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AudioGames.net Forum → Developers room → what language to code a text adventure?
Yeah. I'm sure I could too.
I'm getting some progress in the language, there's just one problem; not sure how I feel about having to read a 27 chapter long book...
that seems a bit much.
You don't have to. Their book goes in an order such that you can start working when you start reading. Instead of being organized by complexity, it's organized by commonality of feature. Though admittedly they're the same in this case. You could also jump straight to the recipe book if you wanted.
But Inform's hello world is not a hello world; it's coding the environment. If you know what you want, you can start reading the book and code things as you come to them. You'll be able to get all the rooms up and running almost immediately, though possibly without functionality.
Oh yeah I forgot about the recipe book.
I pretty much have an idea of a couple of the rooms I want to start out with. I guess I'll just add more as I go.
And as you earlier pointed out it is a major difference going from a programming language to one such as inform. Most languages have something in common, and that is their use of symbols and the way a lot of them are structured. with inform it's like you're writing a story that can only contain certain words.
Yeah, basically. But it's not as constrained as you think and once you get a little used to the type of language you need, it sort of starts flowing. It's been a while, but I believe you can also tell Inform 7 what something means if you want.
There's an issue. I want inform to do something when the player opens a certain door. I've tried all of these, but none seem to work.
When The Battered Door Opens: say "You pull at the knob, which surprisingly manages to stay connected to the door, despite how loose it is. The door makes a loud creeking sound as it scrapes open."
say "You pull at the knob, which surprisingly manages to stay connected to the door, despite how loose it is. The door makes a loud creeking sound as it scrapes open" when The Battered Door Opens.
Any idea of how I might do this? or what chapter to look at?
It's been too long since I've looked at Inform 7 for me to provide specific chapter references, but you need a before, instead of, or after rule. From memory (this may not be exactly correct):
Instead of opening the battered door: say "whatever"; now the battered door is open.
Edit: be careful of accidental recursion. You need to use a "now x" statement. When you're saying something like "open the battered door" in Inform, it's going via the same mechanisms that commands do. that is, the rule which just tried to open the door will trigger itself again and, well, boom.
Maybe I should look at Inform 7 again. I was never creative in the particular way needed to write great interactive fiction, so I stopped.
Wow dude, thanks for the help. what you remembered is correct; it worked.
I appreciate you helping me.
Heh. Don't count on much more of it. I have literally not touched inform in years. Keep going through the book in order. It starts off looking similar to other programming languages; you will soon find out that it isn't. Time for example. And the fact that you can before/instead of/after basically everything like I just did.
If you want big bodies of code to skim, there's the reliques of tolti-aph and counterfeit monkey. Both of these are advanced by all means, but you might learn something from it. I'm 99% sure counterfeit monkey is open source, but it may not be. The one downside to Inform 7 is the lack of a reference. This isn't really surprising given that, unlike other languages, there's 10 or so variations on how to say something in many cases.
Yeah that's OK. and most of the time I'm able to get what the thing's talking about, but of course there's some things I need help with. I guess that instead thing was right under my nose; in the rules chapter--I saw it there, but I didn't think that would help me. I thought it was When.
Steve, if you need any help with Inform, talk to me. I would advise you to downgrade if you are using a version above 6G60. Things are a lot easier: For one, you don't have to keep track of viewpoints and verb tenses. Also, you don't have to worry about putting letters in parentheses after your say phrases like (A) or (B).
Thankyou. Per the racing game I'm currently working on, though, I've set Abducted: Hostiles #1 to the side temporarily, however it is still on my computer and I work on it from time to time. But I'll be sure to keep that in mind for when i need help with inform. Currently I'm using 7L38 I think... so yeah I'm way off.
I'm glad I can help. I'll post a link to the 6G60 instaler later. Also I've ported a few extensions to 6G60, such as Emily Short's Skeleton Keys and inanimate listeners. If you want those extensions made for 6G60, let me know.
Why are we downgrading exactly? "You should downgrade" has successfully hit every single one of my horrible idea buttons, so I'd really like to know what they did that makes you think this.
When a language gives you something new to deal with, it is usually for good reason. If the designers of that language are idiots, this may not hold true. I doubt the designers of the language are idiots in this case. But unless you're looking at something like Python where half your world is only available on the older version, having new programmers to the language start on an older version isn't usually a good idea. So I'm curious. Why?
AudioGames.net Forum → Developers room → what language to code a text adventure?
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