Author Topic: Vocab.900 - The 'Black Box'  (Read 25688 times)

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Offline lance.ewing

Re: Vocab.900 - The 'Black Box'
« Reply #15 on: December 18, 2010, 04:52:24 PM »
Another source of real SCI code (and therefore evidence of the syntax) is Quest for Glory 2. It has a more sophisticated debug mode and in fact can generate snippets of SCI code. See below an example I created this afternoon using QFG2:

(instance Test9 of Actor
   (properties
      x 103
      y 169
      z -20
      heading 0
      noun 'bob8'
      view 0
      loop 0
      cel 0
      description "Test9"
      sightAngle 90
      closeRangeDist 50
      longRangeDist 100
      shiftClick verbLook
      contClick verbGet
   )
)

Offline gumby

Re: Vocab.900 - The 'Black Box'
« Reply #16 on: December 18, 2010, 04:59:53 PM »
Nice!  I wasn't aware that you could get debug output like that.  Looks like the syntax we are familiar with for sure.
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Offline lance.ewing

Re: Vocab.900 - The 'Black Box'
« Reply #17 on: December 18, 2010, 06:24:57 PM »
Yeah, if you load up QFG2 and then inside the game activate the debug mode (by typing "suck blue frog"), and then press ALT-W, it goes through a sequence of dialogs to define an Actor/Prop/View/Feature/PicView. It also asks for a filename. You can place the Actor/Prop/View/Feature/PicView within the current room and after you define each thing it writes the detail to the file.

Offline Collector

Re: Vocab.900 - The 'Black Box'
« Reply #18 on: December 18, 2010, 06:40:37 PM »
I have been thinking that QfG2 should have been used for the template game because of the parser, though it is an SCI01 game, not SCI0.
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Offline MusicallyInspired

Re: Vocab.900 - The 'Black Box'
« Reply #19 on: December 18, 2010, 07:08:03 PM »
Yeah, it would have been a better choice. SCI01 games also have the coveted scrolling background transitions
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Offline lance.ewing

Re: Vocab.900 - The 'Black Box'
« Reply #20 on: December 20, 2010, 05:00:19 PM »
I realise I've taken this post completely off topic but since we were talking about the original SCI syntax, I thought you might all be interested in a web site I just discovered:

http://www.mwilden.com/smalltalk/index.htm

I found it interesting that it mentions not only C and Lisp but also Smalltalk as part of the hybrid that is SCI. Check out this quote:

"SCI was a combination of Lisp, C and Smalltalk, but the message-passing was very much Smalltalkesque. I loved the language"

It is interesting that on the same page he says "I'm sorry, but I cannot get into Lisp" but then says he loves the SCI language. This makes me think that it may have been more Smalltalk-ish that Lisp-like. Perhaps it only had a Lisp shell but was really more like Smalltalk.

I think I might email Mark and see if he can remember much about the original syntax of the language. Worth a shot...
« Last Edit: December 20, 2010, 05:03:54 PM by lance.ewing »

Offline lance.ewing

Re: Vocab.900 - The 'Black Box'
« Reply #21 on: December 20, 2010, 05:21:39 PM »
I just founds Mark's blog as well. He has a blog entry that briefly talks about the SCI language.

http://mwilden.blogspot.com/search/label/sierra%20on-line

Here's a quote:

"So imagine my delight when, soon after, I got a job with Sierra On-Line, then (1989) the most prominent adventure game company. They had actually created their own language, SCI, that was a very pure implementation of OOP. I'll never forget that first night reading the documentation on my bed and just being consumed with this language that did things I wanted to do and even things I didn't know I wanted it to do.

Ever since then, I've run into lots of people who talked about the difficulties of making the paradigm shift to OOP. But not me. It was love at first sight."


Offline lance.ewing

Re: Vocab.900 - The 'Black Box'
« Reply #22 on: December 20, 2010, 05:25:36 PM »
There is a comment on this web site by someone who describes the SCI language as being like Smalltalk. Don't know what their source is:

http://multimedia.cx/eggs/the-interpreter/

Here's the quote:

"And quite an interesting fact: old games used byte-code so it would be easier to parse and run. For example, SCI

Offline gumby

Re: Vocab.900 - The 'Black Box'
« Reply #23 on: December 20, 2010, 10:22:42 PM »
There is a comment on this web site by someone who describes the SCI language as being like Smalltalk. Don't know what their source is:

http://multimedia.cx/eggs/the-interpreter/

Here's the quote:

"And quite an interesting fact: old games used byte-code so it would be easier to parse and run. For example, SCI
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Offline lskovlun

Re: Vocab.900 - The 'Black Box'
« Reply #24 on: December 22, 2010, 07:31:10 PM »
Quote from: Gumby
What kills me is that all things I hated (and swore would not apply in my future) during my higher education are coming back to haunt me.  Push-down automatons, context-insensitive grammars - I never thought I would ever see them in my professional career.  Of course, I have not.  But in my hobbies?  You bet...   
Since I wrote the "black box" document, I thought I'd reply to this. I wrote the document at a time when I had no formal CS education. But this file contains essentially a context-free grammar for the language understood by the parser. It's complicated a bit by some things that are hard-coded in the parser, so you probably couldn't change the black box file easily (not without being mindful of the limitations of the parser code... which we don't have).

Offline gumby

Re: Vocab.900 - The 'Black Box'
« Reply #25 on: December 22, 2010, 09:01:15 PM »
Since I wrote the "black box" document, I thought I'd reply to this. I wrote the document at a time when I had no formal CS education. But this file contains essentially a context-free grammar for the language understood by the parser. It's complicated a bit by some things that are hard-coded in the parser, so you probably couldn't change the black box file easily (not without being mindful of the limitations of the parser code... which we don't have).
I was wondering about that - adding rules into the grammar.  There is only a couple (reasonable) input strings that I couldn't get to parse (of the form verb/noun/prep/prep/noun & noun-verb/noun/adverb/prep/noun).  I thought I would give it go, but I guess I won't be too surprised if it doesn't work.

Thanks for the info on this.
« Last Edit: December 22, 2010, 09:54:17 PM by gumby »
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Offline lance.ewing

Re: Vocab.900 - The 'Black Box'
« Reply #26 on: December 24, 2010, 02:07:34 AM »
I have been reminded that the name of the book that has the original SCI code snippets in it is called "King's Quest Companion". Does anyone have a copy of that book so we can verify this?
« Last Edit: December 24, 2010, 02:09:10 AM by lance.ewing »

Offline Collector

Re: Vocab.900 - The 'Black Box'
« Reply #27 on: December 24, 2010, 02:35:44 AM »
I don't remember anything like that in it, but then I only have the last two editions. I'll see what I can find.
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Offline lance.ewing

Re: Vocab.900 - The 'Black Box'
« Reply #28 on: December 24, 2010, 12:59:41 PM »
It is possible that he has the name of the book wrong. If you were able to verify this then that would be great. If you can't find anything in the book then I'll go back to him and ask if he had the title correct. It was a recollection rather than a certain fact.

Offline Collector

Re: Vocab.900 - The 'Black Box'
« Reply #29 on: December 24, 2010, 02:18:17 PM »
I looked through both the 3rd and fourth editions page by page and found nothing. I believe the original KQ book was called something else, but that would have been pre SCI.
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