From senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!nycmny1-snh1.gtei.net!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!out.nntp.be!propagator-SanJose!in.nntp.be!news-in-sanjose!newshub2.rdc1.sfba.home.com!news.home.com!news2.rdc1.mi.home.com.POSTED!not-for-mail Thu Mar 21 11:22:22 2002 Path: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!nycmny1-snh1.gtei.net!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!out.nntp.be!propagator-SanJose!in.nntp.be!news-in-sanjose!newshub2.rdc1.sfba.home.com!news.home.com!news2.rdc1.mi.home.com.POSTED!not-for-mail From: M. D. Krauss Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction Subject: Re: [Inform] Map creation utility Message-Id: <20011207192204.48ca2e93.MDKrauss-nospam@home-nospam.com-nospam> References: <1007765094.759308@sidehack.sat.gweep.net> X-Newsreader: Sylpheed version 0.6.2 (GTK+ 1.2.10; i386-debian-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 65 Date: Sat, 08 Dec 2001 00:22:04 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.183.100.49 X-Complaints-To: abuse@home.net X-Trace: news2.rdc1.mi.home.com 1007770924 24.183.100.49 (Fri, 07 Dec 2001 16:22:04 PST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 07 Dec 2001 16:22:04 PST Organization: Excite@Home - The Leader in Broadband http://home.com/faster Xref: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu rec.arts.int-fiction:87679 I'm more than happy to do some beta testing on Linux / WINE. Just let me know when your ready. Your intended approach is just what GUI dev. tools are good for -- filling out the boring tedious bits so you can get to the real coding :) But are you sure you want to use VB? What on earth for? I mean, even initially; I don't consider VB particularly good for prototyping. Why not try Python or something? -M On Fri, 7 Dec 2001 14:46:31 -0800 "Brian Payne" wrote: > > Hi. :) > > I'm new to the I-F scene, not counting my Zork infatuation back in the 80's > (actually, I thought IF -- or text adventures, as I thought of them -- were > dead!). I've been poking around, lurking quite a bit, and mostly sticking > to myself while I plotted and played around with Inform, for several months > now. > > And now, I'm realizing that I'm particularly poor at writing games. :) But, > I enjoy creating *tools*. > > What I'm wondering is, would anyone -- once I get it rolling, of course -- > be willing to betatest an Inform map creation utility? > > What it boils down to is, I got REALLY frustrated while working with Inform > and map/room creation. It's actually pretty simple, but it's also somewhat > tedious, and I'm very bad at mentally picturing how a map is laid out. > > Looking at it, I don't see *too* much difficulty (I know, I know, FLW) in > creating a visual map that generated Inform code -- JUST for room > definitions, and so on. For me, at least, it'd be VERY useful, since I > could then forget the tedium associated with many of the rooms in a typical > map and just let the util generate the code for them. > > Note that I'm not talking complex code, or anything -- you'd still have to > work with some things manually to get the right effect out of your game -- > but I'm thinking that anything that takes you from the concept stage to the > testing/improving stage faster is worthwhile. > > Quick caveat: once I get the time, I'm intending to develop this in C > (likely using DJGPP, but that's not a guarantee) so it'll be portable. > During the prototyping phase, though, I'll be using Visual Basic (ugh!), so > you'll need either a Windows system or an emulator if you want to test (WINE > will likely work, for example). > > (Actually, there's more to it than that, but I don't want to bore people. > If you want to know more, just email me [or post, I suppose] and I'll > happily discuss it. :) > > So... anyone interested? > > Brian Payne > sofaspud at sofaspud dot org > > -- To email me convert my address to something resembling reason