Hi, I’m a newbe to IF, but not to RPG.
My main problem is that I’m trying to turn an old campaign into an IF game; the file size has exploded! Can someone point me to any documentation that will help me split it so that characters (NPC, as well as players) can move to and fro between parts, complete with goods and ‘memories’.
A secondary problem is that the time-line runs to months and years, whereas the documentation I’ve seen never seems to extend beyond 24 hours.
File size is a problem only if you’re trying to compile to the z-machine. If you go to the Settings panel and compile to Glulx, there is no realistic limit on file size.
Thanks Felix that looks like what I was needing; couldn’t see for looking. Don’t need it just yet, but I needed to know that it was there for when…
Jim. I know there’s no problem with file size, it’s already sitting at 70 MB in the project folder and that’s less than 1/3rd of the basic rooms. One problem is the compile time; around 40 minutes at the moment and I like to test things a lot. Another is dreaming up enough unique names. Also I have an aversion to ginormous files!
Now all I’ve got to do is split things up. Probably do it on a locale/travel distance basis; the files will still be big due to common items, but they should be relatively few (I hope!) otherwise it’ll be back to the drawing board.
Holy cow. That is a long time. Has the compile time been scaling up gradually, or did something change recently?
I’m guessing you’re using Inform 7? There’s an example model of dates in the extension Weather; it basically uses independent numbers for day, month, year and a table to store some information on day and month length (and month names). I’m not sure if the extension is small enough, but the basic principle could be helpful. Basically, the day number is increased by one every time the time is 12:01 AM; month is increased (and day reset to 1) every time the days reach the number of days in the month.
It’s easy to change the date manually (“now the Month is 4”), although if you set up scenes based on time, you’ll want to make sure they fire throughout the entire time they run - so that rather than starting Scene A oat 3:53 AM on August 2nd, 2066 and ending at 3:53 AM on August 12th, 2070, you make the start conditions so that it starts every time it’s between those dates. It will make testing SO much easier. I learned the hard way - you don’t have to!
I suspect someone has a “date” value system squirreled away somewhere, and it should be relatively easy to make one, basically condensing the above into a single value, so that’s an option if that would be helpful.
