Not really. When you’re out of space, you’re out of space, and there’s nothing you can really do about it. With current versions of I7 it’s very easy to hit the limits of Z8 format, since all the code for indexed text is no longer optional (as it was in the past).
How exactly are you doing the centering? There are easier ways in Glulx, using text styles, but it looks like you’re manually spacing over a certain number of characters?
i’m using the emily short extension
Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.
and using
center "stuff to center";
to center.
it’s messed up because the output is messed up BUT the Glulx (well, okay, GLK) built into inform does everything PERFECTLY. but the GLULX thing itself goes all wonky.
Use memory economy.
Use MAX_ZCODE_SIZE of 100000.IF THERE ARE DRAWBACKS TO USING THIS METHOD I SHOULD KNOW ABOUT then please let me know about them because right now I think I’ve found a no-limit magic solution. Then again, if it was this simple the limit wouldn’t even be in place at all, right?
The limitation you hit is the Z-machine’s 64K RAM size, which is absolute. You cannot dodge it except by conserving memory in your game.
The “memory economy” option conserves memory. Eventually, as your game grows, you’ll run out again.
The “MAX_ZCODE_SIZE” option is completely unrelated to this stuff. It’s a limit on the largest single function that you can compile. Functions don’t live in RAM, you’ve never run into this limit, and anyway the default is 500000 so your setting line actually reduces it. Delete that line.
In the previous release of I7 (6G60), indexed text and dynamic lists were optional features, so you could write a larger Z-machine game if you were careful to avoid them. It would be a pain in the ass for someone used to the current language though.
It does - in fact, it’s much more flexible about color and styling than z-code - but the method for doing it is a bit different. See the Glulx Text Effects extension.
They put a color opcode in the Z-machine because, I guess, Atari and Amiga and C64 machines could display colored text. (The Apple couldn’t.) They didn’t put in font control or other typographical features – what we think of as the minimum necessary for text design – because nothing could remotely come close to supporting those features. (Until the Mac appeared, but that was never their primary platform, so the Z-machine never took advantage of Mac display features.)
'90s open-source Z-code interpreters supported the color opcode because Infocom put it in, so it must be important. Some IF authors decided to use it because it was there, so it must be worth using. Adam Cadre designed Photopia around it, and after that… you can name other games that notably relied on color, but you have to think about it.
Not off-hand. Centering text in the status window is pretty easy in the absence of interpreter bugs. (But people haven’t spent a lot of time recently fixing interpreter bugs.)
I have an outline for how to do this, but I haven’t demonstrated it. Goes along with real typographical display features, more flexible styles, Vorple and Javascript integration, etc.
I’d love to start that conversation, but I won’t because I’m concentrating on making some money. (A radical theory which I haven’t been much in touch with since HL shipped.)
Anyway, I’m trying to get Glulxe to show me the money, but it’s giving me all kind of wonk at the moment. I’ll keep trying at times when i’m not so damn tired.
and i would love to have the ability to just set the font and the size. i’d not even dick around with the colors if i could have those two options all to myself.
Seqoe UI for variable and Consolas for fixed. i’m just saying. both of them 14 points. classy.
Well today I typed “andrew plotkin” into the search box on Patreon, as I sometimes do, and only got the usual three unsatisfying results. Which is totally fine I guess, I mean I guess they are trendy and all but probably it is still okay if not everyone has one. But I keep selfishly wishing that I would get a new top result and I would click on it and it would say something like, “Hi, I am Andrew Plotkin, I have created a crapton of stuff in the past, and I may well create more stuff in the future, and possibly this would be slightly more likely if you were to arbitrarily choose to give me money, but, like, no promises or anything. Also this is per month and not per thing.” And then I could sign up for like $2/mo or something. I know that’s not much, you would still need 249 people to do the same thing in order to hit $500/mo. Or maybe fewer people who were more rabid… or I mean, hmm, presumably the pledge amounts would form some kind of power law distribution, right? Because everything does? Is that even true? It sounds true. Does anyone know? Quick, zarf, create a Patreon and tell us the answer! Otherwise we will never know!!!
And after your HL kickstarter success and subsequent success when it was released? Very likely, sir.