Inform vs. TADS look-and-feel
Magnus Olsson
Last summer (I think), somebody mentioned on this newsgroup that he
didn't like the default TADS formatting of room descriptions etc, but
preferred that of Inform and the Infocom games instead.
Since I, too, tend to prefer the Infocom look-and-feel, I put some
effort into giving my contest entry "Aayela" that look-and-feel. It turned
out to be rather simple; a few changes in the way room descriptions are
printed and some formatting changes in a few other library routines.
However, I've seen no comments on the fact. Which makes me wonder:
Has anybody noticed? Does anybody care? And if anybody cares, do you
think it's a good thing, or do you prefer the "original" adv.t
formatting?
--
Magnus Olsson (m...@df.lth.se, zeb...@pobox.com)
Nulldogma
> Has anybody noticed? Does anybody care? And if anybody > cares, do you
> think it's a good thing, or do you prefer the "original"
> adv.t formatting?
I liked it (the Aayela formatting, I mean). It looks especially nice under
MaxTADS, since the Mac version of TR loses the boldfacing. (Which is one
reason why I now bundle the Mac executable of Lost New York with MaxTADS.)
Neil
---------------------------------------------------------
Neil deMause ne...@echonyc.com
http://www.echonyc.com/~wham/neild.html
---------------------------------------------------------
Kenneth Fair
In article <19970109144...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
null...@aol.com (Nulldogma) wrote:
>> Has anybody noticed? Does anybody care? And if anybody > cares, do you
>> think it's a good thing, or do you prefer the "original"
>> adv.t formatting?
>
>I liked it (the Aayela formatting, I mean). It looks especially nice under
>MaxTADS, since the Mac version of TR loses the boldfacing. (Which is one
>reason why I now bundle the Mac executable of Lost New York with MaxTADS.)
Agreed. I took one look at MaxTADS and threw out the TADS run-time.
Thanks again for porting over the nice MaxZip interface to TADS, Andrew.
--
KEN FAIR - U. Chicago Law | <http://student-www.uchicago.edu/users/kjfair>
Of Counsel, U. of Ediacara | Power Mac! | CABAL(tm) | I'm w/in McQ - R U?
"I've spent half my career without any trousers on." - Charleton Heston
Linards Ticmanis
Magnus Olsson wrote:
>
> Last summer (I think), somebody mentioned on this newsgroup that he
> didn't like the default TADS formatting of room descriptions etc, but
> preferred that of Inform and the Infocom games instead.
Well, maybe this is a minor point, or maybe I'm missing out on
something...
However, I like the ability of Frotz (especially Frotz DOS - the Unix
version is a bit limited here) to change all the colors of Fonts, status
line, emphasis, background etc. I have found dark blue on white,
combined with the ISO font from the DOS 6.22 Supplemental Disk, to be a
nicer reading experience if a play a longer time.. Is there any way to
change the colors of TADS's "tr.exe" ? If not, there should be.
--
Linards Ticmanis
<A HREF="mailto:tic...@reze-1.rz.rwth-aachen.de">
tic...@reze-1.rz.rwth-aachen.de</A>
<BRIBE> me. I'll leave.
Magnus Olsson
In article <32D6B2AA...@post.rwth-aachen.de>,
Linards Ticmanis <Linards....@post.rwth-aachen.de> wrote:
>However, I like the ability of Frotz (especially Frotz DOS - the Unix
>version is a bit limited here) to change all the colors of Fonts, status
>line, emphasis, background etc. I have found dark blue on white,
>combined with the ISO font from the DOS 6.22 Supplemental Disk, to be a
>nicer reading experience if a play a longer time.. Is there any way to
>change the colors of TADS's "tr.exe" ? If not, there should be.
There's a utility called trcolor.exe included in the TADS distribution
that lets you change the screen colours.
Julian Arnold
>
> Magnus Olsson wrote:
> >
> > Last summer (I think), somebody mentioned on this newsgroup that he
> > didn't like the default TADS formatting of room descriptions etc, but
> > preferred that of Inform and the Infocom games instead.
