Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: runequester on January 02, 2011, 08:11:53 PM
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My big goal this year is to write a text adventure game for the amiga. No graphics probably but definately some tracker tunes.
Now the real question is... whats the easiest language to use?
Amos looks pretty straight forward, and I remember messing with basic on the c64 for text adventures. It also seems it will handle music files and such pretty easily.
Any other options to consider?
Any significant advantages of amos pro instead?
Any trouble to expect running on 3.1 kickstart?
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True BASIC has the absolute best string handling of any language ever.
What is a text adventure program? A program that handles strings.
I used to do text adventure coding back in the olden days. I wrote a really awesome parser. A friend wrote the descriptions for the rooms and objects.
Good luck.
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You might look into TADS for the Amiga:
http://aminet.net/package/game/role/TADS3018
More (non Amiga) info may be found here:
http://www.tads.org/
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Thanks for teh recommendation. I'll definately check that out. I kinda want to do this in a proper programming language though, as I want to build out into other games as well later in a million years
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Well, if you're gonna "do it right" -- my humble opinion, of course -- then I'd use an object-oriented language. You will be managing objects in the game.
C++ or Amiga E are probably your best bets.
Two cents...
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I wrote 2 short text adventures last year with AMOS Pro and I'm halfway to finish a third. I feel rather comfortable with AMOS for this task, but in fact any BASIC dialect will do.
There are a handful of PD amiga specific text-adventure writting tools (C.A.G., ADMS) and some commercial soft (Aegis Visionary) among others. Handy if you're not fluent in any native programming lang, but doing it on your own is always a more versatile option.
Spacejest, Battleforce the Adventure Game, Box, are just the first examples I can remember of AMOS written text-advs. I'm currently making a catalogue of Amiga specific Interactive Fiction tools and games for a personnal project of mine. Hope your adventure will be at least mentioned in it some day! :)
@Chaoslord
Which is that text-adventure you wrote? Perhaps I've already seen it but didn't know you were the author, or maybe I wasn't aware at all of it. Tell us about it! :)
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I wrote 2 short text adventures last year with AMOS Pro and I'm halfway to finish a third. I feel rather comfortable with AMOS for this task, but in fact any BASIC dialect will do.
There are a handful of PD amiga specific text-adventure writting tools (C.A.G., ADMS) and some commercial soft (Aegis Visionary) among others. Handy if you're not fluent in any native programming lang, but doing it on your own is always a more versatile option.
Spacejest, Battleforce the Adventure Game, Box, are just the first examples I can remember of AMOS written text-advs. I'm currently making a catalogue of Amiga specific Interactive Fiction tools and games for a personnal project of mine. Hope your adventure will be at least mentioned in it some day! :)
@Chaoslord
Which is that text-adventure you wrote? Perhaps I've already seen it but didn't know you were the author, or maybe I wasn't aware at all of it. Tell us about it! :)
In the future, I'd like to do a tile based game like Hilt, so I figure this will be a good starting point.
Do you have opinion on the different versions of amos (normal, easy, pro) and what to go with?
Thanks for the encouragement!
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I did a small one in C once.
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For something like a text adventure the language used isnt hugely important, just use what you're confortable with. It sounds as though youre leaning towards some form of AMOS, which will do the job nicely. As for which AMOS, I'd go for AMOS Pro without question. It's the most updated and most system friendly AMOS version around.
Although Amiblitz or C are my favored languages for the amiga these days, there's no denying that AMOS is good fun still, and it is better than it's reputation (which was in part carved by the fact it's so simple to use that people with no real coding skills, but raw enthusiasm managed to satisfy their creative urges (ergo a lot of crappy stuff)). Stuff like Babeanoid shows that quite nice results can be obtained...... sheesh, now Im feeling nostalgic,.. might have to have a play with AMOS Pro again myself I think :)
At the end of the day though this is the classic amiga we're talking about, a person isnt going to get rich or reach a massive audience with what they create, so as long as you have fun that's all that matters :)
Feel free to ask for any help when/if you need it.
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For something like a text adventure the language used isnt hugely important, just use what you're confortable with. It sounds as though youre leaning towards some form of AMOS, which will do the job nicely. As for which AMOS, I'd go for AMOS Pro without question. It's the most updated and most system friendly AMOS version around.
