RealNC wrote:Not sure about the scrollback, but a compass rose, possibly accompanied by an auto-mapper would spice things up. People are using Trizbort for this; maybe we can put that built-in into the interpreter (especially since Trizbort is Windows-only.)
Funny. When I was thinking of possible features to add, I thought specifically of Zinc and its mapping feature but didn't want to suggest anything too complicated (even if Zinc's mapper is not an automapper and is kind of simple, as far as mapping programs go).
As far as my note-taking idea goes, I was thinking maybe it is more feasible to do the kind of interface from "to do" apps, where you click on a field to be able to fill it with text. Maybe that'd be easier to do than emulating a little notepad there.
I really know nothing about interface design.
RealNC wrote:There's also some other ideas I had. For example a way for games to tweak the settings of the interpreter by shipping with a "hugor.ini" file. Examples of what might be set in there include launching the game directly in fullscreen mode and perhaps using bundled fonts. (Although that latter part is a bit dangerous as the fonts that the author ships with the game might look ugly on other operating systems.) Or any other settings and customizations that would help in shipping games that look more stand-alone-like.
The fullscreen thing definitely would be most useful for games like Cryptozookeeper that are giving a full, commercial game experience, and I know Recchi has wondered about the feasibility of bundled fonts before.
All in all, these are interesting suggestions. I think Inform's potential has been hurt over the years by stripping authors of the right to make certain stylistic decisions (although I probably could not back this up with a particularly well-articulated argument). It'd be interesting to push this angle a bit for Hugo while we can, if only to show the world that such things don't make the universe implode.
[quote="RealNC"]Not sure about the scrollback, but a compass rose, possibly accompanied by an auto-mapper would spice things up. People are using Trizbort for this; maybe we can put that built-in into the interpreter (especially since Trizbort is Windows-only.)[/quote]
Funny. When I was thinking of possible features to add, I thought specifically of Zinc and its mapping feature but didn't want to suggest anything too complicated (even if Zinc's mapper is not an automapper and is kind of simple, as far as mapping programs go).
As far as my note-taking idea goes, I was thinking maybe it is more feasible to do the kind of interface from "to do" apps, where you click on a field to be able to fill it with text. Maybe that'd be easier to do than emulating a little notepad there.
I really know nothing about interface design.
[quote="RealNC"]There's also some other ideas I had. For example a way for games to tweak the settings of the interpreter by shipping with a "hugor.ini" file. Examples of what might be set in there include launching the game directly in fullscreen mode and perhaps using bundled fonts. (Although that latter part is a bit dangerous as the fonts that the author ships with the game might look ugly on other operating systems.) Or any other settings and customizations that would help in shipping games that look more stand-alone-like.[/quote]
The fullscreen thing definitely would be most useful for games like Cryptozookeeper that are giving a full, commercial game experience, and I know Recchi has wondered about the feasibility of bundled fonts before.
All in all, these are interesting suggestions. I think Inform's potential has been hurt over the years by stripping authors of the right to make certain stylistic decisions (although I probably could not back this up with a particularly well-articulated argument). It'd be interesting to push this angle a bit for Hugo while we can, if only to show the world that such things don't make the universe implode.