STAC Programming 

                  by Tony Woolcock

It is well known that one of the main problems to overcome when
writing a text-based  adventure is catering for all possible
inputs from the player. It is of course impossible to anticipate
all of a player's commands and at times the computer will respond
with "You can't" or "Pardon?" However the game can be made more
attractive by the use of several messages with the same meaning.

I have included a couple of simple routines that can be merged
into your own adventure by the command MERGE in the disk menu.
SECTIONS.SCS will replace special conditions 11 and 12 and
SECTIONS.SCM will add messages 6500-6525  ***WARNING*** Merging
will overwrite messages numbered between 6500 and 6525. All other
message numbers will not be affected.

Now, when a response cannot be found, the game will return one of
5 messages, making the game less of a bore.
One of the earliest adventure that I played was on my humble
spectrum. It was before I knew anything about adventures and I
can recall entering HELP for a bit of a laugh. In my ignorance
I had no idea that the game would respond to such a command but
respond it did. I remember being tickled pink by the game's
reply, "YOU NEED IT MATE!" It was of no help but amusing.

Of course such a response is simple to program within STAC. A low
priority line such as IF VERB "HELP" THEN MESSAGE RANDOM 5 + 6499
is all that is required. The game will recall messages from 6500
to 6505 to respond to the input HELP. (Don't forget to add HELP to
the verb list). I have included 5 such silly messages in
SECTIONS.SCM.

@~To use Tony's routines in your own game, you will find the two
@~files SECTIONS.SCM and SECTIONS.SCS on this disk. Either boot up
@~the computer using another disk then insert this one or use
@~CONTROL-C to get back to desktop.
@~If YOU have a useful routine to share with your fellow readers,
@~why not send it in?