Short: Libraries for Inform V6/7. Author: Graham Nelson (graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk) Uploader: Richard H. Poser II (whomiga@missingpiece.com) Type: game/text Requires: inform614_amiga.lha Action: NoStart inform614_amiga030.lha Replaces: inform_lib66.lha The latest version of this archive and the Amiga port of the Inform compiler can always be found at the Amiga Inform Homepage located at http://www.missingpiece.com/inform/amiga.html Inform Library 6/7 now released =============================== I would not normally release a new library exactly a month after the last one (6/6, of course): except that the competition deadline is imminent and a great many games will probably be compiled in the next fortnight. The bugs fixed are minor but cosmetically worthwhile (since some text messages were ungrammatical in 6/6). As a temporary measure, you can get hold of the new library from the Inform 6 Home Page: http://www.gnelson.demon.co.uk/inform.html (in the form of a tar archive containing all 8 of the files making up the library). It will be filed in its proper place at ftp.gmd.de shortly, and then the temporary uploads page will be taken out. As usual, some browsers may experience slight delays before the new files become visible from my Internet site. I should like to thank everybody who emailed me over the last week or so in response to my plea for bug reports. Graham Nelson 18 September 1997 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Extracted from the 6-series library modification history, which resides on the World Wide Web at: http://www.gnelson.demon.com/lhistory.html ------------------------- 248. When the parser asks a "Which do you mean...?" question, it normally ignores the answer if the answer begins with a verb. A new exception to this is that if that verb is one of... long short normal full brief verbose then it'll be treated as an answer after all, because it's probably meant as an adjective. 249. The DarkToDark routine wasn't being called in library 6/6. 250. Capitalised "They're ..." and "Those ..." library messages were being garbled (this applied only to objects given the pluralname attribute). 251. An incorrect linkage importation has been taken out of "linklv.h": this makes no difference unless you're linking the library files and you're using Inform 6.14 or later (which is able to detect the incorrectness and gives an error, unlike Inform 6.13 and earlier). 252. The implementation of turning scripting on and off has been rewritten, so that it no longer gets confused by restarts of the game in mid-transcript. (For instance, the variable "transcript_mode" has the correct value when the game begins.) Also, the verb "transcript" has been added to the standard grammar as being equivalent to "script": thus, "transcript on" is now a legal command. (Two LibraryMessages have been added: ScriptOn 3 and ScriptOff 3.) 253. Library messages referring to "that", "those", "him", etc., further refined to print better English when a person is the object in question. For instance, > put me in me You need to be holding yourself before you can put yourself into something else. > set george to 5 No, you can't set him to anything. > turn me on You're not something you can switch. (Apologies to those hoping for a racier response.) 254. "Floating objects" are now correctly placed when a ChangePlayer call occurs. Furthermore, the requirement that player objects must provide a "number" property is hereby withdrawn, and the same change means that the library is no longer confused if a change back occurs to a previous player-object which has been moved between light and darkness since its previous incarnation. 255. "Floating objects" are now removed if their found_in properties or routines indicate that they should not be present in a particular location. This ensures that if the found_in test gives different results over time, the object is actually taken away from any room which should no longer have it. It doesn't apply if the object is given "absent", as this would possibly interfere dangerously with the designer's own code, or with a use of the same object as an ordinary game item. (I'm very grateful to Paul Mikell for sending me detailed and accurate diagnoses of the bugs behind changes 254 and 255.) 256. If the constant MANUAL_PRONOUNS is defined, then the parser won't automatically update pronoun settings to follow items mentioned in inventory listings or room descriptions, so that pronouns will only reflect what the player actually types. (I don't think there's ever going to be consensus on what the pronouns ought to do: people seem split roughly half-and-half: so now you can make Inform behave either way.) 257. If the constant DEATH_MENTION_UNDO is defined, then the game will offer "UNDO the last move" as one of the options when the game is over. 258. Score changes (if any) are notified immediately after a reincarnation (if any) resulting from a designer's AfterLife() routine (if any), rather than being notified a turn later. 259. A bug in some versions of the "Zip" interpreter and its derivatives (such as "MaxZip") caused code in the parser, to do with reading the answers to questions like "What do you want to take?", to be misinterpreted: the result was that the answers to such questions might be misunderstood if a story file were played on such an interpreter. Details of the bug have been circulated to interpreter-maintainers, but in the mean time I've altered the Inform parser so that the issue no longer arises. 260. The text describing the standard compliance number of the interpreter (if any) has been moved from the main game banner to the output from the "Version" command (which is also printed at the start of any recorded transcripts). This is a little less cluttered; the Standard is well-enough established now to need less advertisement. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ============================= Archive contents ============================= Original Packed Ratio Date Time Name -------- ------- ----- --------- -------- ------------- 34984 8343 76.1% 18-Sep-97 12:51:16 English.h 17168 3188 81.4% 18-Sep-97 12:51:16 Grammar.h 2594 814 68.6% 18-Sep-97 12:51:16 linklpa.h 4017 1026 74.4% 18-Sep-97 12:51:16 linklv.h 937 440 53.0% 18-Sep-97 12:51:16 Parser.h 161720 47851 70.4% 18-Sep-97 12:51:16 parserm.h 1030 451 56.2% 18-Sep-97 12:51:16 Verblib.h 52925 13005 75.4% 18-Sep-97 12:51:18 verblibm.h -------- ------- ----- --------- -------- 275375 75118 72.7% 19-Sep-97 23:11:08 8 files