Inform 7 – GL02 bug with First time / Only construct

I’ve been upgrading my WIPs to the new version of Inform and for the most part things have been going smoothly.  Once a few extensions were updated and I changed the way I was doing a few things (which were deprecated anyways), they worked pretty well.  After almost two weeks, I noticed somethings wasn’t correct with one description I had in some code like below.

The description of myObject is "[first time]Say this the first time only.[only] Rest of text that will print every time."

When examining the object, it never printed the text within the first time first time construct. After some digging and talking to a few people, I find that this has been reported.

0001291: “first time / only” is not shielded by say__comp

The work around for now is to use something like the following:

The description of myObject is "[one of]Say this the first time only.[or][stopping] Rest of text that will print every time."

May 2014 – Update

Yes, it’s been a bit since I’ve posted but a lot has been going on since last time, so with out further ado, let me dive right in.

Last time, I talked about entering Shufflecomp…..and I managed to do just that.  I can’t talk much about my entry as we’re still in the anonymous time period, but I can say that I had fun creating my entry…I also got a ton of feedback from my beta testers (mostly from my private IF groups), whom I greatly respect their work and their advice.  I was excited about some that I’ve been in contact with and I can say I’ve learned a ton in the process. I’ve also had the opportunity to be a tester for some of those same people that tested mine.  Again what a joy to be a part of something written by some of these people I respect greatly.

As soon as that was submitted, IntroComp was announced.  I had completely forgotten about it, but since I’m in the authoring mood, I’ve started working on an idea that has been percolating in my head for a few months that might fit the bill for this contest.  I think it’s a fun little game that can be expanded into a larger game, but really lends itself well to being built in pieces which will work nicely within the spirit of IntroComp.  Work has been started and moving right along there.

Looking further ahead, I’ve got two WIPs that are far enough along that I could perhaps push over the summer and get one ready for IFComp.  Will I manage to do that, not sure yet, nor ready to commit to that, but it is always a possibility.

Other big news is of course the release of the latest Inform 7 (GL02).  While I held off a few days after release to make sure I could get my ShuffleComp entry out, I’ve been working with it for about a week and I can say I really like it.  I haven’t had the opportunity to dive into a lot of the new features yet, but I can see the improvements made will be well received.  After an initial round of, “Oh crap, none of my stuff compiles and I’m not sure why,” I’ve gotten all my WIPs working just fine with a few minor adjustments.  And once I had those adjustments made, they were really easy to propagate to my other works and extensions that I use.  I’m still looking forward to some of the UI improvements that are in the Mac version and haven’t been moved to Windows yet, but they will come soon enough.

I’ve got some article ideas that I still want to write, just have to make time to do so.  I’m also developing plans to present to our local school district to try and introduce programming to youngsters.  One of the ways I’m working on is to introduce them to IF using Inform 7 as a fun way to think logically while planning, take the plan and create something all the while telling an interesting story.  I know I’m not the first to have done this, but it’s been an interesting thought process to come up with creative ways to reach the kids.

Well that’s all for now.  As always, Go North my friends.