I7 Extensions updated

Emily short has now fixed the bugs in her “Property Checking” extension and updated her “locksmith” one. The reason for the update to “locksmith” is because of her latest offering, “Approaches”. This extension is superb. It allows you to do custom text generation for moving between rooms, not to mention adding in a handy go to location option for visited rooms. The rules included in the extension are easy to hook into as well. Highly recommended.

As usual, these extensions can be downloaded from the I7 extensions page.

Some thoughts on “Spatterlight”

I understand that many blind Macintosh users seem to think that “Spatterlight” is ideal for playing IF. Here are my own thoughts on why they think that this is so and my own personal viewpoints:
1. All the action takes place in a single window. This is true but there are serious drawbacks to this approach. The main one being that for me, at least, it has been impossible to access the status line with Voiceover. Zoom passes with flying colours here as it’s implementation is rather more sophisticated.

2. It plays more formats. So? I’d rather have access to modern IF formats anyway, who cares about “level 9″ there not even in business and as to AGT games, how many are written now?

3. It is easy to use. A good point but I’d rather have complete access to the game environment, not to mention that some games that make use of more aesthetic Glulxe effects such as multiple windows (City of secrets), conversations systems using the status line for menu choices (Best of Three) etc. can’t be played. Any games using sound or images are out as well because Spatterlight only supports the basic GLK implementation.

Finally, from what I have noticed, it’s not even being worked on any longer. Personally, I’d only use it to play AGT games and those that Zoom doesn’t support at present. Zoom has a more advanced game management system, not to mention it’s plug-in architecture for adding additional interpreters when they become available. One final bonus. Zoom’s integration with IFDB makes it far easier to find other games that you might enjoy.

Inform 7 Build 5j39 is now available

The latest build of Inform, Build 5J39 is now up on the official site. It adds the ability to declare lists and use constructs for searching, moving entries around, adding them, removing them, etc….., etc. Some new examples demonstrate using lists to simulate arrays, stacks, logs and queues. Two of the most notable examples in this build, Robo 1 and Robo 2 respectively, demonstrate using lists to crate a robot that learns behaviours and plays them back on demand. There is plenty to get your teeth into in this build, plus all the known bugs from 5G67 are now fixed.