Most-wanted updates

Technical Development Inform Extensions
1

So I have been working today on trying to resolve some of the most significant frustrations about non-updated extensions in I7; I sent Mark updates for Title Screen, Simple Glulx Window, minor tweaks to Approaches and Postures, and Scheduled Activities; I’ve got what I think are fixes for Consolidated Multiple Actions and Hypothetical Questions as well, though I want to verify those with some beta-testing and get vaporware’s permission to upload Hypothetical Questions. (In theory, the license of extensions permits them to be updated by anyone, not just the original author, but when the original author is still around and highly active, I like to at least check with them.)

That done, is there a sort of top ten list of other extensions that people really need and rely on but that aren’t friendly with 6L38? I can’t promise indefinite amounts of time, but I have a little breathing room in my schedule, and I can have a look at a wishlist and see if I can knock off some of it, at least.

2

Glulx Input Loops would be nice! This seems like it has the simplest out-of-the-box solution to making a click-only interface. (Is there another one?)

3

I think that’s the obvious thing to use, and I furthermore think I have a working version of it here. Lemme look.

4

…or not. Okay. That seems to have been overoptimistic on my part. But noted.

5

Simple graphical window.

6

Er, I misspoke earlier with “Simple Glulx Window”, I guess – this is one of the things I sent in earlier today, since I saw you’d been struggling with it. Should turn up in the Public Library when Mark has had a chance to process extensions.

7

Many thanks.

8

I don’t know if this thread is still active, but the one I most miss is Jon Ingold’s Multi-Examine. There’s two projects of mine that would really benefit from it. In case it helps, here’s a test script, sorry I forgot to write a “test me” command when I could still compile it:

“Duck Soup” by “John G. Wood”

Include Multi-examine by Jon Ingold.

Freedonia is a room. “Land of the Spree, and the Home of the Knave.”

A Marx Brother is a kind of man.
The group description of a Marx Brother is “Those crazy people! No, wait. That was what the Goons originally called themselves.”
Understand “marx”, “brother” as a Marx Brother.
Understand “brothers” as the plural of Marx Brother.
Before listing contents: group Marx Brothers together.
Before grouping together Marx Brothers when the listing group size is 4, say “the famous Marx Brothers (”.
Before grouping together Marx Brothers when the listing group size is less than 4, say “[listing group size in words] of the famous Marx Brothers (”.
After grouping together Marx Brothers, say “)”.

Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo are Marx Brothers in Freedonia.
The description of Groucho is “The moustachioed one.”
The description of Harpo is “The silent one.”
The description of Chico is “The one with the accent.”
The description of Zeppo is “The straight man.”
Margaret Dumont is a woman in Freedonia. The description of Margaret is “A stoutish woman, she seems worried that someone might tear her down and put up an office building.”

9

That looks like something that might be handled by my new Actions on Groups extension, which is at Github here. (Get the extension from Github–the one posted in the thread is an older version.) I’m not sure exactly what behavior Jon’s extension provided (it’s a bit early in the morning for me to try to work it out), but here’s what I’d do with Actions on Groups, with the extension-specific code clustered at the beginning:

[code]“Duck Soup” by “John G. Wood”

Include Actions on Groups by Matt Weiner.
Examining is groupable action. Understand “examine [things]” as examining.
Action on groups rule for examining when dealing only with Marx brothers:
say “Those crazy people! No wait, that was what the Goons originally called themselves.”

Freedonia is a room. “Land of the Spree, and the Home of the Knave.”

A Marx Brother is a kind of man.
Understand “marx”, “brother” as a Marx Brother.
Understand “brothers” as the plural of Marx Brother.
Before listing contents: group Marx Brothers together.
Before grouping together Marx Brothers when the listing group size is 4, say “the famous Marx Brothers (”.
Before grouping together Marx Brothers when the listing group size is less than 4, say “[listing group size in words] of the famous Marx Brothers (”.
After grouping together Marx Brothers, say “)”.

Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo are Marx Brothers in Freedonia.
The description of Groucho is “The moustachioed one.”
The description of Harpo is “The silent one.”
The description of Chico is “The one with the accent.”
The description of Zeppo is “The straight man.”
Margaret Dumont is a woman in Freedonia. The description of Margaret is “A stoutish woman, she seems worried that someone might tear her down and put up an office building.”[/code]

Unlike Multi-examine this extension doesn’t define anything as groupable action out of the box, so you need to explicitly define that–but otherwise it’s simply a matter of writing a rule rather than specifying a group description property. And if you want a backstop that prevents the player from examining things that don’t fall into a group, which Jon’s extension seems to do, all you need to do is add:

Examining is group-only action.

and customize the can’t use undesignated groups rule response (A).

(Warning: This is a brand new extension and not much tested. Please let me know if you find any bugs or need any help with it!)

10

Thanks for that - it looks like it should do exactly what I want. I will give it a spin!

Will do.

11

I’d like to request Tailored Room Description, which isn’t listed on the I7 website any more.

It uses Room Description Control, which in turn uses Plurality, which is obsolete and crashes the compiler, so I’m guessing this is an extension that hasn’t been used or requested in quite a while.

12

I updated Tailored Room Description and Room Description Control for Counterfeit Monkey. The current version of Tailored Room Description in the Counterfeit Monkey git repository requires (an updated) Large Game Speedup, but this and this should work without it.

13

Thank you Angstsmurf!

14

Just let me know if they cause any trouble. Otherwise I’ll upload them to i7/extensions.

15

Hi,

I’m working on a game for the if-comp, a translation of a recent game. The thing is, in Spanish, I used Quip-Based Conversation by Michael Martin, and worked very fine. But that extension just doesn’t compile in English in the last version of Inform 7 6M62.

I’ve seen other conversation extensions, but none seems to fit the simple CYOA model I need, a-la Photopia.

Any idea? or help?

Thanks.

Ruber Eaglenest.

16

I can get Quip-Based Conversation to compile; do you have version 5 of Quip-Based Conversation, and version 10 of Reactable Quips? (If not, I can try to find them, though I might not have much time today.)

17

inform7.com/extensions/Michael%2 … index.html

inform7.com/extensions/Michael%2 … index.html

Thanks!

It could be that the problem is in Reactable Quips and not in Quip-based conversation. I don’t know.

18

Hmm, I tried the examples in those extensions and they compiled, though I did get a run-time error for one of the Reactable Quips examples. But I haven’t checked to see that my versions are exactly the same. Have you tried compiling the examples?

19

Weird. Yes, I’ve tried those. My I7 version is 6M62.

Problem. In ‘Table of Ask Results’ , column 1 (NPC), the entry ‘guard’ (row 2) is a genuine, non-blank entry: it’s a specific value. That’s fine, of course - the whole idea of a table is to contain values - but this is a column which already contains a name of a kind: ‘a person’ .

Ummm maybe the extension was badly imported and the tabs and rows are wrongly spaced? hmmm

20

Did you by any chance copy-paste the extension code from the documentation instead of hitting the “import” button next to the extension title? I think copy-pasting tends to mess the tabs up.

That said, that example was the one where I got the run-time errors (which I haven’t been able to track down).