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From: bbarnett@crash.cts.com (Bruce Barnett)
Subject: Inform Programming Quest.
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Date: Thu, 15 Dec 1994 04:30:45 GMT
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I'm in the process of porting a very old (1983) out-of-print adventure
game, EMPIRE OF THE OVER-MIND, into Inform language.  The game is
technically very primitive, but is marvelously imaginative and has a
certain whimsy in places.  Part of its appeal is that primitiveness, which
I'm trying to preserve as much as possible.  It's quite a chore, actually,
to keep it from sounding too "Infocom-y"!  It requires "dumbing out" Inform
in many places.  I've located and written to the copyright owner of this
game, originally published by Avalon Hill Game Company, to ask them if they
will permit our adaptations for non-commercial purposes.

Most of the programming is finished, I think.  I'm down to three problems
that have me stumped.  Here they are, in what I think is increasing order
of programming difficulty:

1.  Over-mind requires that the player be able to do anything, go anywhere,
    and take or drop anything in a dark just the same as if the player were
    in the light.  The only thing the player can't do is see.  But Inform's
    library won't let the player do anything in the dark.  I tried
    bypassing the library entirely, staying completely out of "thedark,"
    but won't allow any player action unless the room is "looked" at first.
    The verblib.h routines for "GoSub" and "LookSub" are deeply obscure to
    me.

2.  There are a number of creatures in Over-mind who can follow the player,
    even when several rooms away (one can follow even from the ends of the
    earth!).  How can this be accomplished?

3.  There is a box with buttons which, when pushed, can hopscotch the
    player eventually into every room in the game.  The programming will
    apparently require somehow referring to the numbers associated with
    each room.  In my programming, however, the room numbers are not
    sequential, because many "nearby" objects break up the sequence.


Those are my problems.  This has been a very interesting exercise.  The
programming techniques of the original Over-mind authors were very
different from Infocom's, I think, and a lot of work-arounds were necessary
to get up to this point.  Can you help me finish this up?

Bruce Barnett

___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12
                                                                                                 
