Invisiclues past and present
Norman Ramsey
I really like what Peter Scheyen has done with the Invisiclues at
http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~pete/Infocom/. I would like to duplicate this
information on my Palm Pilot, but HTML is clearly the wrong vehicle.
Does anybody know if there is any sort of simple, standard,
machine-readable form for invisiclues, from which we could generate
various other useful things? (I'm imagining HTML, something for the
Pilot, and even generating Inform to make those inline menus.)
I know about the Universal Hint System (www.uhs-hints.com), but that
seems to be a proprietary format, and there seems to be only a
dos/windows reader.
On a similar topic, is anyone interested in helping create invisiclues
for popular games? One of the things I liked so much about `Sherbet'
was having the invisiclue-like hints...
Norman
--
Norman Ramsey
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~nr
Joe Mason
Norman Ramsey wrote:
>
> I really like what Peter Scheyen has done with the Invisiclues at
> http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~pete/Infocom/. I would like to duplicate this
> information on my Palm Pilot, but HTML is clearly the wrong vehicle.
> Does anybody know if there is any sort of simple, standard,
> machine-readable form for invisiclues, from which we could generate
> various other useful things? (I'm imagining HTML, something for the
> Pilot, and even generating Inform to make those inline menus.)
Z-Machine? Give the Invisiclues as a menu. By definition, you,ll be
able to read them on any machine you can play your Inform game on.
Joe
L. Ross Raszewski
In article <3575CF44...@execulink.com>,
jcm...@uwaterloo.ca wrote:
>
>
> Z-Machine? Give the Invisiclues as a menu. By definition, you,ll be
> able to read them on any machine you can play your Inform game on.
>
> Joe
>
<SHAMELESS PLUG>
There's even a library to do this -- hints.h, whch produces hints in a format
almost identical to those included with some infocom games.
</SHAMELESS PLUG>
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Lucian Paul Smith
Paul A Krueger (WEIRD...@prodigy.net) wrote:
: Anyways, Inform *is* the only really practical way to do this. HTML would
: have way to many files (you could use relative links, but then you'd have to
: explain why you just didn't use plain text), and there's no way you could do
: it with 8.3 character filenames.
It is indeed possible to do this in HTML. I did it by hand for my hints
for 'So Far'; you can see how it works at:
http://www.bioc.rice.edu/~lpsmith/IF/sofar.html
Basically, first I wrote the hints, then I HTML-ized it, then I broke it
into chunks, saving each full list first, then cutting a line, saving as a
new file, cutting another line, saving as another new file, etc. It
actually wasn't that bad, although there are probably many better ways to
do it, especially today with CGI and java and stuff. (I was young.
Mosaic was young. What can I say?)
The Infocom Invisiclues have been HTML-ized as well:
http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/Invisiclues/
but I don't know how he did it there.
It's also interesting to note that once I had the original text file, it
was easy to convert it to other formats--HTML was first, but UHS and THL
followed, and I could probably do it in Inform with hints.h if I wanted
to, too. The trick is to have consistent indenting so you can search and
replace.
-Lucian
pke...@hotmail.com
> From: Joe Mason <jcm...@execulink.com>
>Z-Machine? Give the Invisiclues as a menu. By definition, you,ll be
>able to read them on any machine you can play your Inform game on.
There is some rather nice hint code in the source for "Night of the
Vampire Bunnies" that is available on GMD (of course, I did write the code
so I would ay that :-)
It's based around GN's menus.h code so it has a most wonderful interface
and it is exactally like the Invisiclues type system with the aditional
feature that it can be adaptive (as it is in NotVB) for authors that want
such a feature. The code is totally free to anyone who may want to use it
in their games and such.
Patrick
Paul A Krueger
Lucian Paul Smith wrote in message <6l55as$sc1$1...@joe.rice.edu>...
>It is indeed possible to do this in HTML. I did it by hand for my hints
>for 'So Far'; you can see how it works at:
>
>http://www.bioc.rice.edu/~lpsmith/IF/sofar.html
>
>
>The Infocom Invisiclues have been HTML-ized as well:
>
>http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/Invisiclues/
>
Yes, but I believe the original poster was talking about making peek-proof
InvisiClues for off-line use. In which case, HTML would need to have a
different file for every single section, question and answer. Inform would
need only 34 files for the entire series (if it were just limited to
Infocom, which it needn't be) or, if the project were more ambitious, 1
Weird Beard
weird...@prodigy.net
Lucian Paul Smith
Paul A Krueger (WEIRD...@prodigy.net) wrote:
: Lucian Paul Smith wrote in message <6l55as$sc1$1...@joe.rice.edu>...
: >It is indeed possible to do this in HTML.
: Yes, but I believe the original poster was talking about making peek-proof
: InvisiClues for off-line use. In which case, HTML would need to have a
: different file for every single section, question and answer.
<Abashed look>
That'll teach me to reply to a reply before the original message shows up
on my server!
</abashed look>
-Lucian
Brian 'Beej' Hall
In article <3575CF44...@execulink.com>,
Joe Mason <jcm...@uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>Z-Machine? Give the Invisiclues as a menu. By definition, you,ll be
>able to read them on any machine you can play your Inform game on.
How about "ic2inf": a program that takes those pesky text-only
invisiclues files and converts them into inform source? (No, I didn't
write any such thing. But I might be tempted if there was call for it.)
I've not looked at hints.h, so maybe this is already all done. :)
-Beej
Norman Ramsey
In article <6l6hf3$sms$1...@hubble.csuchico.edu>,
Brian 'Beej' Hall <be...@ecst.csuchico.edu> wrote:
>How about "ic2inf": a program that takes those pesky text-only
>invisiclues files and converts them into inform source?
What I'm really looking for is a slightly better text-only
representation, one that is easy to parse, so that writing programs
like `ic2inf' becomes trivial. I'd probably also build in some simple
scrambling, so that one wouldn't see clear text if accidentally
glimpsing the hints file.
Norman
Norman Ramsey
In article <3575CF44...@execulink.com>,
Joe Mason <jcm...@uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>Z-Machine? Give the Invisiclues as a menu. By definition, you,ll be
>able to read them on any machine you can play your Inform game on.
Not on the Pilot :-( PilotZip doesn't much like menus.
Plus some games are in TADS :-) I'd like a format that would be easy
to translate into the Inform hints.h style, or into HTML, or into a
variety of other readers (e.g., UHS, if they'd publish their format).
Norman
Joe Mason
The menus can be printed in plain text, too. [a quick check of menus.h
and a double-take] Well, I'll be. Graham's add-on library doesn't do
that! The library's built-in menuing will print a menu like this:
1. Option One
2. Option Two
3. Option Three
And let you pick them by number if your interpreter doesn't like fancy
menus.
The other people who have written "easier menus" libraries: do yours
support plain mode? If so, I'll be switching over right away.
Joe
L. Ross Raszewski
In article <35772ECE...@execulink.com>,
jcm...@uwaterloo.ca wrote:
>
> The menus can be printed in plain text, too. [a quick check of menus.h
> and a double-take] Well, I'll be. Graham's add-on library doesn't do
> that! The library's built-in menuing will print a menu like this:
>
> 1. Option One
> 2. Option Two
> 3. Option Three
>
> And let you pick them by number if your interpreter doesn't like fancy
> menus.
>
> The other people who have written "easier menus" libraries: do yours
> support plain mode? If so, I'll be switching over right away.
>
Yes. Altmenu.h will do everything domenu can, and my domenu will do more than
the library's domenu.