MarvinTheRobot
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Downloaded 370 times.
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From: Unspecified

Hi everyone,

i'm a college student and because i love DROD and also because i have an awful lot of spare time i set myself on making a new drod-inspired game.

i wont say too much about it because i dont to raise any expectations about it. but because i will probably ask alot of questions about the code ( ), i can tell you that i will have to change alot of stuff to meet the requirements of my game-design. included is also a screenshot of my first effect, if you pay close attention you may be able to guess what i am trying to do...

i started working on this a week ago, took me 2 days to compile the Caravel code , then another couple to roughly figure out the structure of the app. the CEffect class and its usage was my first step (though i had to make the swordsman invincible to test my first effect). i also added a couple of CueEvents and i am now working on the CSwordsman and CMonster classes.

so, here it is, my first question! hooray!
what i want is to call an update routine i wrote for the swordsman class (i added various properties to the swordsman that can change during the game), and it should be called, say, when a monster dies. now, im not sure if im missing some vital piece of information about object-oriented programming, but when i try to call
this->pCurrentGame->swordsman.Update() from the Monster::OnStabbed() routine the compiler complains about pCurrentGame being defined as a const CCurrentGame * member-object of CMonster. So i guess i should handle that using the CueEvents interface you so cleverly designed. so i do a find-in-files of CID_MonsterDiedFromStab and found references in CGameScreen:rocessCueEventsBeforeRoomDraw() (where i also call my new effect) and in CCurrentGame:rocessUnansweredQuestions(). ironically enough, that brings anotherquestion: what are the MMT_YESNO and MMT_OK messages? and my first question: where would then be the best place to call that update routine from CSwordsman i mentioned?

thanks in advance for your help, and congratulations on having made one of the best games i ever played.

[Edited by MarvinTheRobot on 01-03-2004 at 12:26 AM GMT: forgot to attach screenshot...]

[Edited by MarvinTheRobot on 01-18-2004 at 12:23 AM GMT: changed the thread icon.]

____________________________
Marvin

"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair." - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

ErikH2000
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MarvinTheRobot wrote:
i'm a college student and because i love DROD and also because i have an awful lot of spare time i set myself on making a new drod-inspired game.

Cool, another college student frittering away his precious youth on DROD! This is what we love to see.

included is also a screenshot of my first effect, if you pay close attention you may be able to guess what i am trying to do...

Screenshot appears to be missing from your post.

i started working on this a week ago, took me 2 days to compile the Caravel code ,

Understandable--all those library dependencies are hard to get through.

then another couple to roughly figure out the structure of the app. the CEffect class and its usage was my first step (though i had to make the swordsman invincible to test my first effect). i also added a couple of CueEvents and i am now working on the CSwordsman and CMonster classes.

Sounds like you've learned a lot in a short time.

what i want is to call an update routine i wrote for the swordsman class (i added various properties to the swordsman that can change during the game), and it should be called, say, when a monster dies. now, im not sure if im missing some vital piece of information about object-oriented programming, but when i try to call
this->pCurrentGame->swordsman.Update() from the Monster::OnStabbed() routine the compiler complains about pCurrentGame being defined as a const CCurrentGame * member-object of CMonster.

Yeah, this is to enforce a certain level of encapsulation. When you call some monster's method, it is good to know that the code in that method will only affect that particular monster. Other changes should be signalled by cue events returned from the monster methods (like you figured out). And the monster processing routine or one of it's callees should perform the changes. This (probably) helps us keep the logic straight, since there is getting to be a tremendous amount of interactions between different game elements.

So i guess i should handle that using the CueEvents interface you so cleverly designed. so i do a find-in-files of CID_MonsterDiedFromStab and found references in CGameScreen :: ProcessCueEventsBeforeRoomDraw() (where i also call my new effect) and in CCurrentGame :: ProcessUnansweredQuestions(). ironically enough, that brings anotherquestion: what are the MMT_YESNO and MMT_OK messages?

These are used for when a monster asks a question or tells you something. At this point, the only example of this is the 'Neather on the last level. The front end must handle monster messages by bringing up a dialog. In the case of MMT_YESNO, the user may choose yes or no, and the front end will send a yes or no command back to CCurrentGame :: ProcessCommand(). So when CCurrentGame returns an MMT_YESNO back to the front end, it will wait for a CMD_Yes or CMD_No on the next command.

and my first question: where would then be the best place to call that update routine from CSwordsman i mentioned?