>
> Well, maybe this is a minor point, or maybe I'm missing out on
> something...
> version is a bit limited here) to change all the colors of Fonts, status
> line, emphasis, background etc. I have found dark blue on white,
> combined with the ISO font from the DOS 6.22 Supplemental Disk, to be a
> nicer reading experience if a play a longer time.. Is there any way to
> change the colors of TADS's "tr.exe" ? If not, there should be.
You can do this with TC/TADSC/TRColour (an external program). This
allows you to select colours from a small range (16 foreground and 8
background) for normal text, bold text, and the statusline. I don't
know of any way to do this from within a game, but then I don't know
TADS.
Hugo allows you to change the foreground and background colours of
normal text and the statusline from within the program (bold colour is
dictated by the current normal text colour). There are 16 colours,
which may be used either as foreground or background. It is of course
up to the programmer to provide facilities for player-choice colour
schemes.
Hugo also allows you to simply choose between the indented (TADS-like)
paragraph style and the non-indented (Inform-like) style, by setting or
clearing the NOINDENT_BIT in FORMAT, and to vary the amount of
indentation (by setting the global INDENT_SIZE to <value> (by default
<value> is 2)).
Jools
--
"For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand
ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me
from ever completing anything." -- Herman Melville, "Moby Dick"
Andrew Plotkin
Kenneth Fair (kjf...@midway.uchicago.edu) wrote:
> In article <19970109144...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
> null...@aol.com (Nulldogma) wrote:
> >I liked it (the Aayela formatting, I mean). It looks especially nice under
> >MaxTADS, since the Mac version of TR loses the boldfacing. (Which is one
> >reason why I now bundle the Mac executable of Lost New York with MaxTADS.)
Whee! Cool.
> Agreed. I took one look at MaxTADS and threw out the TADS run-time.
> Thanks again for porting over the nice MaxZip interface to TADS, Andrew.
Well, thanks again to Mike Roberts for making the TADS source available to
port.
(Coincidentally, I just got back to working on the project that I dropped
to write MaxTADS... :-) No, not an IF-related project.)
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
Patrick Kellum
For some reason, Magnus Olsson was chating and out came these words of greatness:
>Since I, too, tend to prefer the Infocom look-and-feel, I put some
>effort into giving my contest entry "Aayela" that look-and-feel. It turned
>out to be rather simple; a few changes in the way room descriptions are
>printed and some formatting changes in a few other library routines.
I did something like that in my upcoming micro game, but I made up an
'infocom' verb that switches to that style. Typing 'infocom' again
switches back to the previous look.
Patrick
---
"Every weekday morning the school bell cast its glamour over the
surounding hills, calling the young to classes. They came running
down the slopes and leaping over the streams, out from caves and the
hollows of trees and suburban tract homes, impelled by powers greater
then their own to gain an education."
"The Iron Dragon's Daughter" by Michael Swanwick
Neil K.
At some point Magnus Olsson wrote:
>
> Last summer (I think), somebody mentioned on this newsgroup that he
> didn't like the default TADS formatting of room descriptions etc, but
> preferred that of Inform and the Infocom games instead.
Actually... since nobody else has asked... what are the main differences
between the TADS and Inform styles that people don't like?
- Neil K.
--
t e l a computer consulting + design * Vancouver, BC, Canada
web: http://www.tela.bc.ca/tela/ * email: te...@tela.bc.ca
Nulldogma
Neil K. Guy wrote:
> At some point Magnus Olsson wrote:
> >
> > Last summer (I think), somebody mentioned on this newsgroup that he
> > didn't like the default TADS formatting of room descriptions etc, but
> > preferred that of Inform and the Infocom games instead.
>
> Actually... since nobody else has asked... what are the main differences
> between the TADS and Inform styles that people don't like?
