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Date: Fri, 28 Jun 2002 08:07:21 -0400
From: John Colagioia <JColagioia@csi.com>
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Subject: Re: Making a "found_in" object disappear
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Peter Seebach wrote:
[...]

>I have just noticed that even the incomplete game is, indeed, annoyingly slow
>on a PDA.
>However, the problem is now much worse...  because I have a bunch of objects
>which come and go.  So, for instance, I might have one object which only
>appears when you're in "magic" mode, and a similar-but-different object which
>only appears when you're in "normal" mode.
>

Might I suggest using one object for both, in such cases?  Recreate the
short_name, description, and other properties as methods which switch
based on the current mode.

Not only will this free up some more objects (which might be an issue
for you, I don't know), but it'll be slightly faster than a bunch of
objectloops, *and* it'll make the delays "on-demand" and much shorter
each time they occur.

[...]

>Hmm.  Can a room trap the player's arrival and respond to it?
>

Not as such, but you can Replace MoveSub (copying the entire library
content and adding an "if location provides on_arrival," or somesuch)
fairly easily to do it.

>It is made worse by the fact that some of the objects which disappear may be
>inside other objects.
>

I suspect that's not an issue, but I can't be sure about that without
research.

>I will be giving this more thought; I may just leave the code clean-but-slow
>for now, write the game, and *THEN* try to figure out how to optimize the
>problem away.
>

You'd do a former professor of mine proud.  His philosophy was "first
make it work right, then make it work well."  I do tend to agree, though
it's sometimes more fun to play with optimization problems up-front....

