-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 5
Game Actions Examined
A game action consists of 8 numbers:
- VerbNoun: 150*verb+noun
- Condition: 5 repeats of condition+20*value
- Action12: 150*action1+action2
- Action34: 150*action3+action4
This number determines the Action Type, and the verb and noun values derived from the VerbNoun number as follows:
verb = VerbNoun / 150
noun = VerbNoun % 150
Action Types
- Player driven - verb > 0, text entered by the player triggers an action. The Verb number corresponds to an entry in the verb list and the Noun number corresponds to an item in the Noun list. These values correspond to the main word, not a synonym.
- Game driven - verb == 0, an action occurs following a player action. The noun determines the probabilty of the action occuring - a value of 0 or 100 indicates it will occur every turn, or will occur if noun < rnd(100).
For example, in the Scott Adams game Adventure Land:
- Action 0 *FISH ESCAPE*\ has a NounVerb value of 75 meaning Verb:0 Noun:75, so it a probability action.
- Action 71 has a noun verb value of 8604, which means Verb:57 and Noun:54, that correspond to the verb and noun DAM and LAV, respectively.
Five numbers which are broken into condition and argument as follows:
ConditionNumber = Condition % 20
ConditionArgument = Condition / 20
If the condition number is between 1 and 20, then it corresponds to an item in the conditions list on the previous page. If the condition argument > 0 then it is an argument for the condition. Not all conditions have arguments.
If the condition number == 0, and the ConditionArgument > 0 then this value is used an Action Argument.
Two numbers which correspond to a pair of arguments
Action1 = Action12 / 150
Action2 = Action12 % 150
Action3 = Action34 / 150
Action4 = Action34 % 150
Arguments for actions are stored in the 5 condition numbers, if that condition is not used i.e. ConditionNumber == 0.
For example, action 1 in the Scott Adams game Adventure Land contains the following Condition/Actions:
161 386 160 200 0 17612 0
The first 5 numbers, conditions, break down as follows:
| Condition Number | Condition | Condition Arg | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 161 | 1 | 8 | |
| 386 | 6 | 19 | |
| 160 | 0 | 8 | No condition, used as action argument |
| 200 | 0 | 10 | No condition, used as action argument |
| 0 | 0 | 0 |
The last 2 numbers, actions, break down as follows:
| Action Number | Action1 | Action2 |
|---|---|---|
| 17612 | 117 | 62 |
| 0 | 0 |
From the list of actions on Game File Definition, we can see that the first action 117 is to "Print action 66" and that the second 62 is "Item put in room", therefore 8 is the item and 10 is the room.
An apparent drawback to this now emerges: having many conditions that require arguments will reduce the number of arguments available to actions. However there exists a way around by continuing actions.
There exists a special action, number 73, that when used allows actions that follow that have a NounVerb value of 0 to be executed as well.
For example, action 157 of Adventure Land makes use of action 73 when the player drops water. The first account executes the drop water action and the second checks to see if the *fire stone* is present in the room and if it is performs more actions.
Data Format
Game Information