Is it possible to slow down the scrolling in Inform?
Harry
this almost instantly. This doesn't look right and it bothers me that
I have to look for the beginning of the new text after it has
appeared. It would feel more natural to me if the scrolling could be
slowed down a tad on a fast computer. How can I add this to my WIP? It
would be wonderful to be able to type something like
> SCROLL SLOW
for a more sedate presentation of text and
>SCROLL FAST
for a slower computer (like Palm or some such)
Any ideas?
Harry
-------------------------
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Andrew Plotkin
> When a game responds with a lot of text, todays computers can produce
> this almost instantly. This doesn't look right and it bothers me that
> I have to look for the beginning of the new text after it has
> appeared. It would feel more natural to me if the scrolling could be
> slowed down a tad on a fast computer.
There's no good way to code this at the game level. You can manage
some timing tricks in Inform, but the Z-machine's timing facility has
0.1-second granularity, which is almost certainly too jerky. And you'd
be butchering your game code to make it work. (Dividing a long block
of text up into an array of strings, printing them out one by one with
a delay in between...)
If you want this feature cleanly, it would have to be added as an
option in the interpreter.
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
* Make your vote count. Get your vote counted.
David A. Cornelson
news:sdf67vouprapevl9c...@4ax.com...
> When a game responds with a lot of text, todays computers can produce
> this almost instantly. This doesn't look right and it bothers me that
> I have to look for the beginning of the new text after it has
> appeared. It would feel more natural to me if the scrolling could be
> slowed down a tad on a fast computer. How can I add this to my WIP? It
> would be wonderful to be able to type something like
> > SCROLL SLOW
> for a more sedate presentation of text and
> >SCROLL FAST
> for a slower computer (like Palm or some such)
>
Yes. I have a routine to do this. You can set a speed from 1 to 10 and works
perfectly, including wrapping text properly. Now if I can only find it...
Dave
Harry
Darn...
Is this also true for Gluxe?
Harry
cornelson at iflibrary dot com> wrote:
> It
>> would be wonderful to be able to type something like
>> > SCROLL SLOW
>> for a more sedate presentation of text and
>> >SCROLL FAST
>> for a slower computer (like Palm or some such)
>>
>
>Yes. I have a routine to do this. You can set a speed from 1 to 10 and works
>perfectly, including wrapping text properly. Now if I can only find it...
>
>Dave
>
Yay!
David A. Cornelson
> On Sat, 15 Mar 2003 10:17:46 -0600, "David A. Cornelson" <david dot
> cornelson at iflibrary dot com> wrote:
>
> > It
> >> would be wonderful to be able to type something like
> >> > SCROLL SLOW
> >> for a more sedate presentation of text and
> >> >SCROLL FAST
> >> for a slower computer (like Palm or some such)
> >>
> >
> >Yes. I have a routine to do this. You can set a speed from 1 to 10 and
works
> >perfectly, including wrapping text properly. Now if I can only find it...
> >
> >Dave
> >
> Yay!
>
It's uploaded to the archive at ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/incoming and I'm
sending a note to the boyz for placement in the library extension area.
It includes:
- printslow.h (including instructions in header comments)
- printslow.inf (sample usage)
- printslow.z5 (sample usage z-code file)
Dave
L. Ross Raszewski
<daviddotcornelsonatiflibrarydotcom> wrote:
>
>perfectly, including wrapping text properly. Now if I can only find it...
>
... Unfortunately the code is too long to fit in this margin...
Jdyer41
>this almost instantly. This doesn't look right and it bothers me that
>I have to look for the beginning of the new text after it has
>appeared.
I should point out Frotz 2002 uses slow scrolling. I have not
found any way to turn it off.
The Windows version of the Hugo interpreter allows you to switch
between fast and slow scrolling. I presume some of the other
platforms have this feature as well.
--
Jason Dyer
jdy...@aol.com
John Filsak
> When a game responds with a lot of text, todays computers can produce
> this almost instantly. This doesn't look right and it bothers me that
> I have to look for the beginning of the new text after it has
> appeared. It would feel more natural to me if the scrolling could be
> slowed down a tad on a fast computer. How can I add this to my WIP? It
> would be wonderful to be able to type something like
> > SCROLL SLOW
> for a more sedate presentation of text and
> >SCROLL FAST
> for a slower computer (like Palm or some such)
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Harry
>
I have tried all sorts of ways to break up the display of large chunks
of text into smaller units.
I have tried introducing a timed delay between blocks. I don't think
it works; it just seems as though the text arrives in lumps.
Is it permissible to wait for a user key-press between blocks, or
would that just annoy everybody?
Similarly, I am implementing a bus stop, where the obvious thing to do
is wait. Is it the done thing to cause the player physically to wait,
eg by slowly printing a line of dots...........? Or would that get me
shot down in flames?
John.
Rikard Peterson
news:80949cc1.03040...@posting.google.com:
> I have tried all sorts of ways to break up the display of large
> chunks of text into smaller units.
