Work in Progress: the Good and the Bad

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 5:59 pm

The GOOD: I have enough experience with the remote class that I am no longer restricted to having only the people and things in the current room be the only ones accessible.

The BAD: Christ did it take me forever to get there. The next game I am writing is featuring blind people so I can fully embrace the line, "You can't see any such thing." Whore-freaking-ray.

Merk · Post by **Merk** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 8:18 pm

(confused)... what's the remote class?

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 8:51 pm

Whoops! Change that to the "remote_object" type. The thing that lets you refer to an object not physically in the same room as one's player character.

Merk · Post by **Merk** » Mon Nov 20, 2006 7:04 am

This is Hugo, right? I didn't remember seeing anything like that in the lib, so I grep'ed the code and can't find the word "remote" anywhere. There are definitely times when this would be useful, but the closest I've come is by using "anything" in the verb definition.

Is this an add-on library? Or something you wrote? It sounds interesting, but I'm still clueless. :)

Kent · Post by **Kent** » Tue Nov 21, 2006 12:49 am

I believe he's referring to the remote object class in the Future Boy! source code. (Maybe?)

One of a few Hopefully Handy new classes/utilities/tools/etc. in the source to make your Hugo game writing experience a winner!

Merk · Post by **Merk** » Tue Nov 21, 2006 6:23 am

Ooooh. I really should look more into the FB! source code. I bet there are more things like this I've overlooked!

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Tue Nov 21, 2006 8:00 am

Kent wrote:I believe he's referring to the remote object class in the Future Boy! source code. (Maybe?)

One of a few Hopefully Handy new classes/utilities/tools/etc. in the source to make your Hugo game writing experience a winner!

Whoops, meant to get back to this thread last night. Here is the reply I would have posted:

"Yeah, that's exactly it. It's seriously quite handy!"

Merk · Post by **Merk** » Tue Nov 21, 2006 11:33 am

From a quick peek, this probably would have worked for me in TTS. I ended up writing my own (darn it). Between the remote_object and the reflector_object, I could have saved a lot of time. I knew the FB! selected source was there, and I even got the current-date checking out of it, but I just didn't think to look into it further.

The environ.hug is also very interesting. I wrote classes for "inside" versus "outside" and did properties for the floor (so it could be "floor" or "deck" or "ground" as appropriate). I made my own ground, wall, and sky objects, as needed.

The replacments to u_obj and d_obj look useful too. To get "look up" and "look down" to work, I replaced whichever "custom" message routine is responsible for that, and checked that exact condition for certain rooms (returning false so default messages would print in all other cases). This would definitely have made that easier.

Somebody ought to write up a reference page or document on it. :) Ideally, I'd love to see those things brought directly into the standard Hugo library. :)

Looking at this really makes me want to write a big non-comp game. It'll just have to wait until my work schedule relaxes.