For me it's mostly that Inform games have bold room titles, as well as
flush-left (i.e., not indented) first paragraphs for room descriptions.
These are easy enough to implement in TADS (see code below), but so long
as boldfacing wasn't recognized on Macs, it wasn't safe to do. (Flush-left
type below a non-bold heading looks icky.)
With MaxTADS, we are saved from that scourge. MaxTADS also allows
non-fixed-width fonts, which many people clamor for (though I don't
particularly care).
Now if you could add functionality in TADS to recognize both fixed-width
*and* non-fixed-width fonts in the same game, then you'd really be
talking...
Neil
/* Code to "Informize" TADS room descriptions. */
modify room
statusLine =
{
"\(<<self.sdesc>>\)"; "\n";
}
;
modify nestedroom
statusLine =
{
"\(<<self.location.sdesc>>, <<self.statusPrep>> <<self.thedesc>>\)";
"\n";
}
;
Neil K.
> (Coincidentally, I just got back to working on the project that I dropped
> to write MaxTADS... :-) No, not an IF-related project.)
Your laser toy perhaps? :)
Colm McCarthy
fake...@anti-spam.address (Neil K.) wrote:
>At some point Magnus Olsson wrote:
>>
>> Last summer (I think), somebody mentioned on this newsgroup that he
>> didn't like the default TADS formatting of room descriptions etc, but
>> preferred that of Inform and the Infocom games instead.
> Actually... since nobody else has asked... what are the main differences
>between the TADS and Inform styles that people don't like?
> - Neil K.
It's nitpicking, but I've always preferred TADS's default responses.
Inform's "You can't see any such thing" always infuriated me. I found
it rather malicious in tone, but then that's me. Other than that I
haven't noticed any real differences. I prefer the Inform interface
but I find TADS easier to program in.
Cheers
Colm
Andrew Plotkin
Neil K. (fake...@anti-spam.address) wrote:
> > (Coincidentally, I just got back to working on the project that I dropped
> > to write MaxTADS... :-) No, not an IF-related project.)
> Your laser toy perhaps? :)
Nah, that's done, or at least in a stable and functional state.
http://www.edoc.com/zarf/spiro/main.html
Neil K. Guy
Colm McCarthy (illu...@execpc.com) wrote:
: It's nitpicking, but I've always preferred TADS's default responses.
: Inform's "You can't see any such thing" always infuriated me. I found
: it rather malicious in tone, but then that's me. [...]
Hm... you bring up another interesting point. I guess I don't like
Inform's response because TADS' default response (I don't know the word
xxx) is more honest. The former implies Inform knows the word; the latter
basically admits that TADS doesn't. In addition, with the Inform system
you get exchanges like this:
>take zxlkwdweio23898
You can't see any such thing.
And to me that breaks, uh, our good friend mimesis a bit.
My understanding of the logic behind the Inform system is that it avoids
giving away to the player what words the game understands and what words
are unknown. But really, I don't see anything wrong with that. I think
it's quite fair for the player to know what vocabulary words are likely to
be understood. And if you really want to dupe the player then you can
simply stick in appropriate but unused vocabulary words so it's not
possible to guess anything useful that way. :)
- Neil K.
--
the Vancouver CommunityNet * http://www.vcn.bc.ca/
(formerly the Vancouver Regional FreeNet)
Andrew Plotkin
Neil K. Guy (n...@vcn.bc.ca) wrote:
> Hm... you bring up another interesting point. I guess I don't like
> Inform's response because TADS' default response (I don't know the word
> xxx) is more honest. The former implies Inform knows the word; the latter
> basically admits that TADS doesn't. In addition, with the Inform system
> you get exchanges like this:
> >take zxlkwdweio23898
> You can't see any such thing.
> And to me that breaks, uh, our good friend mimesis a bit.
Whereas reality *does* sometimes stop you and say "The word 'XXX' does
not exist in this universe." I see...
