Hugo newsletter

Hugella · Post by **Hugella** » Thu Jun 26, 2003 7:54 am

Whatever happened to the guy that was publishing it?

Additionally, I've been mulling over the idea of setting up a Hugo only site...taking all the stuff from the if archive and putting it in a central repository, etc. I had in mind a kind of tutorial site through the eyes of a total beginner, logging my experiences with learning the language, etc. I know lots of these ideas (about websites, newsletters, etc) seem to come and go, but mine would be different, I'm sure of it. :) What do you guys think about such a site?

On that note, Kent, would you object to a link to the beta of the new manual, or would you prefer it remain semi-private?

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Thu Jun 26, 2003 8:19 am

Whatever happened to the guy that was publishing it?

Ashley seems to have fallen off the face of the earth. The last Usenet message I can find from him was in regards to the newsletter itself on April 15th, 2002. I told him I'd be happy to host the newsletter but only two made it out (and I was really, REALLY hoping that he'd come up with a third one so that the last one ever done did not have an interview with the guy who was hosting the thing -- it looks terrible, but honestly, it was coincidence).

Additionally, I've been mulling over the idea of setting up a Hugo only site...taking all the stuff from the if archive and putting it in a central repository, etc. I had in mind a kind of tutorial site through the eyes of a total beginner, logging my experiences with learning the language, etc. I know lots of these ideas (about websites, newsletters, etc) seem to come and go, but mine would be different, I'm sure of it. :) What do you guys think about such a site?

Heh, yeah, that's just it -- be sure you're in it for the long haul. On the good side, things in the Hugo world tend to develop at a pace manageable for someone attempting to make just a site, so it probably would not end up being a terrible amount of continual work.

=!==-- 1nKuBu5 --==!= · Thu Jun 26, 2003 8:19 am

hey hug can u warez me a hugo manuel

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Thu Jun 26, 2003 12:29 pm

In other news, if I ever attempt to anonymously troll a BBS as a woman, I will definitely be taking a lesson from our friend here and go by the she-name "LinkKubus."

Roody_Yogurt · Post by **Roody_Yogurt** » Thu Jun 26, 2003 1:00 pm

Yeah, I was just looking at the newsletters yesterday myself, in a way, wow, I had forgotten about this sort of way.

Anyway, Kent says it'd be cool to have the work-in-progress manual available since it's better than the old one, even if it's been somewhat of a perpetual goal to get it finished for a long time now.

Roody_Yogurt · Post by **Roody_Yogurt** » Thu Jun 26, 2003 9:25 pm

Also, yeah, I think such a site could be good. Hugo could use whatever help it can get in developing its community. To strengthen the content, though, it'd probably be a good idea to search rec.arts.int-fiction for old Hugo questions and try to make the tips and tricks easily browseable. I'd try to help with a question or two if we wrote a FAQ similar to what Roger Firth has on his Inform site.

Kent · Post by **Kent** » Fri Jun 27, 2003 8:24 pm

I keep meaning to weigh in on the manual thing. As far as that goes, it'll be done and final any moment now...as has been the case for the last 6-9 months. Short version: there is a new draft, but it's not ready. It will be at some point, but in the meantime there's nothing wrong with linking the rough(er) draft. It's better than the old on-the-archive version, anyway.

A Hugo site sounds cool, but I may be biased.

=!==-- 1nKuBu5 --==!= · Fri Jun 27, 2003 10:41 pm

hey kent warez me ur hugo manual k

Roody_Yogurt · Post by **Roody_Yogurt** » Fri Jun 27, 2003 11:15 pm

http://www.plover.net/~ellison/hugo

=!==-- 1nKuBu5 --==!= · Sat Jun 28, 2003 9:42 am

cool rood hey u wanna be in our warez clan?

Roody_Yogurt · Post by **Roody_Yogurt** » Sat Jun 28, 2003 9:45 am

I'm down, as long as I don't have to host other people's stuff.

Hugella · Post by **Hugella** » Fri Jul 25, 2003 9:27 am

Okay, guys, I've been fiddling around with setting up a site for Hugo...grabbing all the downloads from ifarchive, as well as throwing in some random stuff I've found online, like wordfiles for Ultraedit, EditPlus, and Emacs. (The goal, of course, is to have uh, actual content, but this is all preliminary stuff.)

What I'm not finding are other sites, other than JC and General Coffee (as well as the old groucho.org forums), that contain info about Hugo. (And I don't mean general purpose IF sites that happen to mention it in passing.)

Anybody know of any other web resources out there? Any Top Secret Hugo sites/mailing lists?

Any help appreciated.

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Fri Jul 25, 2003 9:47 am

Hugella wrote:What I'm not finding are other sites, other than JC and General Coffee (as well as the old groucho.org forums), that contain info about Hugo. (And I don't mean general purpose IF sites that happen to mention it in passing.)

