Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!oberon!orion.cf.uci.edu!uci-ics!blanche.ics.uci.edu
From: nagel@blanche.ics.uci.edu (Mark Nagel)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: tetris game (BSD Version)
Keywords: Errors; How to get it working?
Message-ID: <8533@paris.ics.uci.edu>
Date: 2 Mar 89 21:24:29 GMT
References: <415@pai.UUCP>
Sender: news@paris.ics.uci.edu
Reply-To: nagel@blanche.ics.uci.edu (Mark Nagel)
Organization: University of California, Irvine - Dept of ICS
Lines: 20
In-reply-to: erc@pai.UUCP (Eric Johnson)

In article <415@pai.UUCP>, erc@pai (Eric Johnson) writes:

|b) On some sites, users may not have permission to write into /usr
|or /usr/lib subdirectories.  I strongly suggest that programs, especially
|games, do not require a specific file to be located in a specific
|directory--especially since all machines are not configured the same.
|I don't mind the requirement to have a high scores file, but I do mind
|requiring that file to be under /usr/lib.  It was in the current directory
|I was running tetris from, so why can't it look there?  Hard-coded paths,
|especially ones that assume a certain configuration, are liable to break
|on various machines.

You are correct that the game should probably look in the current directory
if it cannot locate the file, but the path was configurable.  It wasn't
mentioned in any README or anything, but the file tetris.h has some
configuration parameters, including the score file location.

Mark Nagel @ UC Irvine, Dept of Info and Comp Sci
ARPA: nagel@ics.uci.edu              | Charisma doesn't have jelly in the
UUCP: {sdcsvax,ucbvax}!ucivax!nagel  | middle. -- Jim Ignatowski