GRAAL 2.3 ========= Yes, it's been a while, but just to show you I'm not completely dead here's another GRAAL release. Another bunch of features making GRAAL games both more fun to write and more fun to play! As always, the reference information is available in graal.guide, but here's a quick breakdown of the news... Upgrading from 2.2 ================== Some big, but very-easy-to-implement changes. CHAR: statement change ---------------------- Here's the only change you need to do right away: CHAR: statements have acquired two new, mandatory parameters to match the height and width of the images representing the respective characters (as opposed to the estimated width and height of the characters themselves - that information was already present). Read more in graal.guide. Image-related statement and command changes ------------------------------------------- A lot of the statements, commands and conditions that relate to images have changed names, as have SBOB and RBOB references. This is to finally do away with the most arcane part of GRAAL syntax, which makes everyone confuse image numbers with bob numbers. The driver still accepts the old names, but the syntax checker in the editor spots them and urges you to change them: N_GLOBALBOBS: is now N_GLOBALIMGS: N_SECTIONBOBS: is now N_SECTIONIMGS: N_ROOMBOBS: is now N_ROOMIMGS: BOBS: is now IMGS: SECTIONBOBS: is now SECTIONIMGS: ROOMBOBS: is now ROOMIMGS: BOBS is now IMGS CBOB is now CIMG IFCBOB is now IFCIMG PBOB is now PIMG and the references RBOB is now RIMG SBOB is now SIMG Note that all that has changed are the names - the syntax is still the same. Since the driver still accepts the old names, you can make the changes over time when you have to edit a script for some other reason anyway. Pause length changes -------------------- I have changed the way the pauses for SAY, RESP, THINK and TEXT are calculated, to make the pauses more consistent between those commands (because you sometimes use TEXT instead of SAY for character speech and so forth). So the timing in your scenes may become slightly different. Especially very short texts displayed with the TEXT and SAY commands are now shown a little longer. (You shouldn't have to worry about changing your scripts in most cases.) GRAAL Manual ------------ The GRAAL manual is now delivered in HTML format, so you need a Web browser to display it nicely formatted - Voyager, for example. NEW FEATURES ============ Talkies! -------- GRAAL is now capable of producing "talkies", that is, use spoken dialogue instead of written - or a combination of both. The SPEECHMODE command (or pressing the "A" key) decides which options are active. Making characters talk is as easy as putting some audio file information enclosed in angle brackets just before the text that is normally displayed on screen. Like this: SAY This is the text Now, if audio is ON and text is OFF, the sample file "mysound" will be played instead of the text being shown. "/D/D/D" are parameters allowing you to adjust channel assignments, frequency and pause length, should you not want the defaults (D). This way of giving audio info works with every situation and command which normally uses the text display routine in GRAAL to output text: The LINE: statement and the RESP, SAY, THINK, and TEXT commands. Samples can be IFF or RAW, and must be less than 65536 long. (The sound handling of Amos Pro, the base language of GRAAL, is an awkward business regardless of which Amos Pro commands or extensions one uses. This is just me having to pass on bugs and limitations in the underlying code on to you.) I recommend you try recording no more than half a dozen or so lines first, and try them out in GRAAL to see that your sample format and recording technique is compatible with GRAAL. Also, I have not tested this concept on a full-blown adventure and can only hope that it doesn't lead to long-term memory trashing. The concept uses the same code as the sample-playing commands in GRAAL, so it should be fairly safe and stable. The only other thing to watch out for is that you don't create script lines that are too long when adding audio info to your texts - you may inadvertently "push" the ends of lines beyond the 255-character limit. To avoid flooding the main directory with all these talkie files, they all go into a subdirectory called /graalaudio. Note: The sound effects used by SAMLOAD, SAM, and SOUND as well as tracker module files still remain in the main directory! Having all the dialogue sample files in a separate directory has another benefit: Because you probably want to keep the sample file names as short as possible, you don't have to add a type suffix - everything in the /graalaudio drawer should be dialogue sound samples anyway! Talkies and the Production Utilities ------------------------------------ The new audio capabilities is not handled the same way as ordinary files as far as the production