Although Amiblitz or C are my favored languages for the amiga these days, there's no denying that AMOS is good fun still, and it is better than it's reputation (which was in part carved by the fact it's so simple to use that people with no real coding skills, but raw enthusiasm managed to satisfy their creative urges (ergo a lot of crappy stuff)). Stuff like Babeanoid shows that quite nice results can be obtained...... sheesh, now Im feeling nostalgic,.. might have to have a play with AMOS Pro again myself I think :)
At the end of the day though this is the classic amiga we're talking about, a person isnt going to get rich or reach a massive audience with what they create, so as long as you have fun that's all that matters :)
Feel free to ask for any help when/if you need it.
True amiga spirit my friend.
This won't be a commercial project at all. Just something fun to do, and to have a final project I can point to and say "I made this".
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In the future, I'd like to do a tile based game like Hilt, so I figure this will be a good starting point.
Do you have opinion on the different versions of amos (normal, easy, pro) and what to go with?
Thanks for the encouragement!
If you're sure you want to go with an Amos flavor, you may as well go with Pro. The only advantage of Amos the Creator is that some extensions work with it that don't work with AmosPro. Realistically the extensions for AmosPro are better to work with anyway. You can download AmosPro for free from the Amos Factory website (http://amos.pspuae.com/) and others.
Personally, I think AmigaE would be a lot more flexible for the kind of work that a text-based game would be. The only thing that would be better in AmosPro would be the graphics handling if you want to keep it in ECS screen resolutions. AmigaE works with AGA the same way as C and unlike C, has enough syntactic sugar to do object-oriented programming.
Hilt II was written in Blitz Basic if I'm not mistaken, but if your tile game is not action-oriented any of the above langauges will work.
I started writing a graphic adventure in AmosPro to test the memory bank capabilities but since there is a serious bug in the memory allocation of Data banks, I had to switch to another language. I chose C++ since I was looking at taking on an artist that could do truecolor cartoon images and didn't need backward compatibility for the classics. When my artist bailed out I quit the project.
Hopefully PortablE will make it possible to port AmigaE programs to other platforms like the next-gen Amigas among others. AmosPro is forever doomed to be run in emulators on non-classic Amigas and the AmosPro compiler generates code that is far from optimal.
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Way back around 82 when I got my very first VIC 20 the only game I had for it in the first couple of weeks was a plain text adventure called Mission Impossible on a cartridge the store threw in for free... :)
I always remember switching it on and me and the brother in law sitting there with hugely disappointed faces and asking each other "is this it...":(
Boy were we wrong... within an hour we were both arguing should we go east, should we go west, open that door, no don't open that one...
Suffice to say from that moment on we were hooked... :)
Hopefully, when you've completed your game you'll release it for all us old adventurers to enjoy, best of luck... :)
(Strange... just writing this post I can still conjure up the images in my mind of all the locations described in that game... :))
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write it in inform6 and then use any infocom interpreter on the amiga... that would be pretty traidtional, you can do pics + music but I dont know the formats...
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@Chaoslord
Which is that text-adventure you wrote? Perhaps I've already seen it but didn't know you were the author, or maybe I wasn't aware at all of it. Tell us about it! :)
My 1st one was on Apple ][+. I can't remember what I called it.
My parser was better than any Scott Adams adventure but not as good as Infocom.
The next 2 were on C64: Murkland, Haunted House
My parser was much better than any infocom parser.
I then decided that nobody wanted to play text adventures anymore so I gave up on them :( and ripped out the super duper mega parser and put it into BattleDroids Construction Set later renamed to BattleMech Construction Set (C64 & Amiga) then eventually ripped the parser out of that and plugged it into Total Chaos (Amiga).
So at least I got some lasting use out of my text adventure coding days. :)
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True BASIC has the absolute best string handling of any language ever.
I would rank Perl and PHP as far above any BASIC dialect in terms of string processing capability ;)
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I would rank Perl and PHP as far above any BASIC dialect in terms of string processing capability ;)
But then you would be wrong. :)
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But then you would be wrong. :)
:roflmao:
Sure. BASIC is better at string manipulation than Perl/PHP.
Thanks, that made my day!
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How about PureBasic?
The full version is free for Amigas.
http://www.purebasic.com/
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No fighting guys :)
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No fighting guys :)
I'm not advocating the writing of text adventure games in languages like Perl (though I am sure it has been done), but the point has to be made that manipulation of text was one of the main motivations of Perl in the first place. It may be old and it may be a beast but every language has it's milieu and chewing on textual data is Perl's.
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But let's not forget that manipulation of strings is only one small aspect of a text adventure. Modeling and interacting with the environment is the major aspect of any adventure game.