> My understanding of the logic behind the Inform system is that it avoids
> giving away to the player what words the game understands and what words
> are unknown. But really, I don't see anything wrong with that. I think
> it's quite fair for the player to know what vocabulary words are likely to
> be understood.
I think it's totally unfair (and I speak as a player; it feels like
cheating when I can do this.)
Can we say anything further on this subject?
Neil K. Guy
Andrew Plotkin (erky...@netcom.com) wrote:
: I think it's totally unfair (and I speak as a player; it feels like
: cheating when I can do this.)
:
: Can we say anything further on this subject?
Probably.
Magnus Olsson
In article <erkyrathE...@netcom.com>,
Andrew Plotkin <erky...@netcom.com> wrote:
>Neil K. Guy (n...@vcn.bc.ca) wrote:
>> Hm... you bring up another interesting point. I guess I don't like
>> Inform's response because TADS' default response (I don't know the word
>> xxx) is more honest. The former implies Inform knows the word; the latter
>> basically admits that TADS doesn't. In addition, with the Inform system
>> you get exchanges like this:
>> >take zxlkwdweio23898
>> You can't see any such thing.
>> And to me that breaks, uh, our good friend mimesis a bit.
>
>Whereas reality *does* sometimes stop you and say "The word 'XXX' does
>not exist in this universe." I see...
I don't really think any of the systems is very good at maintaining
mimesis. There's a lot of scope for improvement - however, it is not at
all clear how to achieve that improvement in a reasonable simple way.
>> My understanding of the logic behind the Inform system is that it avoids
>> giving away to the player what words the game understands and what words
>> are unknown. But really, I don't see anything wrong with that. I think
>> it's quite fair for the player to know what vocabulary words are likely to
>> be understood.
>
>I think it's totally unfair (and I speak as a player; it feels like
>cheating when I can do this.)
>
>Can we say anything further on this subject?
Yes (raising hand eagerly, desperate to get teacher's attention :-)),
I think we should think a little more about the effects on
gameplay. Suppose we have a puzzle of the kind we all love and enjoy
so much: a guess-the-correct-word puzzle. Or suppose just that the
first word that suggests itself to the player is one that the author
hadn't thought of. So suppose the player says "take snorkelwhacker",
when the intended syntax was "take potrzebie".
In this case, Inform's response "You can't see any such thing" can be
more than a little confusing. There is IMHO a real risk that the player
will draw the conclusion that there really isn't any snorkelwhacker in
the game, but that the mysterious entity so eloquently described in
the room description really is something completely different.
When TADS replies that it doesn't understand the word
"snorkelwhacker", it is at least being completely honest. I think the
player is less likely to be misled and more likely to realize that he
should try all the synonyms he can think of.
At least that's how I work when I play IF.
Another case is this:
| Library.
| You uncle Zebrafax used to call this room his library, which is a bit
| odd since there is not a single book in sight. The only furniture is,
| in fact, a large safe.
|
| The safe is open. Inside it is a ruby the size of a plover's egg.
|
| > take all
| There is none at all available!
Which reply at least I find quite infuriating - the ruby is in plain
sight, yet the parser refuses to let "all" refer to things within
containers. (I'm sure Graham has good reasons for this; it's
irritating nevertheless).
Nulldogma
> | Library.
> | You uncle Zebrafax used to call this room his library, which is a bit
> | odd since there is not a single book in sight. The only furniture is,
> | in fact, a large safe.
> |
> | The safe is open. Inside it is a ruby the size of a plover's egg.
> |
> | > take all
> | There is none at all available!
>
> Which reply at least I find quite infuriating - the ruby is in plain
> sight, yet the parser refuses to let "all" refer to things within
> containers. (I'm sure Graham has good reasons for this; it's
> irritating nevertheless).
TADS does something similarly annoying in this case, though I at least
prefer it's annoying message ("I don't see what you're referring to") a
bit to Inform's. But I would love an easy way to flag items as being
included in "all" or not; or better, to flag *containers* as having their
contents be included in "all" or not. Or better still, both.
