Want to build a full color scheme into your game so it’ll work on any interpreter? Want to convey important information via background color changes like in Photopia or The Van der Nagel Papyrus, or that one Zarf game? Starting in Dialog 1b/01, now you can!
(style class @fancy)
color: red;
background-color: blue;
font-style: italic;
font-weight: bold;
(program entry point)
Start
(get key $)
(body style @fancy)
Fancy
(get key $)
(clear)
Cleared fancy
(get key $)
(reset body style)
Reset
(get key $)
(clear)
Cleared reset
(get key $)
Web:
Gargoyle:
Unix Frotz:
(Just, uh…don’t actually do bold italic red on blue, please. This looks just awful.)
Note that whether a new body style applies to already-printed text varies by interpreter. The Å-machine web terp applies new styles to the entire text (outside of any divs or spans). Gargoyle applies new colors to existing text, but only if that existing text is in the default color, and never applies anything else (bold, italics, etc) to existing text. Frotz applies nothing to existing text at all. Å-machine and Gargoyle also update the background of the whole window immediately, while Frotz doesn’t.
This is beyond Dialog’s control. If you want consistency, do a (clear) or (clear all) afterward. That gets uniform results across all interpreters.