Scoring

Hugo has some support for score and rankings built-in. The first thing you’ll want to do is declare the MAX_SCORE (highest score possible in the game), MAX_RANK (highest rank), and descriptions for each ranking. A game with a 30 points total with four ranks (set at 0, 10, 20, and 30 points each) would have something like this:

!    This goes up at the top somewhere
    MAX_SCORE = 30
    MAX_RANK = 3
    ranking[0] = "A Big Zero"
    ranking[1] = "Barely Started"
    ranking[2] = "Almost There"
    ranking[3] = "Ruler of the Example Game"

You’d be all ready to go if there wasn’t a little problem in the current version of the Hugo library (v3.1.03.1). Until things are fixed in the next release, you’ll want to use this replacement:

replace PrintScore(end_of_game)
{
    if STATUSTYPE = 1 and MAX_SCORE
    {
        if end_of_game:  print ""
        print "You ";
        if not end_of_game
            print "have ";
        print "scored a total of ";
        print number score; " out of "; number MAX_SCORE;
        if ranking[0] ~= ""
        {
            print ", giving you the rank of ";

            ! A complicated formula, since only
            ! integer division is allowed:
            !
            print ranking[(score*MAX_RANK)/MAX_SCORE];
        }
        print "."
    }
}

This code changes both the formula for determining the rank (the old one came up with wrong answers in some situations) and adds a semicolon at the end of that line so there isn’t a new line before the full stop.

Last of all, wherever you want to reward the player with points (10 in this case), add:

score = score + 10

Just make sure the trigger isn’t repeatable or else it’ll break your ranking. Voilà!

Score Notification

Some games have a “[Your score has gone up]” text pop up every time the player has been awarded some points. Let’s throw together a quick routine that handles this for us automatically!

1. First, let’s make some grammar so the player can turn the notification system on and off. xverb “notify” * DoNotifyOnOff * “on” DoNotifyOn * “off” DoNotifyOff

2. Now, let’s make those verb routines, along with a global to keep track of score notificaion: global score_notify

   routine DoNotifyOnOff
   {
         if score_notify
               Perform(&DoNotifyOff)
         else
               Perform(&DoNotifyOn)
   }
   
   routine DoNotifyOn
   {
         if score_notify
              "[Score notification already on.]"
         else
              {
              "[Score notification on.]"
              score_notify = 1
              }
   }
   
   routine DoNotifyOff
   {
         if not score_notify
              "[Score notification already off.]"
         else
              {
              "[Score notification off.]"
              score_notify = 0
              }
   }
   

3. Now let’s get into the actual score notification stuff. First, add a “ScoreNotify” call to main, after runevents and RunScripts (but before PrintStatusLine): routine main { counter = counter + 1 run location.each_turn runevents RunScripts ScoreNotify if speaking not in location speaking = 0 PrintStatusLine }

4. Now make another global to hold the points-to-be-added-to-the-score and a ScoreNotify routine global points

   routine ScoreNotify
   {
         if points and score_notify
              {
              "\n\B[Your score has gone up.]\b"
              ! or possibly
              ! print "\n\B[Your score has gone up by "; number points; " points.]\b"
              }
         score = points + score   ! add the points to the score
         points = 0    ! reset the point counter
   }
   

5. Lastly, wherever in the game that the player scores points, instead of doing the usual “score = score + ", do this: points = points +