Re: [Tads3] Hints Suggestion

["Mike Roberts" <mjr_@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

"Eric Eve" <eric.eve@harris-manchester.oxford.ac.uk> wrote:
> The closeWhenTrue and openWhenTrue conditions on Goals have proved 
> extremely
> valuable, but I have found myself writing so many along the lines of
> openWhenTrue = (crown.isKnown) or closeWhenTrue = (crown.moved) that I've
> finally invented my own openWhenKnown, closeWhenKnown, openWhenMoved and
> closeWhenMoved properties for Goal; this may just be due to the
> eccentricities of my particular game, but I wonder if such properties would
> be widely enough used to be worth adding to the library.
The when-known properties definitely seem worthwhile to add.  I'm not sure 
if when-moved will come up so often, but I'd be happy to add it if other 
people think it's worth adding - any opinions?

Would it be useful to add openWhen and closeWhen methods that encapsulate 
the full set of openWhenXxx checks?  These would be almost the same as 
openWhenTrue/closeWhenTrue, but the idea here is that they're specifically 
for the game's use in 'modify Goal' rather than something you'd define per 
instance.  This would make it a lot easier for a game to add something like 
openWhenMoved when that came up a lot in a specific game, because you'd be 
able to add the condition with a simple 'modify':

modify Goal
 openWhenMoved = nil
 openWhen = (inherited || (openWhenMoved != nil && openWhenMoved.moved))
;

This would make for a clean place to plug in new special-purpose conditions 
with 'modify'.  The reason to have this in addition to openWhenTrue is that 
it leaves openWhenTrue for per-instance use, so that instances don't have to 
worry about inheriting a base class condition when defining that.

If we added openWhen, would it reduce the need for something as seemingly 
specialized as openWhenMoved?  (I still think openWhenKnown would be widely 
enough used to add it to the library, though, even with this change.)

--Mike

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