>
> I have tried introducing a timed delay between blocks. I don't
> think it works; it just seems as though the text arrives in lumps.
>
> Is it permissible to wait for a user key-press between blocks, or
> would that just annoy everybody?
It probably would. I think that it would annoy me, at least.
> Similarly, I am implementing a bus stop, where the obvious thing
> to do is wait. Is it the done thing to cause the player physically
> to wait, eg by slowly printing a line of dots...........? Or would
> that get me shot down in flames?
It does seem like a good way to annoy the player. The problem is that
the player does not appreciate being annoyed, and a likely response
is to simply quit the game. If you want the player to wait, couldn't
you introduce something interesting to do while waiting for the bus?
For example an NPC could be waiting too, or a squirrel could be in a
tree.
Rikard
Magnus Olsson
Rikard Peterson <trumg...@bigfoot.com> wrote:
>John Filsak wrote in
>news:80949cc1.03040...@posting.google.com:
>> would that just annoy everybody?
>
>It probably would. I think that it would annoy me, at least.
One of the Introcomp games this year - agency.z5 - used this
technique. I found it slightly irritating, like the author didn't
trust me to read all his text unless he fed it to me in small chunks.
(Note to the author: I am quite capable pause and think between
paragraphs on my own accord, thank you.)
>> Similarly, I am implementing a bus stop, where the obvious thing
>> to do is wait. Is it the done thing to cause the player physically
>> to wait, eg by slowly printing a line of dots...........? Or would
>> that get me shot down in flames?
>
>It does seem like a good way to annoy the player.
Indeed.
One problem is that time runs in different ways for the player and
the PC. Even if the PC is getting bored stiff waiting for the bus,
you shouldn't force the same thing on the player.
I assume the effect you want to achieve is to give the player a
strong feeling that time passes but nothing really happens. How
do you prevent the player from just skipping over the boring part?
It's a difficult problem, but I don't think the solution is make
the player as bored and restless as the PC :-). After all, the PC
doesn't have to like the game, and he can't quit. The player has to,
and can.
--
Magnus Olsson (m...@df.lth.se)
PGP Public Key available at http://www.df.lth.se/~mol
Ricardo SIGNES
> In article <Xns935380CA94680tr...@130.133.1.4>,
> Rikard Peterson <trumg...@bigfoot.com> wrote:
>>It probably would. I think that it would annoy me, at least.
>
> One of the Introcomp games this year - agency.z5 - used this
> technique. I found it slightly irritating, like the author didn't
> trust me to read all his text unless he fed it to me in small chunks.
> (Note to the author: I am quite capable pause and think between
> paragraphs on my own accord, thank you.)
So noted.
--
rjbs
Neil Cerutti
<Pine.LNX.4.44.030404...@yes.rps.net>, Quintin
Stone wrote:
> On 4 Apr 2003, John Filsak wrote:
>> Is it permissible to wait for a user key-press between blocks,
>> or would that just annoy everybody?
>
> game to wait between blocks. Some games have included game
> pauses between blocks of text and the general consensus from
> reviews seems to be that this is bad. Waiting for a key-press
> (i.e. [More]) isn't quite so bad. I think it just depends on
> how many there are.
Another factor that can make it bad too, depends on the screen
size being used by the player's interpreter. If the author's
inserted "[PAUSE]" continually ends up right before or right
after an interpreter generated "[MORE]" prompt: fire, brimstone,
soiled Cheerios, that kind of thing, results.
--
Neil Cerutti
Quintin Stone
> Is it permissible to wait for a user key-press between blocks, or would
> that just annoy everybody?
Not as annoying as if the player was actually forced by the game to wait
between blocks. Some games have included game pauses between blocks of
text and the general consensus from reviews seems to be that this is bad.
Waiting for a key-press (i.e. [More]) isn't quite so bad. I think it just
depends on how many there are.
> Similarly, I am implementing a bus stop, where the obvious thing to do
> is wait. Is it the done thing to cause the player physically to wait, eg
> by slowly printing a line of dots...........? Or would that get me shot
> down in flames?
How many times would the player have to actually wait through this forced
delay? If it's just once, it wouldn't bother me and might add to the
atmosphere. You'll still get complaints, I'm sure. But if it's several
times, like if the bus is the standard mode of transportation between
important game areas, then you're likely to really cheese off a lot of
your players.
/====================================================================\
|| Quintin Stone O- > "You speak of necessary evil? One ||
|| Code Monkey < of those necessities is that if ||
|| Rebel Programmers Society > innocents must suffer, the guilty must ||
|| st...@rps.net < suffer more." -- Mackenzie Calhoun ||
|| http://www.rps.net/ > "Once Burned" by Peter David ||
\====================================================================/
David A. Cornelson
news:80949cc1.03040...@posting.google.com...
