DSA question

Post by **PaulH** » Tue Feb 22, 2005 11:25 pm

First off I am pretty clueless with DSAs, but looking at the effects of them in Paul's demos has got me thinking. Could it be possible to...

1) Have an actuator that is triggered upon input of text? ie step on a pad, dialogue box appears (say with a question etc etc) message sent upon correct input of text?

2) Have an actutator that references a seperate sound the same way that the overlay one does with graphics?

If it is clear that what I am talking about is plain nonense, and impossible, please just answer with a 'no'!!!

Post by **Paul Stevens** » Wed Feb 23, 2005 1:45 am

looking at the effects of them in Paul's demos

Wait until you see the effects of them in Zyx's hands!!!!

2) Zyx and I have already decided that we will attempt this.

1) There is a &SAY that can be used to produce text. If we added
something like a &LISTEN command we would have to deal with several
questions as to how it would work.

- How could you examine the answer? In another project (DC or UAF) I
provided a 'grep-like' function to examine text. In that game I have
been able to write UltimaV-like scenarios:
"What is your name"? "Jason"
"Where is Blackbeard?" "On level 5. Northeast."
"What does Blackbeard want?" "He likes Solid Keys."

- Should the game halt while text is being entered?

- Do you really want a dialog box or should the dialog take place
in the text area of the screen.

- The PocketPC has no real keyboard....have to make the virtual one work.

- Will the DM-purists burn me at the stake for heresy?

- And probably other problems I have not thought of in these couple
of minutes.

Post by **PaulH** » Wed Feb 23, 2005 2:04 am

-First off, thankyou for your two minutes...

-I think the DM purists would have already hunted you down and had your head paraded upon the battlements, to be honest

-Text area of the screen would be fine. I wasn't thinking of some huge interactive NPC AI type conversation, just a simple ,'please enter password' scenario. Entered text matched, message sent, door opens ie. Not a two may interface. Therefore no answers. Game could be paused until the 'enter' key is hit. I was thinking along the Black Crypt copy protection plaques or Wiz 6 'captain matey' scenarios.

-Pocket PC? First things first eh?

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Wed Feb 23, 2005 8:43 am

but of course, the game could 'answer' because the effect generated by the correct word could be a text or soemthign being generated, right? so the two way conversation would be possible with this addition?

anyway, i think people would only singe a hair at worst for heresy

Post by **Paul Stevens** » Thu Feb 24, 2005 1:18 am

Well, I have several things on my plate right now.

If you ask again in a month we might be able to think about this a bit more.
I think it can be done !Relatively! painlessly if we can stop the game
while the listening is happening. Don't forget the Record/Playback feature
must still work, too.

Post by **Zyx** » Fri Mar 04, 2005 5:09 pm

The target of a DSA cannot remember the position: that is, it will always point north.

Also I had a strange problem:
here's the DSA code:
L4 L149640 LB OP8 &ADD
I'm trying to make sure the ADD will point to south
149640 means 18(04,08)south

Here's the trace:
LOAD INTEGER 4 (4)
LOAD BigInteger 149640 (4 149640)
LOAD Parameter B = 9828 (4 149640 9828)
OVERRIDE (4 149640 9828)
EQUAL (9828,149640) --> 0 (4 0)
&ADD
CSBwin crashes because of a stack underflow.

Why do I get an EQUAL operation?

EDIT: I just realized I should have put OP3. Still, there shouldn't be a EQUAL operation with an OP8.

Post by **Paul Stevens** » Fri Mar 04, 2005 6:44 pm

Why do I get an EQUAL operation?

Probably a missing 'break' statement. I've done that before; once
or twice or more.

Post by **Paul Stevens** » Fri Mar 04, 2005 8:35 pm

Actually it was much more complicated thatn that.

THe latest FeedingFilter.rar fixes it.

Post by **Zyx** » Sun Mar 06, 2005 11:23 pm

&XOR's rights are not recognized in CSBuild. He even is not allowed to sit in any DSA's line.
Probably because of his rude brother, &ADD, who doesn't have the slightest consideration towards the underrated posMsk parameter.

Post by **Paul Stevens** » Mon Mar 07, 2005 4:17 am

COL

It wasn't a full laugh. Just a chuckle. But it was audible to anyone
in the room.

The 3x5's are flowing fast. We had better settle down and concentrate
on stability for a while. I'll try to fix those two problems tonight.

Post by **Paul Stevens** » Mon Mar 07, 2005 4:49 pm

CSBuild177.rar and CSBwin98v40 are posted.

The noise when using reduced volume. When using 1/8 volume
you are subtracting 3 bits from the 8-bit samples. This only
leaves 5 bits of accuracy. I changed the code to round the
samples to the nearest integer in the hope that this would reduce
the noise content. If you think the problem is bigger than that
then we can do some digital recording and actually see what is
coming out the speaker.

The &ADD did use the 'posMsk' parameter but not correctly. I hope
it works now.
--------------------------------------------
--Round sound samples when reducing volume in an attempt to
reduce the noise content.
--Rewrite DirectSound interface from scratch to make it simpler,
to release sound buffers after they are played, and to make it
possible to turn DirectSound off and on repeatedly. I will be able
to support the DirectSound feature myself.
--Fix lost sounds.
--DSA - Implement &XOR
--DSA - Fix the position override function when illegal pos specified.
--DSA - Make &ADD use 'posMsk' parameter properly.
--Allow 'directx' on command line to use DirectSound by default
--Repair two problems with double shooters.

Post by **Zyx** » Mon Mar 07, 2005 7:27 pm

Reduced volume gives a much better sound now. However I'm worried about the loss of quality, what will happen if I call a &SOUND with a volume parameter of 5, for example? ( the volume parameter still doesn't work by the way)

Save and quit don't crash but show garbled graphics.