Messages

I vaguely recall I was toying around with other programming languages before the nuclear hard-drive fallout for making native windows utils & such. Which reminds me I have to re-install Delphi as that was looking rather interesting in that area, altough that can wait a couple of days while I get my head back into "GLB Mode" & where I left off 

Well, as far as native windows utils are concerned, you might ditch Delphi altogether and just wait to see what GLB v11 can offer. 

Mine arrived a week ago, I'm already scribbling my plans for world domination into it! Thanks!! 

Wow, $35 for a 1080p capable linux computer. Amazing.  Smartphones really did bring the prices down.

I want this little gem in a cool case, with C64, (S)NES, Amiga emulators installed, two CompetitionPro Joysticks, all connected to some old crappy CRT TV. Yum!

Well, indie game Canabalt was ported to C64 and is available as commercial boxed cartridge and as a free download.
Now, how cool is that!?  30 years on, the old C64 is still rocking.


cart: http://www.rgcd.co.uk/2012/01/c64anabalt-cartridge-available-c64.html

downloads: http://www.rgcd.co.uk/2011/12/c64anabalt-c64-2011.html

... 320x240.

What's yours?

Happy New Year!!!! And let's hope we still post here on Dec  22nd! 

You have to place graphics inside the .app folder.

If you have project called Mygame, then place your graphics inside the /Mygame/Mygame.app folder.  You don't have to add them to the file list - that's for source code only.

Merry xmas all!

> Go East and kill dwarf with dagger.

Exactly what I was thinking about. Old Sierra games for example would totally fail on this sentence.

My plan is to have sentence checked for verbs and nouns and act the closest possible action. Regardless of whether that was exactly what player intended. That way at least I avoid the frustration of "You can't. That doesn't work. No way. I do not understand" replies.

In above sentence, it would be relatively easy to sort out "kill" and "go east" verbs and "dwarf" and "dagger" objects and combine that into meaningful commands: "go east",  if player has item "dagger" then "kill dwarf".
That's one sh!tload of string comparing that has to be done, but that's why we have modern CPUs, right?

Also, separating commands into simple sentences is something most of the audience should be fine with. Maybe if parser detects too many verbs and nouns, it then instructs the player to be more verbose. But then, that's another "You can't do that.".


But, the more I think about it, and looking at Facade, I think this stuff is easier than it might seem.

Notice how all the NPC answers in Facade are really, really vague?
I guess it doesn't react directly on specific sentences(commands) but modifies NPC "feelings and emotions" according to players tokens.
Since Facade is purely dialogue oriented, this works great. Player mentions sex, NPC gets uncomfortable. Player mentions sex again, they get more uncomfortable, until player eventually gets thrown out.
Maybe if player poured more and more alcohol before sex talk, stuff woul've gone the other way, who knows?

So basically, it's not like the parser is getting the command "kiss friend's wife".
It actually modifies "emotions":

pseudo

Code (glbasic) Select Expand

"sextalk" -> DEC wife.drive, 1; INC wife.inhibition, 3
"alcohol" -> DEC wife.inhibition, 1
"moar alcohol" -> DEC wife.inhibition, 42
"sextalk" -> INC wife.drive, 12
"kiss" ->
IF wife.drive > 10 AND wife.inhibition < 8
    wife.say("Yeah Baby!")
ELSE
    wife.say("You sick pervert!")
ENDIF

So, it's kind of more an RPG than Adventure game.

I've been playing lots of old-school adventures (again!) - Sierra's "quest"classics: Space, Police, King's Quest and LS Larry. You know, these games with 160x200 resolution and text input.

First thing I noticed is that these games are mostly tedious crap, gameplay-wise, besides Larry, who is still funny as sh!t.
Second thing I noticed is that I want to make a game exactly like this, only mine will be MUCH BETTER^(TM).

So I am wondering, what is a proper way to implement text parser in game?

I guess I will use INSTR$ to search for "tokens" or "verbs" in user input. Then the "nouns". Then I'll probably need a list of synonyms to check against. Then it sends a final "command" to the game.

What I would like to know if there are resources online that go into more detail on this topic. Stuff like checking for errors in spelling, or "words inside words" - like "pick" is not the same as "pickaxe", or whatever else...

It would be nice to do this slightly more advanced than those old adventures, which gave annoying errors for almost any combination of words that's not exactly like the one authors envisioned. Something more "interactive-fiction" like. 
Something that will allow people to experiment more, like this.... 

I agree with gold & orange. Really cosy colours for holidays. With a touch of pink being a father to a beautiful girl. 

But, back in the younger days, it was all about puke green. 

 I'm not sure how will this go with Apple . They're very picky about their own GUI, so they might reject your app because it does not provide "real experience" or whatever.
On iOS it's best to either keep the native GUI or use your own that's 100% different.

How does Android market work with multiple devices? If I have for example both a phone and console, can I use same apps on both devices?
This stuff is extremely tempting, as Android seems to be the best emu platform besides Windows.

Wow, just realized this thing has HDMI video out. Bluetooth gamepad + this thingy = awesome.

Cool one! Wasn't aware of it at all.

ProMotion beats them all...

It's commercial but has the full feature set. I especially like its palette sorting functions, dithering patterns, etc.
Haven't seen anything on par with it yet. It's like nuclear DPaint on steroids.

And it's all about pixels, no photo editing in there...

It's just been upgraded to 6.5 which finally added support for non-square pixels, to draw in Atari/Apple II/C64 style.