Description length of objects, inventory items and hotspots.

Started by abstauber, Tue 09/05/2017 08:00:32

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abstauber

Over at the Scumm help thread, Daniel discovered some rather odd limites regarding descriptions.

It seems like inventory item descriptions can be 24 characters long, even though the editor allows more.
Hotspot descriptions can be almost infinite (tested 35 chars).
Object descriptions can only be 29 chars long and the editor also blocks any longer attempts.

Is there a technical reason for this or could these limites be removed in a future engine release?

Crimson Wizard

Character and mouse cursor name lengths are restricted by plugin API, which may be removed by breaking existing plugins that use corresponding feature (if any); but even there are workarounds.
Other names do not seem to have any ties.

abstauber

Thanks for the info :)
It would be cool if those limits could be lifted at some point.

NicolaGs

You can use a custom property as the description, when needed, since it allows you to store longer strings than the description...
My first game : I Want Out!

Crimson Wizard

#4
That may be 1 days work, I guess only reason they were not removed is that such things are always forgotten in the shadow of larger feature tasks.

But yes, you may use custom properties. Also since 3.4.0 you can modify properties at runtime, hence they may even be more handy.
I do not remember if you may modify descriptions at runtime.

abstauber

Okay, this would be a valid workaround. Still it is a bit unpredictable, that the engine cuts off the inventory name at 24 character, while the editor allows 255. Why 24 in the first place (wtf) ?
But of course this is not top priority. It is just a minor inconsistency .

Crimson Wizard

The script names are rather annoying restriction actually. I joined some game project, and recently got very angry on the maximal length of dialog script name. Because we have a lot of dialogs in game, and coders are having hard times inventing elaborate titles to them.
I wished people were poking me more about these before, it should not be hard to improve this.

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