sizes for adventure items

[Brian]

I've been writing a text adventure creator that uses the old system where
the script has a list of adverts, nouns, messages, objects etc.
I need to define has much space is needed for items, for example Dim
Objects (100) as string. Which puts a limit of how many objects the
adventure can have.
What I've like to know if how many rooms and objects are used in adventures
these days on average?

--
Regards Brian

[Brian]

Or to put it another way, has anyone played or written an adventure with
more than 100 locations?

--
Regards Brian

[Dimitrij Klingbeil]

"Brian" <bcl...@es.co.nz> wrote in message
news:1974898257389854879....@free.teranews.com...

>
> Or to put it another way, has anyone played or written an adventure with
> more than 100 locations?

That's hardly a rarity, plenty of larger adventures exist, and anyway,
hardcoding array sizes is one of the worst "harmful" ideas in programming,
probably way beyound Dijkstra's lamented GOTO. Better give up that fixed
size altogether and learn proper dynamic memory management.

Regards
Dimitrij

[Rowan Lipkovits]

You never know if someone will try to write the next Time Zone or Snowball, however discouraged they should be. I funk some of Paul Panks' approached this scale also

[Adam Thornton]

In article <518ce6c4$0$6570$9b4e...@newsspool3.arcor-online.net>,

Indeed. The vital statistics of _Mentula Macanus: Apocolocyntosis_
(which is large, but not as large as, say, _Blue Lacuna_) are:

The 159129-word source text has successfully been translated into an
intermediate description which can be run through Inform 6 to
complete compilation. There were 175 rooms and 724 things.

Also, take a look at what the current state of the art *is* in IF
development languages. If what you're proposing to write isn't at least
as good as Inform 6, Inform 7, TADS 3, or Hugo (and I don't think Quest
is as good as those, but it has its adherents and sounds more like what
you're proposing, so look at it too)...then you might consider whether
writing extensions to one of those systems, or games in one of those
systems instead, is something you'd rather do.

Adam

[Brian]

I'm converting over an old adventure creating program that started as a
Basic program then it got transferred to Quick Basic and now I'm
transferring it Visual Basic 2010. Its an on going project I and a friend
have been working on and there have been many enhancements made to the
program since the original version. I enjoy it as a challenge to try and
solve programming problems and in finding ways to enhance the program.

--
Regards Brian

[Brian]

I'm converting the adventure creating program from Quick Basic to Visual
Basic 2010. There were limits in Quick Basic preventing the program from
being developed more. I had the program count the number of items in the
script and add this information to another file (compiled script file) so
that when the compiled adventure file is read the program's variables are
dimensions enough to allow for all the items in script but this was not
working.

If there is a better way then it would be worth while learning new
programming techniques.

--
Regards Brian

[Michael Neal Tenuis]

You could probably make use of dynamic arrays (via the "ReDim" statement):

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/w8k3cys2.aspx

[rpresser]

> >>> Or to put it another way, has anyone played or written an adventure with
> >>> more than 100 locations?
>

> > I'm converting the adventure creating program from Quick Basic to Visual
> > Basic 2010. There were limits in Quick Basic preventing the program from
>

> > If there is a better way then it would be worth while learning new
> > programming techniques.
>
> You could probably make use of dynamic arrays (via the "ReDim" statement):

Quite suboptimal for Visual Basic. Use an ArrayList.

[philicorda]

I think Snowball is an example how to make good use of a huge map. Once
you understood the shape of the spaceship, you understood the layout of
6800ish rooms that comprised the freezer storage for the colonists. So
the huge size of the medical levels added to the sense of location and
realism, rather than detracting from it.

The descriptions of the curving corridors and intersections, and how the
corridors meet are not random. It wasn't a maze, but rather a request
that you read and understood what the text was telling you!

It's one of my favorite adventures, and there are certainly some flaws,
but I didn't think the room amount was one of them. I normally hate mazes
in adventures, but as I said, this wasn't a maze!

(SPOILER)
















You only really needed to know the layout later on anyway, when
resuscitating the crew member. The bracelet acted like a navigation
system, which made it quite quick to find where you needed to go.

[Brian]

The only way I could make redim work with be to add 10 to the dimensioned
variable each time the number of items being loaded is about to exceed the
current dimensioned variable.

--
Regards Brian

[Michael Neal Tenuis]

Well, if it works... sometimes it's good for one's motivation to just
throw something together quickly, even if it seems clunky or ad hoc.
It's nice to see some results, and then one can improve later, step by step.

On the other hand, of course, a bit of forethought and planning can help
to avoid a lot of unnecessary work. How do you want users to interact
with your program? Will they use a normal text editor to create their
adventures, or will they have an interface with menus, drop-down lists
and text boxes (but maybe with the option to edit the files with an
external editor)?
Depending on how human-readable you want the files to be, you could
maybe use formats like JSON or YAML to store the adventure's data (so
you don't have to reinvent the wheel):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YAML

(Although this might be overkill.)


By the way, here's an example of the use of an ArrayList, as rpresser
suggested:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302309/EN-US

[Brian]

Thanks Michael for the useful links.


--
Regards Brian