Quixe undo limit (2021)

In Quixe, are there a fixed number of UNDOs guaranteed, or does the number vary by platform and/or game?

-Wade

1 Like

Looks like it keeps 10 undo snapshots. That’s hardwired in the code, so it won’t vary. (Unless your browser has some additional limit on RAM used by a page.)

My usual interject for fyrevm-web is that you can store the game state and turn object for every turn, so not just unlimited UNDO, but you could offer a complete history of play.

When I played with a server version (zifmia), I had the makings of a root and branch system with full JUMP TO capability. Both are in my GitHub account: chicagodave

Thanks David. I wouldn’t mind either of those things, but 10 UNDOs will readily do. I’m not githubby or programmy outside of Inform so fyrevm etc are beyond me. Plus this project needs to stay with the safe / established / readily portable venues for various reasons.

In a segue, can anyone remember what the general problem with UNDO was in Cragne Manor? I relied on letting one UNDO save people in one situation in the room I made, expecting players would have 10. Given that anything they typed in that moment except the right command or UNDO would kill them, I couldn’t see how that could backfire. But I remember authors’ different attitudes to UNDO caused some kind of headache for the overlords, and they had to add a saving-yourself GO BACK command in certain places, including in my room.

-Wade

The problem was that some interpreters always allowed eight undos, but others allowed a variable number dependent on game size. (Basically, they allocated N kilobytes for undo storage and Cragne was so big that only one undo fit.)

The instructions for Cragne authors said “assume the player is limited to eight undos” but this turned out to be bad advice.

I think that all modern interpreters guarantee at least one undo if @gestalt 3 returns true. The N-kilobytes strategy used to have a hole where a really big game got zero undos, but that was fixed after Counterfeit Monkey.

3 Likes