mcdaniel (11/22/82)
#N:uiucdcs:9500098:000:1586
uiucdcs!mcdaniel Nov 21 20:44:00 1982
Some random ideas on "how to pack the pack":
Each item would be identified by two letters: the first would
indicated type, and the second would indicate position.
"fb" would be fruit, "ac" would be armor c, et cetera. Each command
usually works only in a specific domain, so "b" would be enough to identify
what to eat and "c" enough to know what to wear. Those commands that can
work with any item type, like drop or identify, would just take 2 letters.
If a slot is emptied, it would never be refilled, except by items that
are known to be identical (identical scrolls, potions, and foods).
Items could be placed in slots according to the first letter of
their names. Two-handers would be in "wt", but arrows would be in "wa".
I leave it as an exercise for the student to figure out what to do about
potions, scroll, rings, and staffs (should identify scrolls be moved to
slot "si" once you know what they are? what if something is already in slot i?)
and what to do about duplicates in similar but not identical items (where
would it put a second, third, or fourth two-hander?).
A command to move an item to a new slot would be handy: one could move
arrows to "wa". This solves the exercise above, but might be tedious.
Also, the "call" command could reference things by their
slot name, whether or not items are there or not (when you drop your
unknown scroll and it turns to dust, you can call it post-mortemly (sic),
since its slot is not shifted into.)
Tim McDaniel
(. . . pur-ee!uiucdcs!mcdaniel)