@ yakumo9275
Actually, Inform7 is out. I've been playing with it a little bit. It's an interesting approach for an (effectively) dead art form. :)
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Lisp !!!!!
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@Karlos
Ok go ahead. Show me in Perl how to extract a 3 characters string from another string starting at the 5th character and then insert that extracted string into another string starting at the 20th character.
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@Karlos
Ok go ahead. Show me in Perl how to extract a 3 characters string from another string starting at the 5th character and then insert that extracted string into another string starting at the 20th character.
Well, I'm more of a C/C++ guy but I am at least aware that the substr() function in Perl can also be an lvalue, which allows all kinds of useful manipulation of the type you are asking for:
http://perldoc.perl.org/functions/substr.html (http://perldoc.perl.org/functions/substr.html)
And that's not even using regular expressions, for which I'm sure the next PCRE expert will produce some 8 character expression to do your task. ;)
But of course, nobody would be using absolute string positions, right? Terribly bad form if you want to support minor things like alternative character sets and foreign languages.
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Way back around 82 when I got my very first VIC 20 the only game I had for it in the first couple of weeks was a plain text adventure called Mission Impossible on a cartridge the store threw in for free... :)
I always remember switching it on and me and the brother in law sitting there with hugely disappointed faces and asking each other "is this it...":(
Boy were we wrong... within an hour we were both arguing should we go east, should we go west, open that door, no don't open that one...
Suffice to say from that moment on we were hooked... :)
Hopefully, when you've completed your game you'll release it for all us old adventurers to enjoy, best of luck... :)
(Strange... just writing this post I can still conjure up the images in my mind of all the locations described in that game... :))
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write it in inform6 and then use any infocom interpreter on the amiga... that would be pretty traidtional, you can do pics + music but I dont know the formats...
This is the best suggestion so far. It's a proper programming environment that is designed specifically for the task, has compilers for lots of systems and the resulting code is 100% portable to other platforms. You could run the resulting adventure as easily on an iPhone as on an Amiga or even a TRS-80.
If you're unfamiliar, it's an evolved version of the same language that games like Zork, Enchanter and Starcross were written in. There is still an active community of people who write adventures in "Z Code" so getting support would be easy.
If this approach interests you, start searching with "Z-machine" and "Inform" as search terms.
Hope this helps!
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Lisp !!!!!
No... I althwayss tsalkss like thissss... :lol:
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Like others have mentioned, I'd recommend either Tads or Inform over coding from scratch.
I also like Alan --
http://www.welcome.to/alan-if
The Amiga version is rather out of date, however. If interested, I think the source code is available for Alan v. 3, so it may be an interesting option to port it to 3.1, 4, AROS, MorphOS, etc.
I did a bit of coding in Alan years ago, and although it's a little underpowered compared to Inform, it's a fun language.
I also wrote several text adventures using TACL and Visionary for the Amiga ages ago, and although they are pretty easy to use, they aren't up to par with modern day IF languages.
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I appreciate all the suggestions guys :)
I am keen on using something that can later be used to develop other applications or games too, rather than a tool that purely does text adventure, as I want this to be a starting point.
But its a brave new world out there, and I'll have to get my feet wet anyways :)
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I appreciate all the suggestions guys :)
I am keen on using something that can later be used to develop other applications or games too, rather than a tool that purely does text adventure, as I want this to be a starting point.
But its a brave new world out there, and I'll have to get my feet wet anyways :)
My Amiga resolution is to master 68k assembly, perhaps you could code your game in assembly and we could help each other with the learning process?
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My Amiga resolution is to master 68k assembly, perhaps you could code your game in assembly and we could help each other with the learning process?
I've thought about going hardcore and learning assembly but I am a little intimidated I must admit.
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Well, I'm more of a C/C++ guy
So you prefer sissy's do you... :lol:
(Sorry couldn't resist that one... think me antibiotics and me normal meds are making me brain go a wee bit wibble like... :))
@ nicholas
Nice to see someone taking an interest in 68K assembly, its my preferred langauge (other than Scottish), if you want some examples of 68K source code just let me know and I'll send you some of my own stuff (DevPac 68k format) for you to look at and hopefully learn from... :)
It's all stuff I've written myself over the years, just don't ask me to explain all there is to know about 68K though as I can easily code in it but explaining to someone how to actually do it is not my strong point... :)
You can also download some examples of my source code from here for now if you wish (it ranges from the useful to the downright obscure)... :)
http://www.commodorescotland.com/#/downloads/4544143499
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I've thought about going hardcore and learning assembly but I am a little intimidated I must admit.