Outside of "annoying the player" aspects, it is not only possible, but I
uploaded a library contribution to the archive. It doesn't work in chunks,
but per character and so although slow (and possibly annoying to some), it
prints slow and smoothly.
It's called printslow.h.
Dave
Mike Roberts
> Similarly, I am implementing a bus stop, where the obvious thing
> to do is wait. Is it the done thing to cause the player physically to
> wait, eg by slowly printing a line of dots...........? Or would that
> get me shot down in flames?
It would probably annoy people. But even if players were willing to put up
with it, I don't think it's good game design. Think about how you'd handle
this at the two extremes of what goes into IF.
On the "fiction" side, think about how a book would handle the wait at the
bus stop. Would an author say "the main character has to wait ten minutes
for a bus at this point in the story, so please put the book down and sit
quietly for ten minutes"? Probably not; in ordinary fiction, "story time"
and "real time" are almost paradoxically related, in that the amount of
story time a scene takes is often just the opposite of the amount of real
time it takes to read. Sometimes a passage of years is handled in a
paragraph, and sometimes an intense action scene that plays out in a few
minutes of story time can take dozens of pages. If the wait at the bus stop
is so uneventful and uninteresting that there's nothing to describe except
the passage of the time, then in ordinary fiction you'd almost always cut it
down to just that: "John had to stand around ten minutes waiting for the
bus."
On the "interactive" side, are we interested in creating an exact physical
equivalence between the player and the player character in other areas? If
the character has to crawl through a muddy tunnel, do we include some mud in
the "feelies" so that players can smear themselves with it at the proper
point? If a troll chops off the character's head, do we insist that the
player chops off her own head? The point of the interactivity is to provide
a vicarious experience - for the player to see things through the eyes of
the player, to experience indirectly what the character experiences, not to
experience it directly.
So. If the wait isn't especially important to the character, just mention
it and be done with it. If the wait is a source of frustration for the
character, show us why. If there's something else important about the wait,
show that. But don't confuse the player and the player character; it's the
character who's waiting, not the player.
--Mike
mjr underscore at hotmail dot com
Dan Schmidt
| On 4 Apr 2003, John Filsak wrote:
|
|| Similarly, I am implementing a bus stop, where the obvious thing to
|| do is wait. Is it the done thing to cause the player physically to
|| wait, eg by slowly printing a line of dots...........? Or would
|| that get me shot down in flames?
|
| How many times would the player have to actually wait through this
| forced delay? If it's just once, it wouldn't bother me and might
| add to the atmosphere. You'll still get complaints, I'm sure. But
| if it's several times, like if the bus is the standard mode of
| transportation between important game areas, then you're likely to
| really cheese off a lot of your players.
And even if it only happens in the game, the player may play through
that scene more then once.
Aaron Krochmal
> Indeed.
Indeed.
> One problem is that time runs in different ways for the player and
> the PC.
Indeed.
> Even if the PC is getting bored stiff waiting for the bus,
> you shouldn't force the same thing on the player.
Indeed.
> I assume the effect you want to achieve is to give the player a
> strong feeling that time passes but nothing really happens.
A lot is written but nothing is said. Isn't that your field of expertise?
> How
> do you prevent the player from just skipping over the boring part?
> It's a difficult problem, but I don't think the solution is make
> the player as bored and restless as the PC :-). After all, the PC
> doesn't have to like the game, and he can't quit. The player has to,
> and can.
One way is to bore the player/reader with obvious truths.
When can we expect your next pathetic good bye?
LizM7
> >When a game responds with a lot of text, todays computers can produce
> >this almost instantly. This doesn't look right and it bothers me that
> >I have to look for the beginning of the new text after it has
> >appeared.
>
> I should point out Frotz 2002 uses slow scrolling. I have not
> found any way to turn it off.
Speaking of which, *is* there a way to turn this feature off? Because
it gets really irritating, at least for me.
- Liz
Archimage
having to 'wait' or 'z', but I appreciate something happening while I
do so. Rather than 'Time passes...' which could mean you are doing it
for nothing, I prefer (and implemented in my earlier games) a set of
'activity' messages'.
For example at the bus-stop:
Bus Stop
You are standing at a quiet bus stop, waiting for three to come along
at once. [etc]
>Z
Two taxis pass you, their flags set to 'For Hire'. You wish you had
the money for one of them.
>Z
Further down the road, someone thumbs a lift. You feel tempted to try
the same, but your mother told you it was dangerous.
[etc]
[etc]
[and finally]
>Z
The bus finally pulls up at the stop. You look into the distance for
the other two that are bound to come, but the road seems empty.
Anyway, just my hap'orth's worth,
Archimage
David Kinder
> it gets really irritating, at least for me.
Not in the current version. There will be an option in the next version,
out in the not-too-distant-but-not-immediate future ...
David
Stas Starkov
> When can we expect your next pathetic good bye?
Plonked.
--
Stas Starkov (stas_ at mail.rb.ru)