Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (
More info?)
Hi folks -
Apologies in advance for lateness and briefness of reply - I'm on both
vacation and dial-up at the mo.
Andrew Plotkin wrote:
> You still need to rig the interpreter to watch internal Z-machine
> variables, to know about inventory, moves, score, and so on. If you're
> going to do that, you might as well watch the location variable too,
> and not mess around with game text at all.
Yup, that's how it works. (Unlike the verify code, which doesn't ;-)
> game's serial number indicates that it is the V3 version
> that's been at douglasadams.com for years
Well spotted
That's actually where the project started. The Java version
on DouglasAdams.com typically gets a couple of thousand downloads a day (or
ten times that when it's mentioned it on slashdot, and why we had to move
off the Videoranch server) which is where the idea of a server-side version
came from - it seemed a good way of reducing the bandwidth demands
Evin Robertson wrote:
> The server communicates to the flash interface using some XML.
> A typical turn consists of sending something like
....
> The ID numbers correspond to the object numbers in the zcode file.
Spot on. The locations will occasionally gain suffixes (168a, for example),
to indicate changes in the game state (e.g. light going on in bedroom).
Back to AP:
> You still need to rig the interpreter to watch internal Z-machine
> variables, to know about inventory, moves, score, and so on. If you're
> going to do that, you might as well watch the location variable too,
> and not mess around with game text at all.
Yup. We've taken it a stage further too, so it can watch specific game
states (e.g. having no tea). In the Beeb release these are hard coded (time
pressure - had to hit the Sept 21 deadline), but later builds can use a
config file to describe the states to watch and change the XML output
accordingly, so in theory you could use it for games other than HHG.
Most of the team are off on hols at the mo, but there's a plan to release
the full spec so you can all have a play - I'm sorry we couldn't involve the
group beforehand, but the deadlines were incredibly tight.
Giles wrote:
> this version contains a hidden message. Nobody seems to have found
> it yet
It's pretty obscure ;-)
> but they have found a bug that means you don't get the ending
> text when you complete the game :-/
Yeah. Reproducible too. And there's another one that only h2g2 users see.
Grrr. Both my stupid mistakes - hopefully the fix'll be up shortly.
Cheers,
Sean.
--
"I'd forgotten it was all your fault." - DNA