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Annotation of 43BSD/games/ddl/doc/wishlist, revision 1.1

1.1     ! root        1: This file contains information on what's changed since the
        !             2: DDL document people have seen.
        !             3: 
        !             4: Date: 25 Apr 1980 1546-PST (Friday)
        !             5: From: mike at UCLA Computer Science VAX (Mike Urban)
        !             6: Subject: ATTN: DDL Implementors
        !             7: To: cc (UCLA Computer Club)
        !             8: 
        !             9:    I would like the following changes made in DDL:
        !            10: 
        !            11: 1) Friendlier Parsing.  You should be able to say 
        !            12:        give troll the knife
        !            13:    and get away with it (with "knife" as Dobj and "troll" as Iobj).  You
        !            14:    should get messages like "I don't know how to tke" in the event
        !            15:    of a bad verb, and "I think 'north' is a verb" in the event
        !            16:    of a weird parse like "push north wall".  You should be able
        !            17:    to say things like "e.s.s.take thing. eat thing. look" and have
        !            18:    the parser treat the "." as equivalent to and end-of-line.  
        !            19:                /* ACCOMPLISHED 6/13/80.  Syntax errors are now
        !            20:                of the form "I don't know how to xxx" if an unknown
        !            21:                word is encountered (the whole word, not just 5 letters
        !            22:                is printed); "I don't know the word 'xxxxxx'" for other
        !            23:                unknown words; and "I don't understand, because I 
        !            24:                think 'xxxxxx' is a [noun/verb/adjective/etc]" for
        !            25:                other syntax errors.  The separator was already
        !            26:                built into the lexer, but it's a comma, not a period.
        !            27:                And VERB IOBJ DOBJ is a legal syntax now, but 
        !            28:                VERB PREP IOBJ DOBJ isn't (tho it's easy to add) */
        !            29:        MAYBE
        !            30:    (if it isn't hard), you should be able to say "take this, that, the other"
        !            31:    and have a more sophisticated control loop which causes it to act
        !            32:    like "take this.  take that.  take the other" with the EXCEPTION that
        !            33:    no daemon/fuse processing is performed (no turn increment) and that
        !            34:    the whole thing can be short-circuited by an appropriate Exit code.
        !            35: 
        !            36: 2) Generalized routine and object handling.  The routines associated with
        !            37:    objects should be properties of that object just like the others.  The
        !            38:    constants that tell WHICH property is, say, the Action property should
        !            39:    be predefined.  So ($setp room1 LDESC Rubbl) would set the long 
        !            40:    description of room1 to the routine Rubbl (which describes the rubble
        !            41:    left by the explosion you just triggered...).   
        !            42: 
        !            43:        /*** ACCOMPLISHED 6/6/80 ***/
        !            44: 
        !            45: 3) Improved global handling.  The programmer shouldn't have to know the
        !            46:    "address" of his globals.  Instead, a construct like 
        !            47:        VAR score
        !            48:    would be the equivalent of saying "score = xxx" where xxx is one less
        !            49:    than the last VAR done.  
        !            50: 
        !            51:        /*** ACCOMPLISHED 5/29/80 ***/
        !            52: 
        !            53: 
        !            54: 4) Improved grammeme access.  There should be predefined VARs which
        !            55:    contain the values of ($verb) ($dobj) and ($iobj).  You should
        !            56:    be able to re-assign these.  SO, you should be able to say
        !            57:        turn off lamp   
        !            58:    and the PreVerb routine for "turn" might contain something like
        !            59:        (($eq @Iobj off):
        !            60:                ($setg Verb douse)
        !            61:                ($setg Iobj 0)
        !            62:        )
        !            63:                /*** Accomplished 6/12/80; Only change in
        !            64:                        ddlrun is #defines for verbtodo, etc */
        !            65: 
        !            66:                /*** 6/81 added  Prep  global to ddlcomp and
        !            67:                        ddlrun to give access to preposition ***/
        !            68:    Because verbs don't have properties, we may wish for functions
        !            69:    to access their preverb and action routines as well.
