smell of the sea...
0003) The land starts to rise and you appear to be at the base of
a mountain. You realize that continuing in this direction may result
in muscle cramps. The forest thins slightly in this direction.

The ten views:
N 0001
NE 0002
E 0002
SE 0003
S 0003
SW 0003
W 0004
NW 0004
Up 0005
Down 0006 You see the ground below you. Pine needles fill the area,
(the senses of the season...) fall will bring colorful leaves falling off of
trees if the area isn't all pine trees, the leaves crunching under your feet
as you walk... spring will bring flowers... summer will bring heat...
winter will bring snow and ice.

HTH.

--
Jim Carlock
Please post replies to newsgroup.

"Charles A. Crayne" <ccrayne@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Wed, 08 Jun 2005 05:39:36 GMT
"Beth" <BethStone21@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

:They _WOULD_ have been entirely "trivial", if you'd used an "engine"
:design from the beginning...

Your advice, while correct, is a bit too general, and comes far too late.
Let me describe the problem, and its solution, in greater detail.

Paul chose to implement his parser with a string index function, which led
to such unexpected results as "welcome sailor" being interpreted as "go
west". He now understands that a string compare function is a better
choice, although it has pitfalls of its own.

Of course, this should have been a five minute change, but for Paul's
choice to code each and every word in the game's vocabulary in a separate
code block like this:

str.index(w,"bottle");
if((type int32 eax) >= 0) then
mov(11,s);
endif;

Instead, he should have placed the vocabulary words in an array of strings,
and written a procedure which used a single instance of
"str.index(w,p)", where 'p' is an index into the the string array.

He has a similar issue with the room descriptions. A number of people,
including myself, have a problem with Paul's choice of screen colors.
Unfortunately, the room descriptions, along with the associated color
settings, are implemented as a separate code block for each room. Again, he
should have placed the descriptions in an array of strings, and written a
single procedure to write the appropriate description to the screen.

On the other hand, the movement table has the correct design approach,
although the specific implementation is a bit too rigid. I have seen
adventure games where the movement rules also are written into separate
code blocks for each room.

-- Chuck


.

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