Shooting Yourself in the Foot
Michael Vokits
the foot in various i-f languages.
Inform
======
You shoot yourself in the foot. You aren't quite sure how you did it,
or whether your code is clever or stupid (there being a fine line
between these, alas), but everyone agrees that it's impressive. The big
plus is that it's compatible with every computer past, present, or
future. Cave paintings can run your program.
TADS
====
You shoot yourself in the foot. The planning and execution are flawless
and elegant. Too bad you can't get colors.
Hugo
====
You shout for joy when you see that Hugo has the best features of both
Inform and TADS, and excitedly start coding your act of self-violence.
However,
You can't use the word "shoot".
You can't use the word "foot".
Then you realize that nobody but Kent Tessman can program an actual
game in Hugo. You also feel like a guilty bastard about not having
written 35,000 lines of code.
AGT
===
After struggling for hours with a manual which paronizingly insists
that "no programming knowledge is necessary," you realize that it's
easier in TADS -- so you just give up and code it in TADS like you
should've done in the first place.
[Apologies to Kent Tessman and Graham Nelson, and homage to the good
Professor.]
David Given
voki...@pilot.msu.edu (Michael Vokits) writes:
[...]
> AGT
> ===
>
> After struggling for hours with a manual which paronizingly insists
> that "no programming knowledge is necessary," you realize that it's
> easier in TADS -- so you just give up and code it in TADS like you
> should've done in the first place.
Lisp
====
You take aim at your foot and fire. The bullet ricochets off the huge
piles of brackets lying all around and hits you in the head.
Prolog
======
You describe your foot, and the gun, and the bullet. Then you describe the
operation of shooting yourself in the foot. The compiler says "No."
--
+- David Given ---------------McQ-+
| Work: d...@tao-group.com | Disclaimer: We have no wish to offend you
| Play: dgi...@iname.com | unless you're a twit.
+- http://wired.st-and.ac.uk/~dg -+
Jesse McGrew
: Hello, all. As a service to the novice, here's how to shoot yourself in
Snack
=====
You set off with the intention of shooting yourself in the foot. A month
later, you have become sidetracked and shot yourself everywhere except the
foot.
You aim at your foot and squeeze the trigger, but just before the bullet
reaches your foot, it changes into undef and flops harmlessly to the ground.
Then you spend all night searching for what went wrong.
--
/ Jesse "Monolith" McGrew \ :) -> TMBG, UCB/TDS, AMD, ROTT/Sin
| Most quotable man on the Internet | :( -> CW/R&B/rap/alt, WWF/WCW/etc,
\ Mr2001 on IRC / Intel/Cyrix/PPC, Q2/3/HL
Philip W. Darnowsky
: In article <7k0hhc$gt3$1...@msunews.cl.msu.edu>,
: voki...@pilot.msu.edu (Michael Vokits) writes:
: [...]
: > AGT
: > ===
: >
: > After struggling for hours with a manual which paronizingly insists
: > that "no programming knowledge is necessary," you realize that it's
: > easier in TADS -- so you just give up and code it in TADS like you
: > should've done in the first place.
: Lisp
: ====
: You take aim at your foot and fire. The bullet ricochets off the huge
: piles of brackets lying all around and hits you in the head.
: Prolog
: ======
: You describe your foot, and the gun, and the bullet. Then you describe the
: operation of shooting yourself in the foot. The compiler says "No."
Perl
====
There's More Than One Way To Shoot Yourself In The Foot.
Using regular expressions, you search through your entire body, identify a
foot, and shoot it. Two weeks later, you want to modify the code to shoot
someone else's hand, but can't read it.
--
----------------------------------------------------
Phil Darnowsky pdar...@spameggsbaconandspam.qis.net
Remove spam, eggs, bacon, spam, and dot to reply.
Due to circumstances beyond your control
you are master of your fate
and captain of your soul.
Michael Vokits
>Sure you can get colours!
In TADS? How? I mean, you can get bold, but what else?
