Vocab.900 - The 'Black Box'

[lance.ewing]

I now realise (after discussing it with Brian) who it was that first showed me the code from the book in question. It was Stuart George (aka Dark Fiber). I've just got in contact with Stuart and he does indeed remember the SCI code snippet and says he has the book. He is currently away from home, so it will be a few days until he can dig it out to confirm the title and also hopefully send through the SCI code snippets.

[lance.ewing]

I'm still waiting for confirmation from Dark Fiber but in the meantime I have contacted kimme at sierraplanet, who has a copy of many Sierra related books. The outcome of this is that King's Quest Companion is a red herring. The 1st and 2nd editions contain no SCI code at all. What kimme claims though is that the 1st edition of The Official Book of King's Quest has SCI code. Kimme says that the 2nd edition is missing the SCI code and instead has the older AGI code. This makes me think that I must have the second edition not the first because my edition only has AGI code.

[Collector]

Could she scan it for us?

[lance.ewing]

Could she scan it for us?

I'll ask the question and see what she says. At the very least I'd imagine that she could maybe send us a couple of lines to verify that it is indeed SCI code. It is possible that she has mistakenly identified AGI code as SCI code. Unfortunately I don't have my copy of The Official Book of King's Quest on this side of the planet (it's in New Zealand and I'm living in England at the moment), so I don't know for sure if my copy is a first or second edition. I know that my copy has more than one snippet of AGI code but definitely no SCI code. I remember thinking at the time I bought it that it was strange that it didn't have SCI code because all the photos of the tools (picture editor, view editor) were of the SCI tools, and I seem to recall that the discussion in the book about the "making of" King's Quest was related to the SCI version....   and yet all the code snippets were AGI. I guess that supports what kimme is saying about the second edition having the older AGI code. I'll go back to her and ask a few questions.

Dark Fiber should be able to give us his report in the next day or so.

[lance.ewing]

I've gone back to ask the question, but the more I think about it, the more I'm thinking that this might end up being a red herring as well. I've included below Kimme's exact response:

"in the first edition of "The Official Book of King's Quest" by Donald
B. Trivette, there are SCI code snippets for smoke, opening/closing a
house door, and falling on rocks in the "Script Interpreter" section of
"Chapter 2: The Making of King's Quest 4" (pages 17 to 20).

The 2nd edition doesn't have the codes reprinted. It just has a small
snippet of older AGI coding demonstrating how smoke moves in "Chapter 2:
The Making of Quests" (page 20)."

The reason I am starting to think that it might be a red herring is because I clearly remember that my copy of The Official Book of King's Quest had code in it for "smoke", "falling on rocks", and "opening and closing a house door", i.e. all of the things that Kimme mentions as being SCI code. My copy had AGI code though. Kimme says that the 2nd edition only had AGI code for the smoke but I'm certain my copy had AGI code for the others as well. So unless there is an in between edition (i.e. a first edition with the code changed to AGI instead) then I think it might end up being AGI code that she has seen. I've sent her some examples of AGI and SCI code, highlighting the differences, so that she can verify which it is that she saw. I forget that not all Sierra fans know what AGI and SCI code looks like.

[Collector]

Of course if it is from KQ4, it could be either. It seems like it would be easiest for her to simply scan it and email it to you.

[gumby]

Okay, so I've made my first attempt at modifying the black box.  I tried to address an input of the form verb-noun-prep-prep-noun (ex: 'take larry out to dinner').  The interpreter previously had identified this input as "That doesn't appear to be a proper sentence".  Now, the interpreter just crashes when attempting to parse the input.  However, all other inputs still work (they don't cause a crash). 

This tells me that I correctly set up the grammar rule (at least partially).  Maybe I've incorrectly set the corresponding semantic values - or I'm attempting something futile.