WorldClass status (was Re: WorldClass questions)


7 Apr 1995 19:07:12 GMT

[First, answers to the questions. Then, general status:]

In article <3lqf45$nq3@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au>,
Jason Noble <jnoble@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au> wrote:

>- What is the current version of WorldClass released to ftp.gmd.de? I know,
>I know, I should just look myself, but links to that site have been
>extremely slow for me lately. I'm using 1.1.8, by the way.

I haven't updated the one on ftp.gmd.de for a while. I'll do so now. The
latest version is 1.3.3.

>- Is the WorldClass mailing list still active? I believe I'm on it, but I
>never get any related mail.

Well, it works, but no one uses it. :) Either not many people are using
WorldClass, or people just aren't telling me about it.

>- (Sort of related to the first question) Does the latest version support
>descriptions of indistinguishable objects, a la TADS 2.2? Eg. "there are
>three gold coins here" rather than "There is a gold coin, a gold coin, and a
>gold coin here".

Yes, there's support for all that now. There's a typically bizarre example
implemented in the test program TEST.T.

>- Has anyone else noticed the oversight in 1.1.8 (it may have been fixed in
>a more recent version) whereby any actor using the travelto(room) method
>will in fact trigger the room's ldesc when they arrive (even if they're
>moving to a room far from the player)?

It wouldn't suprise me. I'll check it out.

>- Is there a pre-existing function, that I've overlooked, that would return
>a list of all objects currently visible to an actor?

The best way to do this right now is to get a list of the actor's
location's contents and then call actor.cansee(...) on each of the objects
in the list. If this proves to be too slow I can write a special function
for it.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The status of WorldClass in general:

You can see what I'm planning to do in the near future by looking at

ftp.ai.mit.edu: pub/users/dmb/worldclass/TODO

The world.t file itself has a detailed log of past changes.

I'm planning to add some global flags that disable some of the more
CPU-intensive features so you can run the library in "classic adventure
game mode". This ought to alleviate performance problems on slower
machines.

Dave Baggett
__
dmb@ai.mit.edu ADVENTIONS: Kuul text adventures! Email for a catalog.
"Mr. Price: Please don't try to make things nice! The wrong notes are *right*."
--- Charles Ives (note to copyist on the autograph score of The Fourth of July)