Alien Invasion Part 23

Example 439

★

Keeping a preference file that could be loaded by any game in a series.

Suppose that we have a series of games each of which allows the player to select a puzzle difficulty level. When the player plays a new game in the series, we want him to start out by default with the same difficulty level he faced earlier on, so we store this information in a small preferences file, as follows:

Play/modify in Borogove

Play in Quixe

"Alien Invasion Part 23"

A difficulty is a kind of value. The difficulties are easy, moderate, hard, and fiendish.

Understand "use [difficulty] puzzles" as selecting difficulty. Selecting difficulty is an action out of world, applying to one difficulty.

Carry out selecting difficulty:

choose row 1 in the Table of Preference Settings;

now challenge level entry is difficulty understood;

say "Puzzles will be [challenge level entry] from now on."

The File of Preferences is called "prefs".

When play begins:

if File of Preferences exists:

read File of Preferences into the Table of Preference Settings;

choose row 1 in the Table of Preference Settings;

say "(The current puzzle difficulty is set to [challenge level entry].)"

Check quitting the game:

write File of Preferences from the Table of Preference Settings.

Table of Preference Settings

challenge level

easy

The Sewer Junction is a room.

Our preference file is restricted to a single option here for simplicity's sake, but we could keep track of more information -- whether the player preferred verbose or brief room descriptions, screen configurations, and so on.

If we were disposed to be somewhat crueler, we could use a similar method to make the player finish each episode of the series in order to "unlock" the next. All we would need to do is store a numerical password in our preferences file when the player finished a given level; the next level would check, say, the Table of Completed Levels for that password, and refuse to play unless the right number were present.