Library Suggestions

This is a page for us to add suggestions on what kind of things we’d like to see in the Hugo Standard Library (should Mr. Tessman ever decide to revisit it, or if one of us decides to do a rewrite and unleash it upon the world).

New Properties

New/improved property ideas go here (remember that name, before, after, noun, adjective and article are hard-coded into the compiler)

Dynamic Name - This feature (called dynname) causes the name of a room to be created dynamically, that is, programmatically. I had to put it in because changing the “name” property on a room in some cases triggered a “MORE” prompt and stopped for the user to type a character. I now realize there is a simpler way to do this.

New Attributes

The standard attributes are okay, but sometimes you may want to do something different in a game. Here are a few suggestions you might use for attributes that aren’t in the predefined list, but are useful for things in your game. And included are ideas on what a particular attribute might be used for. Some of these are duplicates of others, but the idea is to help you find the right name for an attribute, so that, for example, you have silent or noisy depending on which way you wanted to emphasize the situation. Some of these you could modify by putting UN or NOT in front. Some of these might be combined, so you have Cold_Money to indicate some that was hidden in a freezer, Wet_Paint, Incoming_Teleport/Outgoing_Teleport, etc.

Abandoned - Changes the description, make it more gothic.
Ammo - that which reloads a Weapon, you can create a property or another attribute to say what kind, but you can just put a check in, if you had a “reload” command, if the item they want to reload isn’t ammo, then you just ignore it
Animal - Something may be alive as a character but you can declare an animal if the person wants a horse or a dog around
Bankrupt - If you have a multi-player trading game, the ones that go bankrupt can be skipped
Better - opposed to worse or used or wornout
Blocked - might be temporarily blocked, or something closed it
Borrowed - something that was loaned
Broken - the user broke it or it failed
Breakable - might be something you can break as opposed to something solid
Clean - Your car is now no longer dirty
Coin - a valid form of money as opposed to a slug
Cold - Perhaps too cold to handle, or the room is cold
Collapsed - it failed, like a cave in, or crushed
Conveyor - takes you through a number of places, or try a teleport, escalator, elevator etc.
Crushed - as opposed to being in good order, or collapsed
Damaged - something needing to be repaired
Dead or Deceased - The living attribute tells if something is a character, but what if you’ve killed them, or what if you’re doing a zombie?
Deadly - Entering this room or touching an item with this attribute makes you sick or kills you, perhaps instantly
Defective - Really badly busted, or maybe wornout beyond its useful limits
Depleted - Worn out Uranium is still very hard, and “depleted uranium” has a lot of military uses (or it might be for something that isn’t radioactive)
Dirty - until you clean the car, people keep writing “Wash Me” on the windows with the grime
Done - some things might be InProgress because they take multiple turns, and some might indicate they’re done
Down - Position of a two-floor elevator or direction of an escalator, or up; could also mean a non-working computer or device
Dripping - Has a small leak or is slightly wet. Bigger leaks could use leaking
Dry (or Wet)
Dusty - as opposed to dirty or clean
Eaten - You throw out pieces of meat, if they’re partially eaten, you know that an animal has touched them
Edible - Plants that you can safely eat. Or Inedible
Elevator - You might specifically identify something as one, as opposed to transport or escalator
Empty - Out of ammo, out of gas, or something else
Escalator - or elevator, or transport or conveyor
Fast - as opposed to just quick or possibly slow
Flat - Bad condition for a tire or soda
Flame - Something on fire, or a lover
Flammable - Can burn, and technically the right word is Inflammable but most people use this
Floating - as opposed to it sitting on the ground
Food - Something edible
Free - In a store, some things might be free; taking them doesn’t cause you to be suspected of shoplifting
Fresh - Don’t want stale food or frozen food
Frozen - as opposed to thawed
Fuel - Similar to ammo, if someone tries to fuel something and the item isn’t marked as fuel, you don’t have to check, you just refuse it
Full - The garbage needs to be taken out
Glass - something is solid and perhaps transparent, but it could be a type of wall that is also blocked until it broken
Glasses - You might be blind without them, or you might be drinking from them; or might be broken as opposed to your good ones
Goggles - May give you extra vision capability when combined with the standard worn attribute
Gold - You might distinguish, say, gold from fools gold when ore is found in a mine
Heavy - Movable, but you have to have something like a lift truck
