More Glulx goodies

Another item of interest only to I7 users doing multimedia stuff:

I have revised Simple Graphics Window to version 2. The new version doesn’t do much more than the old version does, except that it provides a bunch more hooks for authors to build additional features. I was prompted to do this because someone sent me some nifty code to do automatic animations in the graphics window, and I wanted to support that. The animation extension will be forthcoming when its proper author decides he’s happy with its finished form.

I have also separated out all the HandleGlkEvent stuff into its own framework extension, which is intended to let authors write different Glulx extensions that can be mixed and matched, without having to constantly replace and redefine HandleGlkEvent. If this sounds boring, that’s because it is. But! It means that there is now a compatible extension, Basic Hyperlinks, which will do… well, more or less what it says on the label. You can put hyperlinks in your text and use them to issue commands within the game, or for other purposes. This extension can optionally run alongside Simple Graphics Window, but it is not required to use them together.

I have not tried using the hyperlinks extension under the Windows build of Inform, so I am not sure whether the built-in interpreter there will handle them properly. If you are using Windows and run into trouble (and this goes for the graphics window stuff as well), you may want to build a release build of the game and check it out on a separate interpreter. Mac Inform’s built-in terp does deal with hyperlinks as it ought.