Crossword

[Layabout]

Hi,
I've got an idea in my head about creating an adventure game, where all the puzzles involve a kind of crosswordy kind of system.

Technical requirements:

A crossword, in which you can input the correct letters. Incorrect letters will not be marked as incorrect. It just won't allow you finish the game. Correct solutions will produce feedback (maybe, not sure about this one... after all, newspaper crosswords don't).

The main idea at the end of the game is to finish the crossword and save the day by using your powers of crossword solvery. Say you talk to someone, they give you a 'cryptic conundrum', which in turn, if you solve it, you recieve a cryptic clue to one of the crossword words. Sometimes you may get a 'bonus letter' added to the crossword screen.

Fair enough. Good idea you say. Interesting. Different.

Logistically, how would one go about implementing such a system. I am self admittedly not very adept with ags scripting, I do know the crossword would be a GUI box, with text input boxes. Issues arise such as only being able to input one letter into each text box. Getting ags to recognise that the correct solution to each number has been inputted. Would it be easier to click on a button and input the whole word? When you have letters in a word (from other solutions), would these be displayed in the input box.

I'm really just asking for ideas and possibly solutions from those who's understanding of ags scripting is far more advanced than mine. Thanks...

[R4L]

I would say something like this:

You would have some GUI's, with crosswords on them. You turn one on when you need one, or if you plan to have random GUI's, then you would turn one on, by the random command.

For guessing letters, im not sure. You could have another GUI, with 26 buttons (A-Z) and when the player clicks on a letter, you turn that letter off. Or you could have an input box, then run commands to check for the players input. (Im guessing that you know how to script a textbox?)

Sorry if im no help. Good luck!

R4L

[GarageGothic]

Drop the idea of a GUI, it would severely limit the size of the crossword. I recommend drawing the crossword grid entirely with RawDraw, possibly, but not necessarily copying the sprite to a graphical overlay in case you need other stuff going on in the background.
The grid itself would be handled in a large struct, which would also store the correct letter for each field. All fields would be the same size, so click detection in the grid would be very easy.

As for letter entry method, I think you should allow both the methods suggested by R4L, 1) to allow the player to use mouse only 2) because any PC game designer not supporting keyboard for text entry should be shot. It would be great if you could work out a method (maybe by clicking on the clue field first) to enter the entire word without having to click on the individual letter fields in it.

[Kweepa]

Try playing a New York Times crossword on-line. That might give you some ideas for input methods.

[Khris]

How about making on_key_press put in the letter if the mouse is hovering over a field?