utilities are concerned: GPRO: /graalaudio files CAN be copied and compressed using GPRO (but you don't HAVE to, neither do they need to be in the diskinfo.graal file - you can copy the contents of the /graalaudio subdirectory to wherever you want manually). Just prefix the audio files with the graalaudio directory name in the diskinfo.graal entry. Like this: A graalaudio/samplefile will copy the file "samplefile" from development to test directory, subdirectory "/graalaudio". Encryption will take place along the way (if compression/encryption is ON). GDC: Don't use GDC with audio adventures - designing an audio adventure to run off 880K floppies is plain silly anyway. Empty the GPRO test directory onto diskettes any way you like and write your own install routine to dump them onto hard disk. Or hey - make a CD! GREP: The report tool doesn't cross-reference /graalaudio files for the time being. This may change in the future. Making the Demo Talk -------------------- The demo has been updated to a "talkie" in the intro and room 1, if you bother to download the audio files which are in a separate archive - "graal2audio.lha". These files must be placed in a /graalaudio subdirectory as described above. If you don't install these files, the demo will still work fine - it just acts like a normal adventure without audio. MUSIC command ------------- The MUSIC command can be used to turn music and sound effects on and off, just as pressing the "M" key does. Implemented to provide symmetry with the SPEECHMODE command. Speech (text display) styles ---------------------------- This is a VERY old request which I finally did something about. It means all "speech" displayed during character dialogues, and also all text displayed by the text message, can be shown in a number of different styles. You can choose between semi-transparent or solid backgrounds and borders in the colours of your choice, and the borders can be square or slightly rounded (well, more a kind of "jagged corners" look, really). You can even have a cartoon speech bubble! I have now switched to that technique in "Olaf" for maximum clarity in the text displays. The little arrow of the bubble automatically adapts itself so that it always points to the characters' heads (well, the image hotspot, actually), which looks really cool. Style selection is done with the new SPEECH_LAYOUT: statement in graal.main . More styles may come in the future. Or not. RESUME KEEP ----------- MARK - RESUME is a very useful set of commands, enabling you to store (MARK) a position, jump to anywhere else, do something, and then jump back to whereever you were (RESUME). The annoying thing up to now was the fact that EVERYTHING was restored by the RESUME, including object and room data. (In fact, MARK and RESUME are essentially a quick way to save and load games from within scripts.) This meant the concept was mainly of use for screens like save/load/score/quit. However, with RESUME KEEP, all changes made to object data, room data, and string variables between MARK and RESUME survives the RESUME. This means there's a lot of new exciting possibilities here. How about: * A room acting as a notebook - MARK, jump to the notebook, make entries, RESUME KEEP back to the jump point. * Other information sources: For example, newspapers where you want WHAT you read to influence what you can do in the game when finished reading, * or, for the sci-fi gumshoe, a pocket-size crime lab: What you analyze, how you do it, and what you find out influences your line of questioning. Well, you tell me. I'm just guessing. IFNOTROOM --------- Just another condition, the lack of which led to awkward coding at times... PLAYMACRO --------- This off-beat command allows you to start playing a previously recorded macro from within a script! Why would you want to? Well, perhaps you'd like to make a non-playable but self-playing demo version of your game. Other Minor Changes ------------------- Some of the old conditions and commands have had their capabilities slightly upgraded, for example HOTSP. See graal.guide news for details. Bug Fixes ========= Some nasty bugs concerning saving and loading games with 3D-scaled characters has been eliminated: - When you saved a position with a scaled character, and loaded that position from a state where the 3D images had not yet been created by GRAAL (that is, a non-3D room), the character would initially not show up after the load, and then walk around full-sized... - Sometimes an object which had been altered with a SHOW command would not re-appear using the correct (last specified) image after a LOAD or RESUME. Scrolling of the dialogue area worked best with the (default) four lines of dialogue displayed, and not at all with less. Should work OK now. GRAAL previously accepted an (erroneous) empty hotspot parameter in ...BOBS statements and commands. Now, you HAVE to put a 0 in there as stated in the docs.