Visionary Woes: Compiling the "Magic Potion" demo

[Kent Dalton]

I finally got some more time to play around with Visionary. I figured my
first goal would be to get the demo game that comes with it, Magic
Potion, to compile. This was my first mistake.

I ran into very serious problems, that lead me to believe that either
the demo is bug-ridden, Visionary setup is brain dead, or Visionary does
not work on 68030/OS 2.04 (in which case it is brain dead. :^). If anyone
out there has gotten this to work, even if you don't have time to read
the rest of this message, please at least hit the reply key and let me
know that you did get it to work. (Even a terse reply like, "Worked
fine on my setup running: 'CPU_Type' and OS 'OS_Version', using
Visionary 'Vis_version'" would be a great help.)

My setup: Visionary 1.2, AmigaOS 2.04, CPU: 68030 (A3000), running off
of HD.

I compiled and linked, and everything appeared ok. When I run it
everything comes up and initializes properly, (I get the picture of the
palm tree, I can look at objects in the room, etc, etc), BUT I can't
leave the room! There is supposed to be an exit to the west to the room
defined as ByShack. Visionary recognizes the fact that the direction
west is available but when I try to go west leaves me by the tree and
gives me the "you are standing by a large palm tree" message again!
tree. Going north, etc, gives me the standard "You can't go that way."
error message.

For debugging purposes, I tried to add a new room, like so:

room dbug_room

default
s ByTree
enddefault

code
$tx := "You are in the debug room"
call print
endcode
endroom

And then I updated the directions in the startup subroutine:

directions ByTree, n w

And updated the ByTree room:

default
n dbug_room
w ByShack
u InTreeTop
enddefault

Again it compiles and links fine, recognizes attempts to go north as
valid actions now, but puts me back by the tree. When running in the
debugger, none of the objects defined in rooms other than ByTree are
accessible. The jump command to rooms other than ByTree do not work.
Turning on the menu and scrollbar in MP source code ( to help dbug)
does not work either.

The XRF file indicates that the new rooms ARE being generated,the program
just won't let me visit them.

Has anybody gotten this thing to work? Is Visionary, as a programming
language, completely broken? Is the demo, as a demo, completely broken?
or What? I wasted several hours on this last night (up til 2am, argh :-(
) trying to get this nutty thing to work.

Any help is *greatly* appreciated.
--
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/* Kent Dalton * EMail: Kent....@FtCollinsCO.NCR.COM */
/* NCR Microelectronics * */
/* 2001 Danfield Ct. MS470A * */
/* Fort Collins, Colorado 80525 * (303) 223-5100 X-319 */
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