I keep trying to convince myself of NO PAIN NO GAIN! :)
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@ nicholas
Nice to see someone taking an interest in 68K assembly, its my preferred langauge (other than Scottish), if you want some examples of 68K source code just let me know and I'll send you some of my own stuff (DevPac 68k format) for you to look at and hopefully learn from... :)
It's all stuff I've written myself over the years, just don't ask me to explain all there is to know about 68K though as I can easily code in it but explaining to someone how to actually do it is not my strong point... :)
You can also download some examples of my source code from here for now if you wish (it ranges from the useful to the downright obscure)... :)
http://www.commodorescotland.com/#/downloads/4544143499
Thanks Franko that's very kind of you.
I actually taught myself a bit in the early 90's but gave it up for x86 assembly when I got my first PC circa 1994. Then came work and years of high level stuff to pay the bills.
This time next year I want to be comfortably able to write some intros/demos in the oldskool style.
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@ yakumo9275
Actually, Inform7 is out. I've been playing with it a little bit. It's an interesting approach for an (effectively) dead art form. :)
inform7 sucks ass. Dont know if the gui/front end is ported to amiga classic, but since it outputs inform6... but without the frontend inform7 is useless
and the inform6 compiler is pretty basic ansi c it should build just fine on the miggy if one cant find any ports of the i6 compiler.
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About Perl
http://perldoc.perl.org/functions/substr.html
That is 200x better than Asm.
That is 100x better than C.
That is about exactly the same as any random halfway decent version of BASIC.
That is not as good as True BASIC. Its just not even trying.
Fail.
I am not saying the language is a failure because I have not studied it enough to know. I am saying that your claim of Perl string handling superiority is a failure. :)
Trying to compare Perl to a language that was actually designed to handle strings efficiently is just not going to work out that well. :)
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So in saying something molests a donkey does that make that something good or bad? I'm not real good with contemporary Americanisms...
inform7 sucks ass. Dont know if the gui/front end is ported to amiga classic, but since it outputs inform6... but without the frontend inform7 is useless
and the inform6 compiler is pretty basic ansi c it should build just fine on the miggy if one cant find any ports of the i6 compiler.
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So in saying something molests a donkey does that make that something good or bad? I'm not real good with contemporary Americanisms...
since I'm Australian, I wouldnt know.
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How about making one in AmigaGuide? Instead of typing, you can use buttons as options. No need to install anything in case you don't have it, just click and play.
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Trying to compare Perl to a language that was actually designed to handle strings efficiently is just not going to work out that well. :)
I'm sorry but you simply have no idea what you are talking about if you think that Perl is surpassed for string manipulation by BASIC.
Perl has been text processing for the masses for over 20 years. The language was created to process text efficiently, which necessitates efficient string handling at every level, from basic search/replace down to how strings are allocated. There is not a string-manipulation task you can think of that it can't already do in half a dozen different ways, most of which do not require anything beyond the language syntax itself (ie, you don't even need to invoke a function).
You need look no further than the fact that regular expressions are actually built into the language and Perl Compatible Regular Expressions (PCRE) have become the yardstick by which most other regular expression processors are measured against. You can't have a bigger lust for string manipulation in a language than that.
Your cited example of reading substrings and inserting them elsewhere is laughably insignificant compared to the power and flexibility of PCRE alone. Without even using their most powerful constructs (I was using PHP's PCRE implementation), I got this site working in classic browsers with all the necessary rewriting of HTML, stripping of CSS etc. on the fly that this entailed. Not just a bit of search and replace, entire transformations where a CSS popup menu matched in one part of the document becomes an option select with javascript trigger in another just so that you can have some of the functionality of the main site in IBrowse. The entire proxy would simply have been incomprehensibly difficult to do without PCRE.
How easy would that be to do in BASIC with substr() calls, do you think?
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Trying to compare Perl to a language that was actually designed to handle strings efficiently is just not going to work out that well. :)
Oh dear oh dear oh dear. This is a comment made out of pure ignorance.
Nice of you to give the TrueBasic code to compare, too. Even though the task given is ridiculously simple (and pointless, it would break with internationalisation for a start - how does TrueBasic handle that?). How is TrueBasic's regular expression engine?
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Oh dear oh dear oh dear. This is a comment made out of pure ignorance.
Yeah, that raised an eyebrow here. Perl is a hideous language syntactically (though it is possible to write clean code, it's just that nobody ever does) but you have to give it it's dues; is there anything it can't do with text strings?
