Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!aplcen!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!apple!apple.com!chewy From: chewy@apple.com (Paul Snively) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.games Subject: Re: What is World Builder? Message-ID: <8539@goofy.Apple.COM> Date: 5 Jun 90 17:20:53 GMT Sender: usenet@Apple.COM Organization: Apple Computer, Inc. Lines: 88 References:<509@cvbnetPrime.COM> <143300004@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu> In article <143300004@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu> sapg0386@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu writes: > It stinks. I bought it, but all you get is a little help writting an > adventure game of the sort where you tell your pupet to move north > south east or west. Or up or down. Bear in mind that until Infocom started shipping their stuff, almost _all_ computerized adventures had this "limitation," and it's hardly a killer. > The library of sounds is a handful of of buzzes, clanks, > and clangs that you can't even bear to hear the first time. So use your handy MacRecorder and the conversion utility that comes with World Builder and record your own! You are _not_ limited to what's provided with World Builder. > The language is > totally brain damaged (there is no if-then-else, just if-then). The language is intentionally simplistic, I'm sure, to allow even a non-BASIC programmer to fiddle with creating an adventure. I have to agree, though, that it is overly confining--it might be a case where they've oversimplified _so_ much that it's actually _harder_ for a non-programmer to use than a slightly fuller-featured language might have been. However, I don't think that the average user is quite up to, say, Infocom's Z System, or ICOM Simulation's ISL, in which my co-workers and I wrote Deja Vu II: Lost in Las Vegas. > As for being useful for the purpose it is sold--bah. Use hypercard > instead!!! You have to set up the card to card links yourself in > hypercard, but being free of the rigid NSEW setup is an advantage! > Likewise, you have to keep track of the location of artifacts using > global variables--but the freedom is worth it. Nonsense. Any language that forces you to use global variables to keep track of data that's actually local to a procedure or object is itself brain-damaged, and it just gets worse as your programs get larger. > With World-Builder you can only write one kind of hackneyed already > over-marketed adventure. I'd call this a limitation of the programmer, rather than a limitation of World Builder. Remember the Scott Adams adventures? Simplistic, hackneyed, and over-marketed, they were also incredibly popular and successful for a very long time. > Your screens will look like trash. Yeah, if you don't get an artist to create them. You can use either objects or bitmaps, so you have pretty much arbitrary graphical control. > The interface will stink abysmally. This can be a problem--World Builder's user interface is weird and very static. > Hypercard has backgrounds where as WB only has card specific data this means > that WB uses your memory up like a gas guzzler, every picture uses a bundle > of memory. If you use bitmaps all the time, yeah. > Save your money. WB is nothing but a high priced rip-off whose only merit > is a catchy name. I'm not convinced that this is fair, obviously. HyperCard is certainly more general, but suffers annoying limitations of its own. Then again, I'll admit to having been spoiled by ICOM Simulations' game development environment, and _it_ has some really excruciating limitations as well. There's no such thing as perfection. Perhaps someone will write something like a "World Builder" for HyperCard, rather than forcing each HyperCard programmer to create their game-support system from scratch. __________________________________________________________________________ Paul Snively Macintosh Developer Technical Support Apple Computer, Inc. chewy@apple.com Just because I work for Apple Computer, Inc. doesn't mean that I believe what they believe, or vice-versa. __________________________________________________________________________