[TADS ANNOUNCE] TADSMap release 1
Andrew Pontious
use!
It uses HTML and PNG images to show the user a dynamically-created map
of her or his immediate location, similar to Beyond Zork's map.
I believe this is the first *dynamic* graphical mapping system available
to any IF language.
It integrates into existing TADS games *very* easily -- mostly minor
changes to the game's rooms.
You can get the current version at http://www.umbar.com/tadsmap/. It'll
be up on the IF Archive soon.
It requires the latest versions of the HTML-TADS interpreters out there,
which means the pre-release TADS 2/3 Window interpreter available at
http://www.tads.org (2.5.6 won't work) and HyperTADS 1.3, available at
http://www.hypertads.org. By "require" I mean earlier terp versions have
bugs in their HTML implementations that prevent TADSMap from working,
and might crash the terp.
All of this is explained in the Introduction (with pictures!)
I'm especially interested in working with any Competition authors who
would like to add this functionality to their games. Come to me if you
have any questions, I'll be happy to help you with any integration
issues!
-- Andrew Pontious
--
Remove LAWNCLIPPINGS to email.
Joao Mendes
dro...@umLAWNCLIPPINGSbar.com (Andrew Pontious) wrote in
news:1fi27yf.nqbnz119skck2N%dro...@umLAWNCLIPPINGSbar.com:
> I'm especially interested in working with any Competition authors who
> would like to add this functionality to their games. Come to me if you
> have any questions, I'll be happy to help you with any integration
> issues!
One question that comes to me is wether this applies to T2, T3 or both. :)
Cheers,
J.
Andrew Pontious
> Hi, :)
>
> dro...@umLAWNCLIPPINGSbar.com (Andrew Pontious) wrote in
> news:1fi27yf.nqbnz119skck2N%dro...@umLAWNCLIPPINGSbar.com:
>
> > I'm especially interested in working with any Competition authors who
> > would like to add this functionality to their games. Come to me if you
> > have any questions, I'll be happy to help you with any integration
> > issues!
>
> One question that comes to me is whether this applies to T2, T3 or both. :)
>
> Cheers,
This is T2 only at this time.
I don't know enough about T3 to port it, and the languages are different
enough that it would almost certainly involve a decent amount of
rewriting.
And the idea of a single codebase for both T2 and T3....shudder. At the
very least it would require a lot of confusing abstraction of
differences between the two, making something that's already pretty
complicated much harder for authors to understand.
But a full port is in the cards at some point.
If anyone wants to help, esp. in order to get this in to a T3 comp game,
let me know.
Kent Tessman
news:1fi27yf.nqbnz119skck2N%dro...@umLAWNCLIPPINGSbar.com...
> It uses HTML and PNG images to show the user a dynamically-created map
> of her or his immediate location, similar to Beyond Zork's map.
>
> I believe this is the first *dynamic* graphical mapping system available
> to any IF language.
Actually, to give credit to the good Cardinal Teulbachs, he created an
automapper for Hugo in 1997 or so which has the capability of generating
either a small dynamic map window (a la Beyond Zork) of the player's
immediate surroundings, or a full map of the game landscape (again generated
dynamically from the room layout).
But I like the sound of the image-based display of TADSMap--I look forward
to seeing it in action.
Neil Cerutti
Tessman wrote:
> "Andrew Pontious" <dro...@umLAWNCLIPPINGSbar.com> wrote in message
> news:1fi27yf.nqbnz119skck2N%dro...@umLAWNCLIPPINGSbar.com...
>> It uses HTML and PNG images to show the user a
>> dynamically-created map of her or his immediate location,
>> similar to Beyond Zork's map.
>>
>> I believe this is the first *dynamic* graphical mapping system
>> available to any IF language.
>
> Actually, to give credit to the good Cardinal Teulbachs, he
> created an automapper for Hugo in 1997 or so which has the
> capability of generating either a small dynamic map window (a
> la Beyond Zork) of the player's immediate surroundings, or a
> full map of the game landscape (again generated dynamically
> from the room layout).
In addition, the z-machine interpreter called Nitfol includes an
automapping feature, which draws a little ascii map in a window.
--
Neil Cerutti <cer...@trans-video.net>
Kevin Forchione
news:1fi27yf.nqbnz119skck2N%dro...@umLAWNCLIPPINGSbar.com...
> use!
Bravo!!
--Kevin
Andrew Pontious
Heh, I tried to be careful to formulate my claim correctly, looks like
it didn't work.
By "graphical" I meant "non-ASCII based".
The tools from nitfol, L. Ross Raszewski's ASCII mapping tool in Moments
Out Of Time, and Cardinal Teulbachs' AUTOMAP.ZIP Hugo code (to compile
AUTOMAP.ZIP you need to rename verblib.g back to grammar.g, this was a
change made from Hugo 2.3 to 2.5) are all ASCII maps. Their graphics are
created using various ASCII characters in fixed-width mode.
TADSMap uses actual graphics to show its rooms, which in my mind gives
it more of the polish of Beyond Zork, which also used actual graphics.
Aside from that, yeah, they're all pretty much taking the same approach.
Plugh!
this for a while, but just couldn't find the time, so I was hoping
that someone else would.
Your implemntation seems excellent.
Do you have any plans to develop it further? Or do you see it as being
complete as it is?
Andrew Pontious
> Do you have any plans to develop it further? Or do you see it as being
> complete as it is?
I will be continuing development on it. (New feature requests are
welcome.)
And there will be a T3 version, though it might take a while.
-- Andrew
Arnel Legaspi
Cool! Automapping for people like me who are too lazy to draw maps!
Don't take this the wrong way, but it _is_ about time TADS has had
something like that, especially since HTML TADS has been here for
quite a long time.
Now to get that new interpreter...:)
Ann O'nymous
> Don't take this the wrong way, but it _is_ about time TADS has had
> something like that
Damn right! People don't do enough to make life easy for us lazy bastards!