It sounds like you can check for CID_MonsterDiedFromStab inside of CCurrentGame:rocessMonsters() and call swordsman->Update() in response to it.

Also, you probably weren't going to, but please don't put any game logic code in your effects. It will break saved games and create limitations to what you can do with the code later.

Feel free to ask more questions. A few of these things might be a little off because I'm going from memory.

-Erik

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Oneiromancer
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Now that the screenshot's been added...are you trying to do some kind of points system or something? I see -7, and two -12's...I think, it's hard to tell.

Edit: oh, and always good to see another person who actaully gets "42" jokes around here.

Game on,

[Edited by Oneiromancer on 01-03-2004 at 12:42 AM GMT]

____________________________
"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

MarvinTheRobot
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Thanks for the fast reply!

These are used for when a monster asks a question or tells you something. At this point, the only example of this is the 'Neather on the last level.

Right, now i see why i didnt get that... i'm still in level 18!

It sounds like you can check for CID_MonsterDiedFromStab inside of CCurrentGame:rocessMonsters() and call swordsman->Update() in response to it.

Thanks, that seems to be it.

Also, you probably weren't going to, but please don't put any game logic code in your effects. It will break saved games and create limitations to what you can do with the code later.

I created 3 classes for the effect shown on the picture:
CTextEffect implements a DrawText() funtion to draw some semi-transparent text at a given position.
CFadingTextEffect : CTextEffect implements a DrawFadingText() function to, as the name implies, fade-in / fade-out the text.
and a third class that inherits from CFadingTextEffect wich is the only to implement a Draw() function that calls DrawFadingText().
These classes only receive the text, font, alpha and position where the text should be drawn.
However i considered passing args like CMonster*, CSwordsman* and such to future effects to perform effect calculations. Is that considered game logic?

from oneiromancer:

Now that the screenshot's been added...are you trying to do some kind of points system or something? I see -7, and two -12's...I think, it's hard to tell.

Hint: Take a look at the effects files in the background.

____________________________
Marvin

"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair." - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

ErikH2000
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MarvinTheRobot wrote:
However i considered passing args like CMonster*, CSwordsman* and such to future effects to perform effect calculations. Is that considered game logic?

That won't cause any serious problems if you treat these as read-only and don't do things like, for example, move a monster to a new square when an effect completes. We've taken a lot of pains to separate the front-end UI from the backend game logic, and in my opinion, it's been worth it. TLK's DROD3D uses the same backend code as Caravel DROD, for example. And we store thousands of saved games with impunity, because we can just remember the moves that generate a game state and play them back silently to reach that position. I didn't want you to miss out on the same benefits by breaking the separation, so that's what the warning is about, but it's no big deal to me if you want to do it a different way.

This gets more into style, but I would also recommend to keep pointers to game objects (CMonster *, CSwordsman *, CCurrentGame *, etc.) out of the effects as well, even if they are read-only. I think it is better to determine what the effect should do at the time you create it, and not require it to have knowledge of game elements. For example, your effect for showing fading text might be written to show any text that you pass to it in the constructor (GOOD) or it could be written to call a CMonster method like CMonster::GetLastDamageStat() (BAD). The first way is preferable because it makes the effect easier to reuse in other situations, but more importantly CFadingTextEffect no longer depends on CMonster to be written a certain way for it to work. It occurs to me that we've broken this rule with at least one of our CEffect-derived classes, so I understand that at times you just want to pass game elements and be done with it.

Sorry for the CS lecture. I'm sure you've got your own ideas on coding style. I'm not going to be a zealot about it.

-Erik

____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
dev journals | twitch stream | youtube archive (NSFW)

MarvinTheRobot
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And we store thousands of saved games with impunity, because we can just remember the moves that generate a game state and play them back silently to reach that position

Makes perfect sense. I get it.