Hot - Possibly too hot to handle or causes burns, or the room is hot
Incoming - something that is one way inbound; could also be a modifier for some other transport or conveyor or teleport
Inedible - Stuff you can’t eat
Inflammable - The correct term for something that burns as opposed to flammable
Inflated - A better condition if you have a tire
InProgress - Something might require several turns to accomplish, so it’s inprogress until done
IsAspie - Whether you are the sort of person to write up 75 new Hugo attributes
Jammed - Shotguns don’t jam, but automatic weapons do
Killed - Something killed as opposed to dead from natural causes
Leaking - Has a leak. If there are small leaks you could use dripping
Liquid - or possibly wet or a solid
Loud - as opposed to noisy, silent
Loaned - something borrowed
Money - Something that can be spent, perhaps in a store, possibly instead of a coin or cheating with a slug
Mirror - You can see some things behind you
New - Or old or young or used
Noisy - Some things might be, or quiet or silent or loud
NOT - while there is a not keyword, if a particular condition tends to normally be negated, putting NOT as a prefix may be easier to understand; can be used as a modifier, NotWet instead of Dry, NOTUsed instead of NEW, NotNew, NotFrozen instead of Unfrozen or thawed, etc.
Old - or new or young or used depending on whether you want to emphasize something has aged or it hasn’t
Out - Perhaps something is out of range
Outgoing - something that is one way outbound; could also be a modifier for some other transport or conveyor or teleport
Paint - Something is a class of paint
Painted - Has fresh paint on it
Paper - something that can have annotations or writing on it
Poison - Not to eat, or something you throw at an enemy to kill them
Quick - You might have characters that are fast or slow or some object might move quicker
RadioActive - Room or object might be (see also depleted)
Redirect - Room redirects you someplace else
Repaired - something no longer damaged
Rusty - it might squeak or he harder to open
Seating - Create a ‘sit’ command, and you can sit on the chair, the couch, or the bed, but not the table
Silent - Perhaps a weapon has a silencer, or something is quiet
Slow - or speedy or fast
Slug - garden pest, or a fake coin, pretending to be money
Solid - as opposed to liquid, could also be wet
Sound - Something is making one
Speedy - as opposed to quick, slow or fast
Stable - or collapsed (or modify as unstable)
Stale - as opposed to fresh or frozen
Store - You might be able to buy things (with money or coin) only in rooms indicated as a store.
Terminal - A place to leave something, a place where transport arrives or departs, or a character that is dying
Teleport - something that directly or can directly move you to someplace else without going through other intervening rooms
Thawed - as opposed to frozen
Tool - something you might need to fix a damaged device so it is repaired
Track - Stand there and maybe the Train runs you over
Transport - Something that can move people or things, there is a built-in vehicle class, but this might be an elevator, escalator, conveyor or something different entirely
Train - Might be a type of shuttle, a full train or something else, runs on a track
Unwound - A spring that has released its energy
’'’UN ‘’’ - Can be used as a modifier, Unsound instead of Defective, Unused instead of virgin, Unblocked, Unfrozen instead of thawed, etc.
Up - Position of a two-floor elevator or direction of an escalator, or down; also the state of a working device
’'’Used ‘’’ - as opposed to something new or worse, ‘wornout
Varnish - something used on furniture instead of paint
Virgin - Maybe you’re doing a game about sex, or something never used (also you could do unused)
Weapon - anything from a slingshot, pistol, shotgun, to a LAWS rocket, a fuel-air explosive, or a suitcase nuke
Wet (or Dry) - plumbing, fixtures, a trough, wet paint, or possibly dripping, also liquid or solid
WornOut - really heavily used
Worse - not as good a condition as better
XRay - Produces dangerous X-rays, is leaking x-rays, etc.
Young - as opposed to old or new or used
Zombie - you might have corpses, and some that are not only dead, but have been reanimated

New Functions

Ordinal - This function creates the 2-letter extension for numbers, 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc. This handles numbers from 1 to 99.

routine Ordinal( I ) { ! routine for Hugo Interactive Fiction System to generate the 2-letter extension ! for a number, e.g. 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. ! ! Provided courtesy of Viridian Development Corporation !

local J,K

 J = abs(I)/10             ! Tens Digit
 K = mod(abs(I),10)        ! Units Digit

 if J = 1
    return "th "   ! 10th through 19th
 else

 select K
 case 1
     return "st "
 case 2
     return "nd "
 case 3
     return "rd "
 case 4
     return "th "
 case 5
     return "th "
 case 6
     return "th "
 case 7
     return "th "
 case 8
     return "th "
 case 9
     return "th "
 case 0
     return "th " }