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Ahh I used to love writing adventure games with graphics (coloured character ROM graphics!) on my C64 with Commodore BASIC lol. Good memories :)
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Yeah, that raised an eyebrow here. Perl is a hideous language syntactically (though it is possible to write clean code, it's just that nobody ever does) but you have to give it it's dues; is there anything it can't do with text strings?
Perl is a text processing monster. I've known Perl for about 13 years now, and it is all I ever use when I need to do more complex text parsing than what's sane in a UNIX shell.
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Ahh I used to love writing adventure games with graphics (coloured character ROM graphics!) on my C64 with Commodore BASIC lol. Good memories :)
When I was about 7 or 8 and the c64 pretty near to a new machine, me and a friend decided to write some adventure games. We used to call ourselves Zentih software (which I believe is actully in use today for a real business rather than 2 primrary school kids having fun) and our slogan was, "Not bad for 99 cents". We had delusions of selling our software, and due to its humble nature decided 99 cents was the way to go. :)
Mostly off topic, but good memories nonetheless.
What is semi interesting however was an original way we came up with to control our text adventures. Rather than soley text based, we made up some gfx for the commands and a sprite based cursor, with which a person could select thier command. Additionally inventory would also be shown as graphics rather than text. I guess why I remember this is because some years later games like The Labyrinth (awesome under-rated game in my opinion, the true precursor to point n click adventure games) were released, and later on games like Maniac Mansion and Zakk Mkracken started appearing, all featuring some of the elements of "Zenith Software" adventure games.
Im sure it's nothing more than a coincidence, but boy, would I have liked to have patented it :)
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Ahh I used to love writing adventure games with graphics (coloured character ROM graphics!) on my C64 with Commodore BASIC lol. Good memories :)
I LOVE the softgold + mountain valley games that used the C64 text graphics, and used the same screen layout... unsurprisingly both companies were based in Melbourne..
( like Bastow Manor, King solomons Mine etc )
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How about making one in AmigaGuide? Instead of typing, you can use buttons as options. No need to install anything in case you don't have it, just click and play.
hah, thats not a half bad idea actually :)
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Interesting idea, but that'd be more of a Choose Your Own Adventure than a typical text game, but even more restricted due to a lack of inventory.
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This would be almost the same thing as "The Secret of Monkey Island" without the animation. ;-)
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hah, thats not a half bad idea actually :)
I disagree. It's definitely at least a half bad idea. No variables to keep track of stuff like the number of turns or, as was said earlier, no inventory or item manipulation.
I'm sticking by my decision to say that AmigaE is probably the best Amiga-specific language you can learn as a beginner.
@Karlos and ChaosLord
TrueBasic does string slicing similar to what Python does so that may well be better than Perl or PHP at substring manipulations.
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@Karlos and ChaosLord
TrueBasic does string slicing similar to what Python does so that may well be better than Perl or PHP at substring manipulations.
Unlikely. If there is anything that you can do to a string, literally anything at all, Perl already has 5 syntactically different ways to do it :lol: (at least 2 of which will be insanely optimized because someone thought the other three weren't up to the job, but each will also have subtle side effects to trip up the unwary developer).
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Best thing to do is write your own parser in 68K, much quicker and you can make it to suit your own needs... :)
(@ Karlos... don't you think it's way past time to take down the xmas banner... :))
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(@ Karlos... don't you think it's way past time to take down the xmas banner... :))
But it's so cheerful and festive...
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But it's so cheerful and festive...
Cobblers... it's keech and I've had enough of chrimbo to last me a lifetime, tear it down so I can get back to being grumpy again... :)
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Cobblers... it's keech and I've had enough of chrimbo to last me a lifetime, tear it down so I can get back to being grumpy again... :)
It's not Christmas until 19th of January for the Armenian Christians.
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Just a quickie to suggest Objective-J :lol: (@karlos yeah, I've found another language I like)
In all seriousness, for something like this you are missing a trick not using HTML and a bit of JavaScript!
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Just a quickie to suggest Objective-J :lol: (@karlos yeah, I've found another language I like)
I'm sure objective-c is at least as good as C/C++ for string manipulation, but no match for Perl in terms of what can be done per token.
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Goodie... I smell another Bloodline V Karlos debate coming up... :)
Popcorn anyone :lol:
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I'm sure objective-c is at least as good as C/C++ for string manipulation, but no match for Perl in terms of what can be done per token.