____________________________
Marvin

"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair." - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

MarvinTheRobot
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File: screenshot2.jpg (77.7 KB)
Downloaded 162 times.
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From: Unspecified

Hey again

i'm having tremendous fun with this DROD code. i'm coding like a maniac, adding features everywhere i can think of! things are comming smoothely and at a fast pace, thanks to the incredible code you guys written. i can see why maintaining strict encapsulation has its benefits.

however i bring another question: i was fiddling with the font manager code and i dont seem to understand how that outline stuff works for the fonts? it seems that the background and ouline color interfere with each other in a peculiar way... i searched the SDL_ttf docs for it but found no relevant information. another thing i noticed was that if i set TTF_STYLE_BOLD to a loaded font (manually, using the SDL_ttf API, since i dont think you implemented it) it applies to all the loaded fonts wich refer the same ttf file. however i will peek more carefully through the FontManager code to see if it isnt after all my mistake.

i'm so happy with this that i'm posting a screenshot of my late night work on the title screen (its incredible what one can do with photoshop... and i suck at it).

____________________________
Marvin

"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair." - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

agaricus5
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This really is looking to be like an RPG, except DROD style!

It's a cool idea. I think we'd all be interested to see how this comes along.

Also, if monsters have hitpoints, does this mean that there will be alternative (more powerful) weapons in the game?

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MarvinTheRobot
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This really is looking to be like an RPG, except DROD style!

I dont want to give too much away because of at least two reasons: 1. im not too sure how long will this programming spree will last (i may lose interest at some point) and 2. im definitetly not sure if if it will work, in a game point of view. i mean DROD is puzzle. im not sure if monsters with hit-points will work to the best effect. however i definitely want to try it out!

Also, if monsters have hitpoints, does this mean that there will be alternative (more powerful) weapons in the game?

I intend to add weapons, fantasy-like, like all types of swords, axes, maces, even bows and crossbows. i even have this idead about... oh nevermind...

thanks for the support though, if i ever get to an advanced stage of development im really counting on feedback from the forum for ideas/ plot or anything.

____________________________
Marvin

"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair." - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

ErikH2000
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MarvinTheRobot wrote:
i'm having tremendous fun with this DROD code. i'm coding like a maniac, adding features everywhere i can think of! things are comming smoothely and at a fast pace, thanks to the incredible code you guys written. i can see why maintaining strict encapsulation has its benefits.

You got the fever, man! It's good stuff unless combined with methamphetamines.

however i bring another question: i was fiddling with the font manager code and i dont seem to understand how that outline stuff works for the fonts? it seems that the background and ouline color interfere with each other in a peculiar way... i searched the SDL_ttf docs for it but found no relevant information.

The outline stuff is all in the font manager--SDL_ttf doesn't do any of it. I think there is just some routine in the font manager that draws an outline around the font returned by SDL_ttf.

another thing i noticed was that if i set TTF_STYLE_BOLD to a loaded font (manually, using the SDL_ttf API, since i dont think you implemented it) it applies to all the loaded fonts wich refer the same ttf file. however i will peek more carefully through the FontManager code to see if it isnt after all my mistake.

The thing you should probably do there is add a bold flag to the loadedfont class (or was it a struct?). Have the font manager call SDL_ttf to set boldness depending on the loadedfont flag. Look for the place where it is already doing this for other font attributes (sorry, can't open up the DROD project right now to be more specific). The other members of the loadedfont class, like color of font and background color are in one place used to set up SDL_ttf in preparation for rendering a font. Find that place, and add the same sort of code to set boldness. Then you will have boldness set per-"DROD font" instead of per-TTF file.

i'm so happy with this that i'm posting a screenshot of my late night work on the title screen (its incredible what one can do with photoshop... and i suck at it).

Very nice. Don't feel obligated to keep the Caravel box. You are making your own thing here.

-Erik

____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
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DiMono
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Marvin, I think I can say with 100% certainty that you'll have dozens of eager playtesters waiting here for you whenever you have something you're comfortable releasing to us.

I have a suggestion for you not related (directly) to the code you're writing:

Write down all the features you want to include, and prioritize them. This has three effects: first, it'll make sure you don't forget anything, as everyone tends to do at some point. Secondly, if you decide you've had your fun and want to stop soon, you can drop the items from the bottom and still have basically what you wanted. Finally, it means that if you share your list and your code then others can pick up where you left off, and help finish your game.

You have my full support, Marvin, and I'm sure you have that of everyone else here too.

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The_Red_Hawk
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I'm really looking forward to it too. How different is it going to be from the current DROD?

