Hey all, I recently started trying to figure out TADS3 and, frankly, I am succeeding at glacial speed! That said, I was hoping for some general assistance on the following: where can I go to learn how to break the game into time segments, i.e., Monday, Tuesday, etc.? It is very possible that the answer to my question has been right in front of me along, but that would be par for the course. Any help is appreciated. Thanks
Have a look at the subtime.t extension, which should have come with your TADS 3 compiler.
It has a lengthy essay by MJR about keeping track of time in IF, and implements a timekeeping system like the one in Christminster.
Thanks bcreesey. It’s a good piece. Not sure I completely get it, but I’ll muddle through. Thanks again
It seems like that extension is mostly about getting clocks, watches and the like to show a reasonable approximation of the current in-game time, while still having plot events occur at designated intervals.
That may not be what you’re asking for. A lot depends on how you want to present the time to the player. If you just want the status bar to show Sunday, Monday etc, you can get away with an object or global property where you update the string value as needed. Then you just need to adjust the status bar to show that text instead of the turn counter / score.
This is basically the way Anchorhead handles it; it also prints some text in the main window whenever the day value is changed, letting the player know that time has advanced. I would probably tie this in with Eric Eve’s scenes extension, so that you trigger the changes in conjunction with major puzzle solutions and other moments of dramatic import.
On the other hand, if you want watches or clocks that the player can inspect, or a TIME command he can issue, you probably need something a little more elaborate to track the current time and increment it in a natural way. That’s where subtime.t can help.