        !            70: 
        !            71: 5) String handling:  It'd sure be nice to have someone type
        !            72:        incant "abra ca dabra" 
        !            73:    and be able to talk about ($subs Dobj @var 1) or ($indx @Dobj "abra")
        !            74:    or whatever.  I don't know exactly how to implement it yet.
        !            75:                /*** Accomplished 7/28/80;  STRINGs are negative-valued
        !            76:                objects.  If the lexer gets a string, it puts it into
        !            77:                a temporary string area (that is flushed every turn) and
        !            78:                returns an index (not pointer) into that are as a negative
        !            79:                number.  The parser knows about these and can handle
        !            80:                verb string  and  verb string prep iobj   sentences.
        !            81:                (the latter being for "Incant "rise" over seed".)
        !            82: 
        !            83:                If the dobj or iobj of an input is a string, the dobj
        !            84:                and iobj routines called are the ones associated with
        !            85:                the object STRING (if such is defined by the DDL
        !            86:                programmer).  At present, the functions $substr, $length
        !            87:                and $eqst  are defined.  $substr returns a negative
        !            88:                pointer into the temp string area; this can be stored
        !            89:                in a global, for example.  A permanent string area
        !            90:                is available, but I haven't written the function 
        !            91:                ($sets glbl string) which would move the string to the
        !            92:                permanent area and put its index therein into glbl.
        !            93:                                Mike            ***/
        !            94:                /*** On 8/20/80, I added a new function (which, mirable dictu,
        !            95:                will allow coding of the "echo" room!), ($read), which
        !            96:                pauses, gets a line of input, and returns the line as
        !            97:                a string!  Gee, if we code up ($pars str verb dobj iobj)...
        !            98:    The implementation is kludgy and nonintuitive.  But then, so's a lot
        !            99:    of DDL
        !           100: 
        !           101: 6) Ctrl-D should terminate the program.  Ctrl-C should interrupt whatever
        !           102:    is happening and begin a new turn.
        !           103:    Note that this may leave things in a bad state.
        !           104: 
        !           105: 7) New language construct: (WHILE condexp : formlist) is essentially
        !           106:    equivalent to (condexp : formlist ($____ formlist+condexp)) where
        !           107:    "($____ formlist+condexp)" is a new operator, JUMPB (jump back),
        !           108:    which is just like the current $.... jump forward instruction, but
        !           109:    (obviously) negative, and unconditional.  It goes back exactly to
        !           110:    the beginning of the test.
        !           111:                /*** ACCOMPLISHED 8/18/80 --Mike ***/
        !           112: 
        !           113: 8) New routine ($rand n) produces a somewhat random number in the range
        !           114:    1..n .      /*** ACCOMPLISHED 8/18/80 ***/
        !           115: 
        !           116: 9) DDLRUN sources should be reorganized so as to enable recompilation
        !           117:    of less than the entire program if some less global change (such
        !           118:    as the addition of a new routine, or a bug fix in the parser) is
        !           119:    made.
        !           120:                /*** Somewhat accomplished 10/80.  Still needs 
        !           121:                     work.  In particular, changes in extvars.c must
        !           122:                     be reflected in extvars.h ***/
        !           123: 
        !           124: 10) The symbol table, and the hash routine, are simple-minded.  The
        !           125:    5-character limitation on names is a real pain for some people.
        !           126:    For example, you can't even fake the Zork puzzle room by allowing
        !           127:    someone to say "push northern wall".  
        !           128:    These changes don't have to go together.
        !           129: 
        !           130:                /*** ACCOMPLISHED(!!) 11/80.  Identifiers are pretty
        !           131:                        much as long as you like.  The symbol table,
        !           132:                        now alphabetized, contains indices (not pointers)
        !           133:                        into a pool of identifiers that starts at
        !           134:                        sbrk(0).  A binary search algorithm is used.