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Slashing, whirling, diving, twirling,
Snapping, turning, rising, swirling,
Screeching, flipping, gliding, sliding,
The red hawk's dance of death.

.....the king of the skies.....

MarvinTheRobot
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i'm now in need of sound effects for the game. i didnt think so many of them would be needed. i found this site http://www.a1freesoundeffects.com/ and found some nice sounds for 'sword miss' and even managed to get some 'beethro hit' sounds choping a choke sound they had.

any help would be apreciated, if you happen to know a web-site with sounds or have a nice sample i could use please email me (and if you do please say so in the forum as i get 50+ spam every day...). also erik if you have some old sounds you didnt use is it possible for me to have them?

Edit: an example would be a roach being harmed but not killed

cheers,

[Edited by MarvinTheRobot on 01-05-2004 at 12:14 AM GMT]

____________________________
Marvin

"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair." - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

ErikH2000
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I'm not sure what country you are in, but in the US, the budget rack at stores that sell software is a good place to look. You can probably find 2 or 3 CDs full of thousands of effects, all of them legally in the clear for any use, for $5 or $10 apiece.

Animal sounds are a good source for monster noises after you do things to make them sound a different, like change their pitch or reverse them. Something tells me that if you sped up a pig squealing, you'd have your roach sound. The trial version of CoolEdit ( www.syntrillium.com, I believe) is semi-crippled but you can still get a lot of use out of it for editing samples.

If you want to be a little more ambitious. Spend about $25 to pick up an okay microphone, and record your own samples. It's a lot of fun, and you'll be surprised what you come up with recording everyday sounds and editing them into something new. Half of the sounds in DROD are from a four hour recording session in my basement. The sound of a roach dieing comes from dropping an aluminum curtain rod on its end. The sound of a game being saved comes from applying pressure to the side of a metal tube connected to a furnace. The drums in some of the songs are me kicking the side of a desk really hard. Recording your own samples is a blast! I heartily recommend it.

You asked about using samples that I haven't used. Most all of them are in this public domain SoundFont. If you can locate the right software for editing soundfonts, you should be able to extract individual samples for it. Look for "Vienna" on Creative Lab's site.

Please, don't go to one of those websites that has a million samples on it, but doesn't specifically say they are public domain or licensed for your use. If it doesn't say this, then some portion of the samples there are almost certainly ripoff material, and you'll be stealing somebody else's work. It's just a little bit harder to do everything legit and get your samples with the legal right to use them.

-Erik

____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
dev journals | twitch stream | youtube archive (NSFW)

MarvinTheRobot
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thanks for the feedback on the sound effects.

i now have almost all the code roughly figured out and am *almost* ready to start adding content (other than graphical and sound effects). changing monster behaviour is fun, however in the midst of blind enthusiasm i forgot about what i knew was comming up... i speak of none other than the Db* hell. i almost got a heart attack just browsing some of the files. is there any advice you can give me on those, or where i should start? im already browsing the metakit documentation to see if i can figure any of this out.

p.s. sorry if im being a pain-in-the-...

____________________________
Marvin

"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair." - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

Schik
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MarvinTheRobot wrote:
i now have almost all the code roughly figured out and am *almost* ready to start adding content (other than graphical and sound effects). changing monster behaviour is fun, however in the midst of blind enthusiasm i forgot about what i knew was comming up... i speak of none other than the Db* hell. i almost got a heart attack just browsing some of the files. is there any advice you can give me on those, or where i should start? im already browsing the metakit documentation to see if i can figure any of this out.

I had the same reaction as you when I first saw the database code. I still do, for the most part.

The layout of the database is defined in DRODLib/DBProps.h. I recently added a new viewdef for DROD1.7, so it can't be THAT hard. If you're looking at adding something simple, then doing it by looking at existing code is feasible, but if you want to do anything too complex, I'd definitely suggest reading the docs thoroughly.

Basically, if it's a c4_ViewProp, it's a subtable. If it's a c4_IntProp or c4_BytesProp, it's a field. The things in the DEFTDEF() macros are the tables - the structure should be pretty obvious by looking at it.

Each table has an ID field - DemoID, HoldID, etc. There's a table "IncrementedIDs" that keeps track of the next ID for each table. These need to be updated when you add a new entry to any table.