Not Objective-C... Objective-J ;)
Hmmm I'm not so familiar with pearl, but the GNUStep/Cocoa framworks are well serviced with a string object.
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Hmm... Karlos must need specs... Round one to bloodline... :)
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Just a quickie to suggest Objective-J :lol: (@karlos yeah, I've found another language I like)
In all seriousness, for something like this you are missing a trick not using HTML and a bit of JavaScript!
No javascript on my A1200 mate ;)
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Oh... Oh... an irate fan has entered the ring... security... :)
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Not Objective-C... Objective-J ;)
Hmmm I'm not so familiar with pearl, but the GNUStep/Cocoa framworks are well serviced with a string object.
You said Objective-J but you were thinking Objective-C, otherwise you'd not have put the "@Karlos" ;)
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Karlos replies with an uppercut to the chin... :)
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Goodie... I smell another Bloodline V Karlos debate coming up... :)
Popcorn anyone :lol:
Lol, no... I'm off to bed... But over Christmas I attempted to teach my youngest brother to program, xcode was out of the question so I set up a JavaScript HTML document with some basic io functions in the head to hide the DOM and he was really getting into it! I will introduce objective-c to him via Objective-J :)
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Booo... bloodline has thrown in the towel (or should I say sock...;)) I demand a refund... :lol:
We Now Return You To Your Normal Viewing... :)
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You said Objective-J but you were thinking Objective-C, otherwise you'd not have put the "@Karlos" ;)
You have to check out Objective-j... It is to JavaScript what Objective-c is to c ;)
I think you'll loooooooove it :lol:
Hmmm... Really no JavaScript on A1200? I'm pretty sure the Amiga web browses support it!!
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Bloodline is disqualified for throwing a low blow after the bell... :)
(thought you were going to bed... ;))
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Oh well, if that's it then... It's just after midnight here so I'm off to peek through the neighbours windows and lurk about in the dark gloomy night... :)
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trying to compare perl to a language that was actually designed to handle strings efficiently is just not going to work out that well. :)
rofl!
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You have to check out Objective-j... It is to JavaScript what Objective-c is to c ;)
I think you'll loooooooove it :lol:
Hmmm... Really no JavaScript on A1200? I'm pretty sure the Amiga web browses support it!!
Javascript already has an object model, based on prototyping (rather than classes) and it's pretty easy to do reflective programming with it. Hard to see what it adds, other than objective-c syntax, which is not a selling point in the slightest.
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Since text games are harmoniously retro, pick something way portable and retro itself to write one in- nothing JIT or interpreted, either...
It will not be cool if it cannot run on a PDP-11.
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Lol, no... I'm off to bed... But over Christmas I attempted to teach my youngest brother to program, xcode was out of the question so I set up a JavaScript HTML document with some basic io functions in the head to hide the DOM and he was really getting into it! I will introduce objective-c to him via Objective-J :)
I'm phoning social services!
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I'm phoning social services!
:roflmao:
Seriously, though, I bet they take a dim view of that sorta thing...
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:roflmao:
Seriously, though, I bet they take a dim view of that sorta thing...
It's perverted and should be stopped!
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inform7 sucks ass. Dont know if the gui/front end is ported to amiga classic, but since it outputs inform6... but without the frontend inform7 is useless
and the inform6 compiler is pretty basic ansi c it should build just fine on the miggy if one cant find any ports of the i6 compiler.
I dunno... I'm finding the natural language approach to Inform7 rather intriguing. I don't know that it'll amount to anything, but it's still a rather interesting solution for the subject matter.
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I dunno... I'm finding the natural language approach to Inform7 rather intriguing. I don't know that it'll amount to anything, but it's still a rather interesting solution for the subject matter.
Tired and without my spectacles I misread Inform6 as Informix and nearly had a heart attack! :lol:
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So does yakumo9275's reference to bestiality mean he likes it or not?
I dunno... I'm finding the natural language approach to Inform7 rather intriguing. I don't know that it'll amount to anything, but it's still a rather interesting solution for the subject matter.
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I took it to mean he thought it stunk. I suppose he can clarify if he wishes.
@ nicholas
So, which part nearly gave you the heart attack? That I found Informix intriguing? Or that it would never amount to anything? :)
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I took it to mean he thought it stunk. I suppose he can clarify if he wishes.
@ nicholas
So, which part nearly gave you the heart attack? That I found Informix intriguing? Or that it would never amount to anything? :)
I still have re-occurring nightmares of being forced to write code with an Informix back end in the mid 90's!