        !           135:                        This will enable a future version to respond
        !           136:                        correctly to unambiguous abbreviations for
        !           137:                        things at runtime (like news for the aard
        !           138:                        newspaper, for a cogent example).  This
        !           139:                        hasn't been tested for portability to a
        !           140:                        PDP-11 under V7, so beware. As of 11/18,
        !           141:                        the symbol table is still unencrypted ***/
        !           142:                /*** The runtime parser recognizes unambiguous 
        !           143:                        abbreviations.  The symbol table is still
        !           144:                        unencrypted.  1/81 ***/
        !           145:                The building of the symbol table is simple-minded.
        !           146:                Oh well.
        !           147: 
        !           148: 11) It should be available on a micro.
        !           149:                        /* Not yet.  But the thinking has begun! */
        !           150:                        /* This will necessitate some rearchitecture
        !           151:                           especially wrt buffering of routines/strings */
        !           152:                        /* Object table caching required */
        !           153: 
        !           154: 12) The ACTION routine for verbs should execute AFTER the action 
        !           155:     routine for your room; this enables east(ACTION) to correctly
        !           156:     default to ($say "Can't go that way.") and allow one to generally
        !           157:     live without $hit and $miss, crocky routines that they are.
        !           158:     See ../sample (espec. transit.ddl) for a specimen of how this works.
        !           159: 
        !           160:                        /* 11/80 */
        !           161: 
        !           162: 13) Routines that get the action and preaction routines for verbs
        !           163:     should be made available.  
        !           164: 
        !           165: 14) Fuses and daemons aren't QUITE right (fuses go off after your daemon
        !           166:        has typed a prompt, for a real-world example).  Maybe they
        !           167:        shd be on a homogenized priority queue?
        !           168: 
        !           169: 15) It should be frozen real soon.
        !           170:                        /* As of 1/81, we're STILL thinking in terms
        !           171:                           of "just this ONE more feature..."  Damn. */
        !           172: 
        !           173: 16) 3/82: Modern versions of Unix permit various forms of interprocess
        !           174:     communication and commutators of some variety or another.  Mpx
        !           175:     channels in 32/V and 4.1bsd, UCB's future IPC mechanism for 4.2bsd,
        !           176:     named pipes (?) in 3.0, etc, etc.  One wonders how much work it
        !           177:     would be to turn DDL into MUD-DL (multi-user dungeon definition
        !           178:     language)!  Example of changes:  The single variable .ME now
        !           179:     has some cousins, .ME1 thru .ME8.  The parser sees not only the
        !           180:     input, but who's responsible, and sets .ME to the appropriate
        !           181:     .ME[n].  Then you just go through the turn normally.  Routines
        !           182:     like "$say" implicitly go to the .ME[x] currently associated
        !           183:     with .ME (thus, to talk to someone else, temporarily reassign .ME;
        !           184:     since .ME is an object, not a global, this means that you
        !           185:     add $setme and $whoami.  Also, a string-valued function for
        !           186:     $myname) Globals 1-100 are as always, but globals 101-125 are
        !           187:     implicitly local to the current .ME who's doing something.  This
        !           188:     is the easy part.  The hard part is figuring out how to say
        !           189:     "Tell everyone in the room that a Troll has entered", or
        !           190:     "Tell everyone in the room but .ME that .ME got fried by the
        !           191:     dragon".  Worse, how do you handle it when two or more people
        !           192:     are required to push on a door to open it?  How do daemons, fuses
        !           193:     and turn counters work?  It's nice do have names for the various
        !           194:     .MEs; but this requires dynamically fudging their SDESCs.  Chris
        !           195:     Kostanick has thought about multiplayer games in general; Mike
        !           196:     Urban has played Essex MUD.  We've both matured since DDL was
        !           197:     written, so maybe now's the time!
        !           198:        Mike
        !           199: 

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