One big reason it feels so weird to actually use the database (for me) is that you refer to them in what seems like a backward order. If you want to know an orb's X,Y position in a room you would refer to p_X(OrbsView[orbId]) and p_Y(OrbsView[orbId]).

Which brings me to a related oddity - there are lots of things that have X,Y coordinates saved. Orbs, monsters, scrolls, Levels, etc. To reference the X and Y coordinates of ANY of them, you use p_X and p_Y, just with different Views passed in. It's hard to get used to.

p.s. sorry if im being a pain-in-the-...

You're not. Please ask as many questions as you need - you're obviously doing pretty darn well on your own so far. And if it helps you make a DROD-derived game, I'm sure any of us will be willing to help

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The_Red_Hawk
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Just so long as it doesn't violate Erik's copyright.

____________________________
Slashing, whirling, diving, twirling,
Snapping, turning, rising, swirling,
Screeching, flipping, gliding, sliding,
The red hawk's dance of death.

.....the king of the skies.....

MarvinTheRobot
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I was tired of coding so i started writing the introduction for the game. please be aware that english is my 3rd language (after portuguese and french) so if you find any mispelling or bad grammar please (please) correct it!

im a big fan of douglas adams so i 'borrowed' his writting style

any comments/suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Drod Quest (prototype title)

" Far out, in the uncharted backwaters of a candy-coloured castle dungeon, lies a small, unregarded, yellow bug. Well, almost unregarded as, orbiting this, at a distance of roughly 10 feet, is a blue-green bug-exterminator named Beethro.

You see, Beethro has a job. His job is to exterminate bugs that are about 2,15378 times his size, using a sword that is exactly his size, and given that his size is about 2,57221 times the size of a well-constituted human being, the smallish bug worries him.

'Something is amiss.', he worries.

The smallish bug however, is worried by something else. Something almost, but not completely, unlike him. Something roughly 10,75137 times bigger than the circling figure that is starting, lets face it, to annoy him. The figure is, however, totaly oblivious to this, and the other, fact.


Meanwhile, on the surface, things were relatively normal. At least as normal as they could be when a huge army of unusualy large cockroaches are having lunch-break at the local population.

This was perfectly normal, and nothing to be worried about, as many other blood-thirsty entities usualy had lunch-breaks at the local population, namely termites, lizards, bloodworms and tourists. There was even a third type of entity currently having lunch-break at the local population, and at about anything else in fact. Its name was Dugan, and it was often prefixed with the word 'King', and most often postfixed with the words 'The Fat Lard' or 'The Big Chicken'.

It is interesting to note that one day, long ago, King Dugan The Big Fat Chicken Lard, upon glancing one of the previously mentioned giant roaches, obsessed with the idea of a big feast, had 2/3 of his personal guard killed while trying to slay the suculent insect, and also caused the death by exaustion of 3.753 of his personal 'chefs' (wich accounted for roughly 1/10 of his cuisine personnel), who where unable to prepare the 273 gallons of sauce 'vinegrette' required to season the suculent animal. It is even more interesting to note that the feast in question got away with minor bruising. "


____________________________
Marvin

"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair." - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

The_Red_Hawk
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What does unregarded mean?

I don't really understand this.

____________________________
Slashing, whirling, diving, twirling,
Snapping, turning, rising, swirling,
Screeching, flipping, gliding, sliding,
The red hawk's dance of death.

.....the king of the skies.....

ErikH2000
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The_Red_Hawk wrote:
Just so long as it doesn't violate Erik's copyright.

Nothing to worry about there. Art and other media released with DROD software so far is public domain. Source code is licensed under Mozilla Public License.

-Erik

____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
dev journals | twitch stream | youtube archive (NSFW)

The_Red_Hawk
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OK, good.

____________________________
Slashing, whirling, diving, twirling,
Snapping, turning, rising, swirling,
Screeching, flipping, gliding, sliding,
The red hawk's dance of death.

.....the king of the skies.....

MarvinTheRobot
Level: Delver
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What does unregarded mean?

unregarded means not cared about.

____________________________
Marvin

"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair." - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

The_Red_Hawk
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Maybe there could be a better word.

____________________________
Slashing, whirling, diving, twirling,
Snapping, turning, rising, swirling,
Screeching, flipping, gliding, sliding,
The red hawk's dance of death.