Neil
Stephen Granade
In article <19970122050...@ladder01.news.aol.com>
> But I would love an easy way to flag items as being
> included in "all" or not; or better, to flag *containers* as having
> their contents be included in "all" or not. Or better still, both.
I don't know that it's an *easy* way, but take a look at either a) the
code I posted recently under the "all" thread, or b) Magnus' code from
"Uncle Zebulon's Will" in zeb_std.t. Neither of them handle containers,
but a bit of patching could fix that.
Stephen
--
Stephen Granade | "It takes character to withstand the
sgra...@phy.duke.edu | rigors of indolence."
Duke University, Physics Dept | -- from _The Madness of King George_
Dave Gatewood
Colm McCarthy wrote:
> It's nitpicking, but I've always preferred TADS's default responses.
> Inform's "You can't see any such thing" always infuriated me. I found
> it rather malicious in tone, but then that's me.
(snip)
I've always had the exact same reaction to TADS's default response "You
can't have the [object]."
Dave
Trevor Barrie
erky...@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin) wrote:
>> Hm... you bring up another interesting point. I guess I don't like
>> Inform's response because TADS' default response (I don't know the word
>> xxx) is more honest. The former implies Inform knows the word; the latter
>> basically admits that TADS doesn't. In addition, with the Inform system
>> you get exchanges like this:
>> >take zxlkwdweio23898
>> You can't see any such thing.
>> And to me that breaks, uh, our good friend mimesis a bit.
>
>Whereas reality *does* sometimes stop you and say "The word 'XXX' does
>not exist in this universe." I see...
No, but a message which is explicitly from the game (rather than from the
simulated reality) breaks mimesis less than when a message ostensibly
describing the game-world brings the incomplete nature of that world to
light. For me, of course; YMMV and all that.
Kathleen Fischer
(Sorry... can't find who to attribute this to...)
> Hm... you bring up another interesting point. I guess I don't like
> Inform's response because TADS' default response (I don't know the word
> xxx) is more honest. The former implies Inform knows the word; the latter
> basically admits that TADS doesn't. In addition, with the Inform system
> you get exchanges like this:
> >take zxlkwdweio23898
> You can't see any such thing.
> And to me that breaks, uh, our good friend mimesis a bit.
The biggest gripe I have about "You can't see any such thing." is that I
get it most often when I'm trying to examine something listed in the
room description. Talking about breaking mimeses!
That said, I still prefer the Inform message to TADs because "The word
'XXX' does not exist in this universe." admits defeat right up front.
At least Inform tries to keep the illusion going and in some
circumstances it works (ie, you try to pull your mint condition IF
compiler manual out of your daypack when in fact you lost it in an
malfunctioning avalanche several posts ago).
----
Test Room
You a standing in the middle of Kathleen's test room. A thousand bugs
have been slayed here and their carcasses lie scattered about the floor.
Resting amoungst the rubble is a mint condition IF compiler manual. To
the north is a door leading to more interesting stuff.
> x bugs
You can't see any such thing.
A kunkel walks by, laughing his head off. "Mimesis? You need a good
graphical interface for that, my friend." he smirks.
You patiently remind the kunkel that half the time in graphical games
you click on the book wanting to open it and instead your character lobs
it at some big green slobbery monster standing in the room with you.
"Books? We don't need no stinking books!" huffs the kunkel, warily
eyeing the mint condition IF compiler manual resting amongst the
carcasses.
> click on book
A disembodied hand appears from nowhere and presses on the book. The
mint condition IF compiler manual begins to rise slowly (ever so slowly)
from the ground and levitate toward the kunkel...
"Ahhhhh" he screams, scratching frantically at the concealed door that
doesn't seem to working at the moment...
Kathleen
--
*******************************************************************
* Kathleen M. Fischer
* kfis...@greenhouse.llnl.gov
** "Don't stop to stomp ants while the elephants are stampeding" **