Re: [Denemo-devel] Script question

[Richard Shann]

On Thu, 2009-08-13 at 17:12 -0500, Jeremiah Benham wrote:
> While writing these educational games I was wondering if it is better  
> to have a game that are more complex offering many modes of operation  
> or should I create smaller game scripts with one mode of operation  
> only. If we choose the complex route I would either need to create  
> generic buttons that are renamed. The reason for this would be because  
> of screen realistate. If buttons are to be deleted then I would create  
> a "select" mode where all the buttons are to control aspects of the  
> game. Aspects can be things like:
> 
> Gamemode::{practice, time limit, numbered test}
> 
> Input::{keyboard, mouse, midi, audio}
> 
> Scoreboard::{single person, group}
> 
> Clef::{treble, bass, etc...}
> 
> The start button would get out of select mode or restart the game or  
> quit or other things.
> 
> The only reason for the complexity is to not have 70 different scripts  
> that are very similar to one another. If the complex route is chosen  
> the users prefernces may need to saving.
> 
> Comments?

I would suggest the many scripts approach. Temper this with some well
designed procedures in Educational/init.scm which provide the common
functionality - keeping & displaying the score, the number of goes,
printing out, announcing the end of the game, comparing with other
users/all time high ... all of the things that you can think of as
common to many games.
Each game will then be quite short, encouraging others to write
variants.
Keep in mind that we can develop the button interface - e.g. by allowing
buttons to be placed in custom palettes; so if you write a
create-notename-buttons as a procedure that, for the moment just places
the note names in a row, later we can change the function to place them
on two rows, or in a separate palette... I anticipate the tags in the
buttons having prefixes to say where they should go.

Richard