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Javascript already has an object model, based on prototyping (rather than classes) and it's pretty easy to do reflective programming with it. Hard to see what it adds, other than objective-c syntax, which is not a selling point in the slightest.
Karlos! Always thinking so low-level! Objective-J gives you access to the NeXTStep API in a web browser ;)
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Karlos! Always thinking so low-level! Objective-J gives you access to the NeXTStep API in a web browser ;)
No, just thinking pragmatically.
All the implementations I saw turn your Obj-J into regular javascript. Hence there's nothing it can actually do that can't be done in JS directly. Probably with a greater degree of efficiency too.
There's nothing stopping your browser (and it's plugins) or any other javascript host application exposing any API it likes to javascript, irrespective of what language the API itself was written in. You don't need to change any syntax of JS for this. In fact, I can remember using and controlling java applets from javascript. You simply instantiate (or embed) the applet, get a DOM reference to it in JS, and then all the public methods of it are visible to javascript. All the webkit classes are written in C++ but you don't see someone creating a JS implementation of C++ to get at HTML5 ;)
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@nik
Can you make your signature a bit bigger? I can't read it from street level... :lol:
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No, just thinking pragmatically.
All the implementations I saw turn your Obj-J into regular javascript. Hence there's nothing it can actually do that can't be done in JS directly. Probably with a greater degree of efficiency too.
But Karlos, any Turing complete language can express another language. The original C++ compiler compiled into C code and yet it brought something new to the table, no? Hrm, right, there are plenty of C coders who disagree with that ("C can do OO just swell thank you, but OO is shite anyways")
Well then, let's try a different example! In the end, compiled languages usually come out in the form of cryptic assembly code, and certainly everyone can agree that being able to write in a high-level language is a welcome improvm....Oh right...This is the Amiga forum wherein this very thread there is talk of writing a text adventure in assembly...
Hmmm, what was my point again? :lol:
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Since text games are harmoniously retro, pick something way portable and retro itself to write one in- nothing JIT or interpreted, either...
It will not be cool if it cannot run on a PDP-11.
I like this idea. I suggest Smalltalk.
However Logo might be a better option, and that's also available on the Amiga. A surprisingly powerful language.
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I took it to mean he thought it stunk. I suppose he can clarify if he wishes.
Necrophillia probably stinks. Beastiality, maybe. I guess it depends on which animal it is. Necrophillic beastiality however,.... I can only assume that'd really stink, regardless of the animal.
What does this have to do the with the original post? Well, you could probably use it in the storyline of a text adventure. Maybe make it Christmas themed, just to keep it jolly.
hmm,... did I just cross a line ? :)
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But Karlos, any Turing complete language can express another language. The original C++ compiler compiled into C code and yet it brought something new to the table, no? Hrm, right, there are plenty of C coders who disagree with that ("C can do OO just swell thank you, but OO is shite anyways")
Expressing C++ generics in C, without some hideous macro orgy (let's not forget, the preprocessor is not actually C) might test that theory in practise.
Anyway, my point was that JS already supports OO and Reflection, which are two paradigms that Objective-C supports as a language that you might want to exploit. As per your suggestion, "C with classes" brought a convenient OO syntax to C with support for classes, hierarchy and polymorphism. You can of course write object-oriented code in C, but the language syntax does not strictly support it or make it particularly convenient to write. The same claim can't be made for Obj-J; it doesn't bring any new paradigms to JS or make the existing ones easier to use (that could be subjective of course, some people don't like the prototype OO implementation of JS. Personally I'm sort of ambivalent about it). But you certainly don't need to do it to make host APIs easier to interface with.
Well then, let's try a different example! In the end, compiled languages usually come out in the form of cryptic assembly code, and certainly everyone can agree that being able to write in a high-level language is a welcome improvm....Oh right...This is the Amiga forum wherein this very thread there is talk of writing a text adventure in assembly...
Hmmm, what was my point again? :lol:
That pancakes rock :D
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Necrophillia probably stinks. Beastiality, maybe. I guess it depends on which animal it is. Necrophillic beastiality however,.... I can only assume that'd really stink, regardless of the animal.
What does this have to do the with the original post? Well, you could probably use it in the storyline of a text adventure. Maybe make it Christmas themed, just to keep it jolly.
hmm,... did I just cross a line ? :)
Suggest it to the Eastenders script writers, I'm sure they could work it in somewhere, as long as there were arguments, fights and people falling out.
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Expressing C++ generics in C, without some hideous macro orgy (let's not forget, the preprocessor is not actually C) might test that theory in practise.