>Unfortunately, you get the message: "In which foot do you wish
>to shoot yourself, the foot, or the foot?"
Oddly enough I get that error all the time in Inform -- but not in
TADS. An adjective property is *very* nice. My first toy game, "The
Gig," had a guitar, a guitar pick, and guitar strings -- you couldn't
refer to just the guitar! And then there was the fiasco with the slice
of pizza and the pizza box and the verb "eat" -- I'm glad I didn't
implement the pizza boy! (Now a pizza girl could've enlivened things
up... Is "Big Al" reading this?)
I ended up using (Andrew Clover's?) adname.h to clear this up. Now
if I understood parsing, I could make my own version. ;^)
-- Michael Vokits
Michael Vokits
>You can use <FONT COLOR=RED> or whatever colour you'd like.
This only works in H-TADS (HTML-TADS, HTML TADS, Hyper TADS, or
whatever the current name is ;^). But thanks.
TenthStone
wrote:
>Hello, all. As a service to the novice, here's how to shoot yourself in
>the foot in various i-f languages.
Basic
--------------------
It takes you five seconds to shoot yourself in the foot. It takes you
a minute to be able to choose whether to shoot yourself in the foot
or in the hand. It takes you an hour to be able to pick up the gun
and then shoot yourself in the foot. It takes you a week to be able
to hop around in agony after shooting yourself in the foot and walk
around before. You decide to put in an NPC whom you can order to
shoot you in the foot, and quickly decide that perhaps a different
part of the body would be in order.
Java
--------------------
You shoot yourself in the foot within ten minutes. That's three
minutes to load the development system, four minutes to write the
applet, and three minutes to JIT compile.
JavaScript
--------------------
You shoot yourself in the ankle on Netscape and blow off your big toe
in IE. Anyway, you might be able to fool the lieutenant with all that
son et lumiere, but probably not the sergeant major.
----------------
The Imperturbable TenthStone
mcc...@erols.com tenth...@hotmail.com mcc...@gsgis.k12.va.us
Christopher Nebel
(Michael Vokits) wrote:
I've felt for a while that the proper name should be "H-TADS", where the
"H" stands for *whatever the heck you want.* HTML, HyperText, Hyper, it's
up to you...
-Christopher Nebel
Neil K.
> I've felt for a while that the proper name should be "H-TADS", where the
> "H" stands for *whatever the heck you want.* HTML, HyperText, Hyper, it's
> up to you...
Well, last time this came up someone pointed out that in Japan H-games
are "hentai" or porn games. An association some people may want, but other
people may definitely not want.
- Neil K.
--
t e l a computer consulting + design * Vancouver, BC, Canada
web: http://www.tela.bc.ca/tela/ * email: tela @ tela.bc.ca
Philip W. Darnowsky
: In article <7k49h3$rou$1...@msunews.cl.msu.edu>, voki...@pilot.msu.edu
: (Michael Vokits) wrote:
: >In article <8DE5A344Ercarbol@news>, rca...@home.com says...
: >>You can use <FONT COLOR=RED> or whatever colour you'd like.
: >
: > This only works in H-TADS (HTML-TADS, HTML TADS, Hyper TADS, or
: >whatever the current name is ;^). But thanks.
: I've felt for a while that the proper name should be "H-TADS", where the
: "H" stands for *whatever the heck you want.* HTML, HyperText, Hyper, it's
: up to you...
Hoopy!
Neil K.
> I think the name should be just "TADS". I don't see the need to
> distinguish between TADS and HTML-TADS because (I think) the current
> compilers and interpreters all understand the embedded HTML formatting
> and multimedia codes. Its just that on some platforms the interpreter
> ignores the codes or downgrades them to a simpler effect (eg colour
> changes might be displayed just as bold text.)
Well, what's basically happened is that each specific interpreter has
ended up having its own name. Just as the Z-machine world has MaxZip,
Frotz, Zip Infinity, JZip and so on.