.....the king of the skies.....

Scott
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Possibly but then it wouldn't be Douglas Adams.

The_Red_Hawk
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All right.....

Succulent has two "c"s, and...

How does a dungeon have "backwaters"?

____________________________
Slashing, whirling, diving, twirling,
Snapping, turning, rising, swirling,
Screeching, flipping, gliding, sliding,
The red hawk's dance of death.

.....the king of the skies.....

Oneiromancer
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Registered: 03-29-2003
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Listen, Hawk, it's a tribute to Douglas Adams, and you obviously aren't getting the joke, so do everyone a favor and go down to your local library and borrow The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. If you don't think it's funny...then I'm sorry, you just aren't human.

Game on,

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"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

DiMono
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1181
Registered: 09-13-2003
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Yeah, Hawk, so long, and thanks for all the fish.

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Deploy the... I think it's a yellow button... it's usually flashing... it makes the engines go... WHOOSH!

The_Red_Hawk
Level: Smitemaster
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I was referring to the "intro", not the Douglas Adams part.

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Slashing, whirling, diving, twirling,
Snapping, turning, rising, swirling,
Screeching, flipping, gliding, sliding,
The red hawk's dance of death.

.....the king of the skies.....

agaricus5
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 1838
Registered: 02-04-2003
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MarvinTheRobot wrote:
I was tired of coding so i started writing the introduction for the game. please be aware that english is my 3rd language (after portuguese and french) so if you find any mispelling or bad grammar please (please) correct it!

im a big fan of douglas adams so i 'borrowed' his writting style

any comments/suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Drod Quest (prototype title)

" Far out, in the uncharted backwaters of a candy-coloured castle dungeon, lies a small, unregarded, yellow bug. Well, almost unregarded as, orbiting this, at a distance of roughly 10 feet, is a blue-green bug-exterminator named Beethro.

You see, Beethro has a job. His job is to exterminate bugs that are about 2,15378 times his size, using a sword that is exactly his size, and given that his size is about 2,57221 times the size of a well-constituted human being, the smallish bug worries him.

'Something is amiss.', he worries.

The smallish bug however, is worried by something else. Something almost, but not completely, unlike him. Something roughly 10,75137 times bigger than the circling figure that is starting, lets face it, to annoy him. The figure is, however, totaly oblivious to this, and the other, fact.


Meanwhile, on the surface, things were relatively normal. At least as normal as they could be when a huge army of unusualy large cockroaches are having lunch-break at the local population.

This was perfectly normal, and nothing to be worried about, as many other blood-thirsty entities usualy had lunch-breaks at the local population, namely termites, lizards, bloodworms and tourists. There was even a third type of entity currently having lunch-break at the local population, and at about anything else in fact. Its name was Dugan, and it was often prefixed with the word 'King', and most often postfixed with the words 'The Fat Lard' or 'The Big Chicken'.

It is interesting to note that one day, long ago, King Dugan The Big Fat Chicken Lard, upon glancing one of the previously mentioned giant roaches, obsessed with the idea of a big feast, had 2/3 of his personal guard killed while trying to slay the suculent insect, and also caused the death by exaustion of 3.753 of his personal 'chefs' (wich accounted for roughly 1/10 of his cuisine personnel), who where unable to prepare the 273 gallons of sauce 'vinegrette' required to season the suculent animal. It is even more interesting to note that the feast in question got away with minor bruising. "

Okay. I can see a small problem. In French, the rule is use commas to separate decimals and full stops for separating powers of to in multiples of 3, so in French 1303402 1/5 should be written:

1.303.402,2

Right?

In English, it's unfortunately the other way round, so the number above is actually written:

1,303,402.2

Commas are used where full stops are in French, and a decimal point is used instead of a comma.

[Edited by agaricus5 on 01-06-2004 at 10:46 PM GMT]

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Resident Medic/Mycologist

MarvinTheRobot
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 44
Registered: 01-02-2004
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right, thanks forgot about that.

and another question.

"...when a huge army of unusualy large cockroaches are having lunch-break at the local population. "

noone mentioned it, but im not sure this sentence sounds right. is it ok or should it read "...when a huge army of unusualy large cockroaches are having the local population for lunch-break." instead?


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Marvin

"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair." - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy