Just a bit of working out...

[jhunter]

OK, I know mostly how to do BBC code and thus far this ABML code hasn't presented any problems. I just have to know a few things.

• Will there be a way to test gamebooks without publishing?
  
• Are there more SEL commands coming up?
  
• Can I edit the battle system slightly for my book?
  
• What brand of shampoo works best?
  

Thanks for your help.

[Zaphod Beeblbrox]

hi jhunter, glad to hear you're getting on with ABML :-)

1) At the moment I haven't got any plans to allow testing books without publishing, however if it is proving significantly troublesome I shouldn't think it would take too long to make provisions allow that.

2) No new SEL commands are planned in the short term, however I'm aware it's a limited command set so if there are some facilities provided by a typical language you would like to use let me know and I'll see what I can add

3) Yes - the battle system in the hosted 'FF' library cannot be edited (you cannot alter hosted library routines at all), however just copy the entire battle system to a library of your own choosing (most likely the book library for your adventure) and edit it as much as you please (applies to any hosted library). Just make sure you rename the routine in your library if you plan to include the hosted library as well to avoid routine name conflicts.

This is exactly what I did for the Outsider adventure - the battle routine is almost exactly the same with the exception of a few lines added to include the Florentine bonus damage, and the routine name was modified from multi_combat to florentine_multi_combat. You can view them both in the FF library and OutsiderLib library files

I would warn you that the current combat routine I have worked out is really a triumph of poor coding just managing to do the job however. My current mission is to work out more elegant (and readable) one. You're welcome to write a better one yourself in your own library - if it works and is more readable/elegant I'd love to make it a hosted library standard.

In the long term I hope to make the library inclusion system more heirarchical so that you may 'override' library routines reliably.

I really ought to write a small article explaining the library system sometime....

4) I'm really not sure but I do know that Head n Shoulders while providing dandruff relief in the short term really screws your scalp up in the long term so I would recommend avoiding that

[jhunter]

Ok, thanks for your help! ;D

[Beeblbrox]

Nice to see someone attempting to use the system, seems you are having a bit of trouble using variables though. This may help, I used this to generate the stats in the Outsider Test suite:

<EVENT event="$skill=$iskill=&dice(1)+6;&permvar $skill, $iskill;">Created Skill with an EVENT tag, 6 + 1 dice</EVENT>

<EVENT event="$stamina=$istamina=&dice(2)+12;&permvar $stamina, $istamina;">Created Stamina with an EVENT tag 12 + 2 dice</EVENT>

<EVENT event="$luck=$iluck=&dice(1)+6;&permvar $luck, $iluck;">Created Luck with an EVENT tag, 6 + 1 Dice</EVENT>

<EVENT event="$psychic=&dice(1)+6;&permvar $psychic;">Created Psychic with an EVENT tag, 6 + 1 Dice</EVENT>

<EVENT event="$gold=70;&permvar $gold;">Created Gold with an EVENT tag, set to 70</EVENT>





I then used this as the character sheet:

Skill:<INFO info="$skill"></INFO>(<INFO info="$iskill"></INFO>)

Stamina:<INFO info="$stamina"></INFO>(<INFO info="$istamina"></INFO>)

Luck:<INFO info="$luck"></INFO>(<INFO info="$iluck"></INFO>)
Psychic:<INFO info="$psychic"></INFO>

Gold:<INFO info="$gold"></INFO>



Hope that's of some use to you - if you want a detailed breakdown of what's happening I will be happy to explain it

[Zaphod Beeblbrox]

Ought to menton that the stat generation I just entered in to reference 0. 'charsheet' is also an automatically generated page. At this stage there is no need for using function libraries.