The TADS world has tr for DOS, tadsr for various Unixen, MaxTADS,
WinTADS, HTML-TADS, HyperTADS. The last two can display graphics and play
sound; the rest can't. Each interpreter has both its own version number
and a TADS engine version number, and whether or not it's text only or
multimedia. eg:
MaxTADS 1.1.4 - A text-only TADS 2.4.0 Interpreter.
HyperTADS 1.0 - A multimedia TADS 2.3.0 Interpreter.
Therefore, HTML-TADS really just refers these days to the Win32
multimedia interpreter that Mike Roberts wrote and not to the whole
multimedia version of TADS.
Stephen Griffiths
> (Michael Vokits) wrote:
> >In article <8DE5A344Ercarbol@news>, rca...@home.com says...
> >>You can use <FONT COLOR=RED> or whatever colour you'd like.
> >
> > This only works in H-TADS (HTML-TADS, HTML TADS, Hyper TADS, or
> >whatever the current name is ;^). But thanks.
> I've felt for a while that the proper name should be "H-TADS", where the
> "H" stands for *whatever the heck you want.* HTML, HyperText, Hyper, it's
> up to you...
I think the name should be just "TADS". I don't see the need to
distinguish between TADS and HTML-TADS because (I think) the current
compilers and interpreters all understand the embedded HTML formatting
and multimedia codes. Its just that on some platforms the interpreter
ignores the codes or downgrades them to a simpler effect (eg colour
changes might be displayed just as bold text.)
For example the conversation above could be paraphrased as
>>> You can use <FONT COLOR=RED> or whatever colour you'd like.
>> This is only displayed correctly if the player is using the
TADS interpreters for Win9x and Mac. But thanks.
If there is a need to distinguish between 'normal' and 'HTML' flavours
then I'd vote for "HyperTADS" as the best variation I've seen.
-- SteveG.
Iain Merrick
[...]
> MaxTADS 1.1.4 - A text-only TADS 2.4.0 Interpreter.
> HyperTADS 1.0 - A multimedia TADS 2.3.0 Interpreter.
>
> Therefore, HTML-TADS really just refers these days to the Win32
> multimedia interpreter that Mike Roberts wrote and not to the whole
> multimedia version of TADS.
I like the new naming scheme, but we could still do with a common term
for HTML-savvy games and interpreters. Possibly something like this:
This is a multimedia TADS game. It requires a
multimedia TADS interpreter, such as HTML-TADS
for Windows or HyperTADS for the mac.
Or maybe just 'this game uses HTML'.
--
Iain Merrick
Dylan O'Donnell
> I like the new naming scheme, but we could still do with a common term
> for HTML-savvy games and interpreters. Possibly something like this:
>
> This is a multimedia TADS game. It requires a
> multimedia TADS interpreter, such as HTML-TADS
> for Windows or HyperTADS for the mac.
>
> Or maybe just 'this game uses HTML'.
"This game uses HTML-extended TADS."
--
: Dylan O'Donnell : "Any sufficiently arcane magic is :
: Demon Internet Ltd : indistinguishable from technology." :
: Resident, Forgotten Office : -- Lebling's Inversion of :
: http://www.fysh.org/~psmith/ : Clarke's Third Law :
Neil K.
> I like the new naming scheme, but we could still do with a common term
> for HTML-savvy games and interpreters. Possibly something like this:
>
> This is a multimedia TADS game. It requires a
> multimedia TADS interpreter, such as HTML-TADS
> for Windows or HyperTADS for the mac.
Mmmm. I suppose. But I'm not sure when this would come up. Text-only
players would see a little message like "Hey - you'd get all the groovy
sound and graphic aspects of this game if you tried a multimedia
interpreter!" or something? To me the strength of the HTML model used by
TADS is how gracefully it can handle different types of interpreters. A
game is a game and can be played just as well text-only and
graphics/sound-laden if handled right.
> Or maybe just 'this game uses HTML'.
Well, the danger I think with that is that a lot of newbie/non-technical
types think that HTML=the Web, which can lead to all kinds of confusion.
"I need a browser to play this game?"