The Dink Network

Hrm... I don't think I should have decided to rewrite the DinkC Reference. I'm on page 52 now (using Microsoft Word), and dang, it's a lot of work.

Is your pondering the task that is holding you up, or the chewing through it?

Seriously though, if it wasn't for your fault tolerance, this community would be a lot different.

Kudos,
mm

Yeah... I had trouble just formatting the thing for the WinHelp version... let alone updating it - Good Luck!

Will the DinkC reference be a .chm or .hlp help file, or will it stay in the MS Word format?

I don't have MS Word, see, and starting up OpenOffice every time to watch a document... Well, OpenOffice is a bit slow.

If you would like a .chm help file made out of it, I have experience with that so you can ask me. But to make a chm out of it the documents must be converted to HTML format.

I wish you good luck with the tutorial, and I hope you will finish it.

Try OpenOffice 2. it isn't so slow as 1.x and 2.o Beta. It actually open faster tha the Linux version of 1.1 ans 2.0 Beta, both of which open fast. I do agree though that it should be in .chm form since not all people have MS Word or OpenOffice.org, but everyone who has Windows has Help Viewer or whatever it's called.

Oh and how do you make .chm files? I've been wanting to know that.

It will probably be included in v1.08 as a .txt and .chm file (and maybe a .html file, not sure). I'm just writing it in Word.

As long as no advanced make-up is used, WordPad will open .doc files. I have it standard in win98 SE and I think it's also in XP, but I don't have much experience with it.

Hey, good luck with that thing, it had a lot of excellent information when I looked the version that came with the Beta.

@Draconic: I have 2.0, but it's still slow.

Well, if there's gonna be a chm, I have no problems with that anyway.

Good luck once again, ReDink.

Maybe you have a slower pc than me.

The ol' girl is two years old now. It has some pretty big down points anyway because I managed to get it cheap.

Back to topic.

27,791 words later, it seems I am done.

It's 19,000 words shorter than Ted Shute's DinkC Reference v3.2. I cut out a lot of the Seth-says-something-incorrect, Ted-corrects-Seth type comments. It basically includes the correct stuff to begin with.

It also includes some friendlier explanations of some topics that were given a short-thrift in the original document.

Now I need to convert it to a chm file... which seems to be more difficult than I thought. I'll create a perl script to do it or something.

Check it out, dudes.

Edit: Hrm, I should insert SimonK's Appendix F on dink.ini lines... my version is a bit brief. I got tired of writing around page 132

And I should also have some sections for the different categories of DinkC commands.

Cool, thqanks man, I think I'll have a look at it. The only thing that put me of looking at Ted Shutes' DinkC Reference was it size, so yours being small should incourage me to finally get me into learning more DinkC. Especially with the new 1.08 stuff added in.

Looks good. And made with humour.

// spawner.c

void main(void)
{
spawn("grocery");
// Spawner: "Behold, grocery, I bring you to life. Do what you were born to do."
// Grocery: "Alrighty."

kill_this_task();
// Spawner: "Erk." <DIES>

}



But seriously, this is good stuff. Not only is everything documented, but there are notes, warnings and tutorials as well. Good job, ReDink1!

(You might have done something about the font, though. Times New Roman doesn't look too good to my tastes.)

So what font would you recommend?

Good luck once again, ReDink.

Random Useless Comment :

That's red ink, not ReDink.

something went wrong... I downloaded the file, but I can only see the erh, well, that stuff in the left column, but I can't read any text... Don't know whether it's my fault.

edit: I guess it is my fault!

I have no problem with Times New Roman.

The file works fine to me. Now, I'm going to read the content.

as soon as i open it, i get an action cancelled message in the right column, after that, if i click on any links in the left column, i get the "this page can not be displayed..." message in the right column. why can't i get it to work!?

Try right-clicking on it and select Save Target As. Then run it.

If that doesn't work... what version of Windows are you using?

i got it now. there was a window that popped up that asked if i wanted to open it b/c it was from an unknown author, i just checked a box that said don't ask again and it works fine now

"He clenches his teeth and launches off of the ramp and jumps all the way down to the healthy statement, and skis through the rest without any excitement."

Made with humour, that's right.

"Note that the sp_blood_frame default is actually 0, but the engine will interpret this as 187 to maintain backwards compatibility"

Copy-paste from sp_blood_seq()? The 187 in this case should be a 3.

I'm currently reading through the functions (blah) and I will try to report any nitpicking

Thanks, dude.

Okay, some more nitpicking:

activate_bow() freezes Dink, though he can still change direction. This isn't in the function description, but might be worth knowing.
set_y and set_title are not documented in "Internal Functions". Okay, they aren't real functions, and don't do anything except in choice menu's, but neither do title_start() and title_end()

Also, if you're going to add sections for the different categories of DinkC commands, could you add a section "new in 1.08"? It may be handy for people who know the "old" 1.07 functions, but want to know about the new functionality of 1.08.

The chapters "Scripts", "Control Structures" and "Techniques" have empty introduction pages.

That's it for my nitpicking for today. I'll read it again again another time.

Hmm, I'll modify the activate_bow() entry.

set_y and set_title... meh title_start(); and title_end(); at least look like functions. I stand by my decision. I also didn't include keywords (int, goto, return, etc) in the function reference under similar considerations.

Good idea on the 1.08 section, I'll do that.

I like this document a lot.

Just noticed one minor thing re the colors in the choice menu...

set_title_color 1

gives a deep/dark blue while color 1 in text/say() commands will be Light Magenta. The link to the new set_font_color just mentions the Light Magenta color.

SimonK: Hmm, weird. I just changed v1.08 to use the same font colors as the say commands.

Fair enough... I did like the blue in the choice commands, so now you can have any color with set_font_color, I've been playying with that ...

math_cos, math_sin and math_tan are mentioned in whatsnew.txt, but not in the help file. Are they thrown out? Sin and cos don't make sense anyway with only integer output.

EDIT: I haven't read the RC2-post well enough, because it already mentioned it. Bleh, now I'm gonna play with this stuff

Had (still have) same problem as rabidwolf9, but using Save Target As doesn't help either...
running win xp btw

EDIT oh, wait, now a window popped up, checked something, problem fixed...

Looks really nice!

D'oh, I need to remove those from whatsnew.txt, nice catch.

The problem people are having under XP is caused by a security feature introduced in SP2 (surprise, surprise). In order to view the file, either do as sefanie suggested and uncheck the "Always ask before opening this file" box in the window that pops up when you try to open it, or right-click the file, go to properties, and click unblock.

Oh, and nice doc too

Yay, Invertigo's back!

He's going to get in trouble for using two accounts, though.
But maybe that's just some kind of capital/non-capital letters problem, like the Ducklord/DuckLord problem I had quite some time ago.

Nah, both Simeon and sImEoN link to my account so capitals don't matter.

Yeah, it uses the name you use to log in.

I once had two accounts (Scratcher and scratcher) but that kind of problems seem to have been since fixed.

Even cooler, the profile page uses the name as in the url I always use magicman, I don't feel the need for capitals.

neither do I...

(normaly...)

Yeah, it uses the name you use to log in.

Thanks, SCRATCHER/Scratcher/scratcher.

The problem people are having under XP is caused by a security feature introduced in SP2 (surprise, surprise). In order to view the file, either do as sefanie suggested and uncheck the "Always ask before opening this file" box in the window that pops up when you try to open it, or right-click the file, go to properties, and click unblock.

I don't have that problem since I use Mozilla Firefox 1.5.

And I am actually given a choice since I use Opera 8.51.