First Project! (Part 2)

(I broke this up into 2 posts because the way I embed the example code was starting to make the HTML all funky)

Inventory!

So, ZILF's library defaults to "tall" inventory listings, where each item is given its own line.  The transcript uses the "wide" format so I had to edit my own version of V-INVENTORY.

In a bit of additional transcript weirdness, the circus ticket is listed as "a circus ticket" in the inventory and just "ticket" everywhere else.  Since I was editing V-INVENTORY anyway, I just put in a condition for printing "a circus ticket" instead of using its default name.  Since this game doesn't need it, I also took out the light and container checks.

You'll notice how MAP-CONTENTS loops through every child of the second argument, setting it to the first argument.  I use it once to get the number of children of the player so I can adequately add punctuation the next time around when everything is printed out.

>JUGGLER, TELL ME ABOUT THE DOG

Originally, I was hoping to finish the transcript game in time to submit it to Marius Müller's "Neinth annual New Year's Minicomp."  I was saving the coding of the juggler's actions for last as I imagined it'd take the most work (some daemon/queue stuff along with the juggler dropping things and reacting to whichever objects the player has grabbed), but before I got to that, I ran into another issue.

It turned out that the EVERYWHERE grammar token (ZIL calls them "syntax tokens") hasn't been implemented yet.  EVERYWHERE allows verbs to refer to any known, referable object, pretty much existing mostly for ASK and TELL.  Without EVERYWHERE, I could only ask NPCs about objects in immediate scope.

The workaround for this involves making fake global objects just for the purpose of conversation.  While pursuing this method, I noticed GENERIC-OBJECTS wasn't working 100% as it should.  GENERIC-OBJECTS are objects that can be referred but not seen or touch (the manual lists the "new will" in Deadline as an example).  I found that my player could see them just fine!

The fix for this involves a couple steps.  First off, I had to edit VISIBLE? so it did not allow GENERIC-OBJECTS along with GLOBAL-OBJECTS (which can be seen from everywhere).  Unfortunately, VISIBLE? is only called when the command has a pronoun, so the following code needs to be added to all applicable verb routines:

<COND (<IN? ,PRSO ,GENERIC-OBJECTS>

<CANT-SEE>

<RETURN>)>

(CANT-SEE is just a routine for printing "You don't see that here.")

This is mostly on the right track although there is still one remaining issue.  Referring to an object that is actually out of scope doesn't take up a turn, but referring to an object in GENERIC-OBJECTS does.

What's next?

I still have to go through the rest of the applicable verb routines and add the above code, even though it's likely I'll use LOCAL-OBJECTS instead (where you can limit objects' access to certain rooms).  Then I'll have to make sure they never clash with real objects.  After that, I can get to work on coding that juggler!

That all said, now that I've missed the deadline for the New Year's comp, I have some other things I need to work on, so the Ballyhoo Sample Transcript Game is going on the backburner for a little bit!

Well, actually, I just remembered one more thing I could write about, but I'll save that for next time.