Comeau, arguably the most standard-compliant C++ compiler (even supports the hideous export keyword), carries on the tradition of Stroustrup's original and compiles into C rather than assembly, so the theory has definitely been tested in practice already :) But I don't see why you'd need macros to compile C++ generics into C? By the way, the preprocessor is (however unfortunate) very much part of C/C++. Though wouldn't I love if it were deprecated and a proper module system put in place instead...
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What about learning the open source version of SCUMM, this will run then on loads of things through scummVM
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No, just thinking pragmatically.
All the implementations I saw turn your Obj-J into regular javascript. Hence there's nothing it can actually do that can't be done in JS directly. Probably with a greater degree of efficiency too.
There's nothing stopping your browser (and it's plugins) or any other javascript host application exposing any API it likes to javascript, irrespective of what language the API itself was written in. You don't need to change any syntax of JS for this. In fact, I can remember using and controlling java applets from javascript. You simply instantiate (or embed) the applet, get a DOM reference to it in JS, and then all the public methods of it are visible to javascript. All the webkit classes are written in C++ but you don't see someone creating a JS implementation of C++ to get at HTML5 ;)
What Objective-J gives you is the NeXTStep frameworks (called cappuccino), and all the benefits which that brings for use in your web browser. It is rather easy to rapidly build an app using it, that runs in your browser, I think that's cool :)
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What Objective-J gives you is the NeXTStep frameworks (called cappuccino), and all the benefits which that brings for use in your web browser. It is rather easy to rapidly build an app using it, that runs in your browser, I think that's cool :)
I don't doubt it, it's just that it is completely unnecessary to change JS syntax in any way to introduce access to this API or any other.
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I don't doubt it, it's just that it is completely unnecessary to change JS syntax in any way to introduce access to this API or any other.
Imagine you are a NeXTStep coder, or an iPhone coder or even an MacOSX coder... Now you want to write an app that anyone with a JavaScript browser can use... Bingo! Obj-j is here! All the classes you are used to, with the correct syntax and all those little features you've grown to love, all there at your fingertips ready to allow you full expression... Or you could use it as a teaching tool, a gateway from JavaScript to Obj-C as I plan to :)
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I still have re-occurring nightmares of being forced to write code with an Informix back end in the mid 90's!
Heh. :) I've never worked with Informix -- Oracle, SQLServer and a little MySQL, yes, but not Informix -- so I have no idea how bad it is... but you know, if it had a natural language parser, like Inform7, that'd be pretty impressive.
But my point is pretty pointless...
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Imagine you are a NeXTStep coder, or an iPhone coder or even an MacOSX coder...
First up against the wall come the revolution.
Now you want to write an app that anyone with a JavaScript browser can use... Bingo! Obj-j is here! All the classes you are used to, with the correct syntax
Objective-C syntax is never correct except when it is vanilla C ;)
and all those little features you've grown to love, all there at your fingertips ready to allow you full expression... Or you could use it as a teaching tool, a gateway from JavaScript to Obj-C as I plan to :)
An evil plan. I almost approve :lol:
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Anyhow, back to the original question: Pick any well-supported language that is good with strings and data collections.
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First up against the wall come the revolution.
Hmmm, so I'll put you down as "undecided" about joining the resistance then ;)
Objective-C syntax is never correct except when it is vanilla C ;)
Well, I'm going to argue with you about that, as I've said before, it took a while for the syntax to "click" with me too :)
An evil plan. I almost approve :lol:
Lol, I'm not actually being evil, my little brother has his heart set on writing a game for his iPod touch... And this seems to be the least painful way to get him started in programming!
On topic, I don't see why a simple HTML based hypertext adventure is out of the question... It would be VERY quick to implement and deploy :)
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Hmmm, so I'll put you down as "undecided" about joining the resistance then ;)
ROFL! Wait, resistance against what? Decent language syntax?
Well, I'm going to argue with you about that, as I've said before, it took a while for the syntax to "click" with me too :)
There's no need, I "get" the syntax used in Objective-C, I have even written Objective-C and I even appreciate some of the design aims and features of the language. I just find it horrible to look at and to write. It's as if Smalltalk was experimenting with a teleporter device and after a few successful trials, on it's first attempt at teleporting itself from one pod to the other, noticed a copy of the K&R bible had fallen in with it but couldn't get out in time...
Any promotion of Obj-J to me is like witnessing the metastasis of this hideous abomination into other language areas. Don't expect me to like it :D