Chapter 9 - Prepare the Text for the Point and Click Defaults

And to think that prior to Chapter 3 of this tutorial, you may have never before made use of any text resources, but now and when we actually get to coding the rooms, they are going to become your very best friends.

Text Resources for the Inventory

Now, I realize that without actually seeing the code that is going to be accessing this resource, you might not believe that we are actually going to use them, trust me on this one, I am pretty sure that you will. If not, you can always come in later and change these to something else if you don't like what I have everything set up to do. This text resource is going to handle most of the default clicks, or clicks on things that aren't handled by the room's scripts, mainly clicks on ego help, and whatnot.

Open up a new text resource and let's begin with the help statements.

Welcome to %s . A point and click adventure.
To control your characters interactions, select the desired action from the action menu. Walk, talk, look, get are all represented by icons and clicking on one will change your cursor accordingly.
To use an inventory item, you must first open the inventory screen and select it from the items you are carrying. Clicking on the backpack icon will open the inventory screen.
The system menu allows you to save, load, restart, quit, or change your speed and volume settings. You can reach the system screen by clicking on the center blue sphere of the menu graphic.
To return the menu to actions simply click the smaller blue sphere to the left of the system menu option.
Hope this has been helpful, enjoy playing %s!

Just to make sure, you have plenty of room to add in more help messages if you feel you need them, we are going to go ahead and add in a few empty lines just so you won't have to rearrange things in the future. The next line that we are actually going to start using is going to be line 10, so if you want, go ahead and just enter a space or whatever in lines 6 through 9 just in case.

Now, let's go ahead and add in a few lines for random "action" clicks on the ego.

What a handsome fellow!
Vanity is never an attractive trait.
That's strange, I don't remember ever putting these clothes on.
Talking to yourself has rarely ever been considered a good sign.
Do you really think that you would find yourself that interesting?
"Hi there me, How am I doing?"
You sir, are no Michael Jackson, keep your hands off yourself.
When I think about you I touch myself.
You quickly adjust your clothes. After all who knows, there may be some fly young hotties in the next room.
Whatever you are trying to do to yourself, knock it off
I'm not really sure if I would want to use that on myself.
Oh yeah, stick it my ear. That's a good idea.
Your brilliant use for that in this way clearly illustrates that you are in a league of your own. So much so, that I am not even going to allow it, try something else.
I am not even sure how I could use that there.
Hmm, interesting idea... but I think we would need a permit.

That takes care of all of the clicks on the ego and random item clicks in room, I have the point and click script set up to randomly pick from three possible responses for each action, look, talk, hand, items. Now, we need to handle the texts for the "system" options, basically the statements that are printed along with the quit and restart dialogs.

Are you serious? You really want to start all the way back at the beginning again?
Do you really want to quit?

That is all we need out of this text resource for the tutorial, save this as number 950.

Now, While we are creating texts, let's go ahead and start off with Room 1's text resource. As the point and click script is currently written, you will need a separate text resource for each room. The room number should correspond to the text resource number, so room 1 will require text resource 1.

The default clicks handled by the point and click script require that line 0, 1, and 2, be set up as the rooms default clicks (or clicks on stuff that is not handled in the rooms script specifically) as the following actions look, talk, and get.

So for instance, clicking on nothing with the look cursor will print text resource line 0, the general description of the room.

Open up another new text resource and enter this stuff.

You find yourself standing in the great white void of room 1's nothingness.
Yelling into the void, you are greeted with an eerie silence, if only there was someone here to talk to.
Reaching out, you find, as many philosopher's have over the centuries, just how hard it is to grasp true nothingness.

Since this resource is going to be used for room 1, save it as resource number 1.

All right, that is that, we now have two text resources for the point and click room. Remember 950 holds all of the texts which are needed for the point and click menu itself, while text resource 1 holds all of the texts for room 1 specifically. As you add in more rooms, room 2 will try to access text resource 2 and so on.

That sums up the creation of the Point and Click Text resources!

< Previous: Chapter 8 - Ordering the Additional Cursors Next: Chapter 10 - Point and Click Menu Views >

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