Good idea.David Whyld wrote:I think one thing that would be handy was if the wiki was available in the program itself. Inform 7 has the manual built directly into the program and this can be very useful in finding information and solving problems. Accessing a manual in the program itself is certainly far less hassle (for me anyway) than hunting around the internet for it.
I keep meaning to add help to the task page, as per objects etc. But the Wiki should explain the differences between the tasks.Another thing I’d prefer is if some of the new features in the program were more clearly labelled, or if there was perhaps some mouseover that told me what they did. When I create a new task, I'm given the option of it being a "general task", a "specific task" or a "system task" but it doesn't say what the difference between these is.
Tasks in v4 are equivalent to General tasks in v5 - these are where you define a general/default response to a command, or define a verb. The advantage of creating specific tasks is that they are specific cases of the general command and refer to the object by reference rather than embedding the object name into the command which creates guess the verb problems unless you manage to write every possible way of writing the object name.I notice when I open a work in progress written with V4 in the V5 Developer, it labels every task as a “general task”. None are specific or system. I've no idea if this means the game will run properly under V5 or not, or whether I need to go through each task in the game (all 906 of them!) and change them to specific or system as appropriate. What advantage does having specific or system tasks have over general tasks? Will games written in V4 work properly with V5 due to this or do they need to be re-written so that each task can be categorised correctly?
You could use v5 just using General tasks. Just you'd run into the same old problems as v4.I'm assuming that the games will work fine as they are – if not, it’d be a mammoth task to convert an old game into V5 and probably more trouble than it was worth – but, if so, that makes me wonder at the necessity of having three different categories for tasks. If I wrote a game in V5 and just left every task as general, would the game still run?
I think you're failing to understand the fact that Specific tasks are simply overrides for General tasks. So they could run instead of the default Genearl task, or as well as. Those options let you specify how.As mentioned in another recent thread about this matter, I think a lot of what's in V5 is confusing. Under “specific task", I'm given the options to make it "display parent message" and "execute parent actions". Under the advanced tab, I have options like "task priority", "auto-fill priority", "prevent this task from being inherited" and "if task fails and input references 'all', display this instead of restriction comments". None of that makes a whole lot of sense to me.
Library messages is just an empty folder. I think I removed it from the latest library, but I may have forgotten. All folders are just that - they don't have any special logic.On the left hand side of the screen there are a number of options in the "folders" sections but again it's not immediately apparent how to make use of these. Double clicking on "library messages" brings up a new window which is currently blank. Right clicking on the new window and selecting new brings up more options, but none to add a library message or give me any idea as to what library messages might be. The same goes for things like "player movement" and "attacking".
It is the library tasks for the North, East etc commands.Some of these I can figure out, but I'm not sure why there's a separate part for “player movement”. What does “player movement” actually do? Keep a list of every move the player makes or locations they visit? And “attacking” implies a combat system but from what I heard V5 doesn't yet have one.
Maybe for you. I still struggle to get my head around Inform and Quest.Maybe I'm just kicking up a fuss over nothing, and I accept that V5 is still in the beta stage so it’s possible everything will make perfect sense when it’s finally released, but at the moment if I was approaching ADRIFT for the first time, V5 isn't the system I’d choose to go with. The basics of Inform 7 are easier to get to grips with, as is Quest, and the more advanced features are too poorly documented for me to be clear as to what it is they actually do. If you compare the ease of use of past versions of ADRIFT with V5, it’s hard to imagine the non-programmers who flocked to ADRIFT in the past (and yes, I'm one of them) having much patience with V5.
Campbell wrote:Tasks in v4 are equivalent to General tasks in v5 - these are where you define a general/default response to a command, or define a verb. The advantage of creating specific tasks is that they are specific cases of the general command and refer to the object by reference rather than embedding the object name into the command which creates guess the verb problems unless you manage to write every possible way of writing the object name.
I still struggle to get my head around Inform and Quest.
ralphmerridew wrote:<PEDANT>guess-the-noun</PEDANT>
Tongue in cheek.This does not sound good. Shouldn't a person who's designing a programming language have a good grasp of them?
Campbell wrote:Do you have any suggestions for improvements to the GUI?
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 3 guests