It would probably be for the best if you weren't directing IF players to the forum on the Groucho site (I presume you are speaking of the Trotting Krips one). Attempts at mixing the community there with a community of IF players has been extremely problematic.

Anybody know of any other web resources out there? Any Top Secret Hugo sites/mailing lists? Any help appreciated.

There is the "#Hugo" channel on the ifMud. If I need a quick answer to a question I usually find that I can find it there quickly. (I don't have the Mud's URL handy, but if you throw "A Mud Forever Voyaging" into Google, it'll come up.) Other than that I don't know of any place that Hugo is being discussed in detail.

Roody_Yogurt · Post by **Roody_Yogurt** » Thu Nov 27, 2003 8:43 am

Hugella, you still considering getting that site started up? I've been doing a shmackload of coding in the last week (unfortunately, it's another joke game that I'm even less sure that I'll share with the world), but I'd love it if there were a Hugo FAQ I could help contribute to like Inform pages such as http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?InteractiveFictionInformTips and http://www.firthworks.com/roger/informfaq/index.html.

Unfortunately, I hate webpage design and HTML enough that I won't do it myself but would gladly help out if someone got it started.

Hugella · Post by **Hugella** » Thu Nov 27, 2003 5:52 pm

Hi Roody...

Yes, I've actually been working on it, although with the holidays etc progress it is not proceeding apace.

I've collected all the resources I know about and have made them available for download (although I've graciously allowed the IFArchive to continue footing the bill for ROBB'S games :)).

I haven't started on a faq because I'm in the process of learning Hugo myself, but obviously that's something I'd like to include in the future.

My site (usual disclaimer about 'under construction') is at http://hugonomicon.sf.net . You can email me at cena AT cox-internet DOT com if you like.

Roody_Yogurt · Post by **Roody_Yogurt** » Thu Nov 27, 2003 10:06 pm

Wow, looking nice. Yeah, I'll be sure to send you an e-mail at some point.

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Sat Nov 29, 2003 4:34 pm

Oh, wow -- that is a great looking site, Hugella. If there's anything I can do to help out, let me know. If you have an expanded section on various games or anything like that in the future, let me know and when you get ready to launch I'll drum up some custom content for you.

Hugella · Post by **Hugella** » Mon Dec 01, 2003 6:18 am

Thanks for the nice responses, guys. :)

As I said, I'm in the process of learning Hugo right now, and thought documenting the process might potentially benefit some other hapless newbie. I'll wait to 'announce' it until I have more substantial content.

In the meantime, does anyone have anything they'd like to see on the site? Any suggestions welcomed.

Roody_Yogurt · Post by **Roody_Yogurt** » Mon Dec 01, 2003 11:11 pm

Don't mean to change the topic but I didn't really want to start a new thread. Anyway, I'm releasing the game that I was working on last week as a joltcountry.com exclusive, mainly because I feel a little silly with this one yet put too much work into it to not share it.

The backstory is that years ago, a lady friend and I were going to write a game together and she wrote the beginnings of a TADS game. I never learned enough TADS to do anything with it, though, so I just packed it away. Anyway, long ago, I had decided that I had wanted to use a particular puzzle idea in this game and just recently finally decided to execute it.

The game file and source code are available at http://www.plover.net/~ellison/jc/fourstar.zip. It uses the conversation library by Christopher Tate, although that and a couple things in the Hugo library are slightly modified (yeah, I should avoid that, I know).

The game isn't quite as fleshed out as it could be and I didn't really watch for consistent spacing at all (which I think is a real pain), but c'mon, it's a joke game and I already spent enough damn time on it.

Roody_Yogurt · Post by **Roody_Yogurt** » Mon Dec 01, 2003 11:28 pm

To get back to the thread's intent, here is a bunch of things I learned while writing this game (I'm sure most of it can be found in the manual, but some things like the first one, were not easily found):

- to make sure a new line isn't added to printed text, add a semi-colon (;) after the quotes

- I'm sure I don't use the 'after' property as much as I should, but it was a life-saver when I wanted to do a check for an inventory item for whether a verb would work (in this case, it was a lighter and 'burn'). When 'Burn' is invoked, you can have it check to see if the object has an 'after' property referring to 'burn' at which point it'll do that. Otherwise, it'll do whatever else you want it to do. For clarification, here's the code:

routine DoBurn
{
if not CheckReach(object): return false
if lighter in player
{if not object.after
"Your common sense overrides your pyromania."
}
else
"You need to be holding an ignition device."

}

Of course, this can be applied to lots of other verbs and uses, but I think it's an important thing to keep in mind when you want to avoid having to write a 'before' property for a specific verb for all objects.

- I was reminded again how easy it is to do code for having an NPC follow you (something I definitely would want added to the hypothetical FAQ)

Okay, that's all I can think of off the top of my head. More things would just involve me copying and pasting more bits of code, so go look at that if you want.

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