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[Last revision: January 31, 1996, AdHints v0.9]
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Library 5/12 (or later)
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NewMenu.h to replace DoMenu and LowKeyMenu
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USING THE ADHINTS LIBRARY IN INFORM:
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In practice, one declares a series of objects, all contained within an
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object called Hints, with the name of the puzzle in short_name, a property
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called 'the_hints' which contains one or more strings to act as the
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(consecutive) hints, and a hint_check routine to set general and solved
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based on the status of the game.
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All adaptive hint examples are for the demonstration game BALANCES. The
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adaptive hints are contained in a file called ah_bal.h and three lines
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were added before the line Include "Grammar";
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Constant SHOWSOLVEDTAG;
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[In addition, to allow the menus to change dynamically and otherwise
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perform properly, you need to include NewMenu.h:
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before including Parser:
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then before including AdHints.h:
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otherwise there will be some undefined symbol problems. ]
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Object Cottage_Puzzle "Cottage Puzzle" Hints
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with short_name "What to do in the Cottage",
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the_hints "Maybe you should look around some."
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"Perhaps you should even try looking at objects in the room."
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"In fact, the furniture might be a good place to start \
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if (h_box has moved) give self solved;
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Notice that it starts with general (which means that it is available to the
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player from the very beginning), and that as soon as the h_box has been
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It is probably a good idea to point out that the hint_check routine is
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run in an AfterPrompt() routine within AdHints.h, so special precautions
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should probably be taken if you define your own AfterPrompt() (for boxed
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quotations, for example).
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A more complicated hint structure might be:
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Object Box_Puzzle "Box Puzzle" Hints
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with short_name "What to do with the box",
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the_hints "Hmmm, I wonder if there isn't a useful ability to unlock \
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"Of course, you might try looking at your spellbook."
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"(The next hint is explicit)"
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"Maybe the REZROV spell would be useful.",
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if (h_box has moved) give self general;
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if (h_box hasnt locked) give self solved;
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Notice that the hint_check routine causes the hint to be available after
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h_box has been moved, and as soon as it is unlocked, the puzzle is
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AdHints implements several new verbs (some of which are available only
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Hint, Hints -- goes into the hints system
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Hints off -- disables hints for the remainder of the game
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Hints on -- parity routine, doesn't actually re-enable the hints
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Review -- looks at past hints
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Puzzles -- lists all puzzles under the Hints object
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AllHints -- shows every single hint
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If the player uses 'Hints off', the hints will be unavailable for the
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remainder of the game *regardless* of the use of 'Hints on'. This is
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preserved over saved games since the state is saved in a global variable
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called AH_hints_available. Set this to 1 if you need to re-enable hints
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for some reason (for instance, in an AMUSING routine).
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The easiest way to customize the behavior of the adaptive hints system
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is to define one or more constants/variables. The 'correct' way to define
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Constant variablename;
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(e.g. Constant GIVEHINTSONCE; )
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GIVEHINTSONCE: This causes a hint to be given by the hint verb only once.
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This is a particular nuisance (from the player's perspective) if
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NOHINTREVIEW is also defined, since the hints will be given but a single
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time and be utterly unretrievable afterwards.
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NOHINTREVIEW: This disables the Review verb. It does not disable the
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ReviewSub() routine, so the programmer may call it up (say, at the end of
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the game) somewhere else in the code.
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REVIEWGIVENONLY: The default behavior is for Review to display any hints
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which have been given and any hints for puzzles which have been solved.
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Defining this causes Review to display only those hints which were
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SHOWSOLVEDTAG: If defined, this causes the string "(solved)" to appear
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after any hint title in the Review menu if the puzzle has been solved.
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HINTDEBUG: This causes extra internal information to be displayed and
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allows access to debugging verbs. Probably not useful unless you are
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hacking at the actual hints system.
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HINTDEBUGVERBS: This causes the debugging verbs to be available without
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having all the debugging and tracing information displayed.
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NOTE: The defines modify the behavior at compile-time! That means that
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(for instance) the "(solved)" tag either appears or doesn't. This may
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change in future versions if interest is expressed, but it doesn't seem
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worth the space trade-off, in my opinion.
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INSIDE THE ADAPTIVE HINTS:
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The source code can, of course, be examined. The brief overview is
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that there is an AfterPrompt() routine which executes AH_UpdateHints() in
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order to run hint_check on each hint object each turn. If you define your
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own AfterPrompt(), call it AfterPrompt2 and make certain it is defined
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before including AdHints.h.
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Each hint should be declared as being of class HintClass (although
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that does practically nothing as of yet -- this will probably change as
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the system improves) to pick up appropriate defaults.
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I have tried to make a general, useful adaptive hints module, and I
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think I have succeeded to a certain extent. However, I'm sure I missed
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some things, and I would appreciate comments, criticisms, corrections,
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suggestions, bug fixes, bug reports, and anything else which might improve
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the module. Yes, it's pretty large, but it's a pretty large task that's
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being done. I'm not 100% sure of my paging code, but it survived my
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testing, and I'm sure the source code could be a little more elegant, and
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I'd like to not have to replace the DoMenu stuff, so I have submitted my
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minor corrections to Parser.h.
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Commentary of any sort should be mailed to mike@lawlib.wm.edu and the
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'correct' home site is:
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ftp://skaro.lawlib.wm.edu/pub/users/mike/inform-stuff/adhints/
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After a first round of review, barring extremely major complications,
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AdHints.h will be uploaded to ftp.gmd.de as a 1.0 release.
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To allow use in the 1996 IF Competition without waiting for me to
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finish up the last couple of things I want, I am releasing 0.92 to
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FTP.GMD.DE for that specific and express purpose.
added
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include/adhints.txt
