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Verbs

So I finally got around to something that I had been putting off for awhile now and that is the concept of verbs for my game engine.  I came across the old SCUMM training manual that used to be used by Lucas Arts to train up their new adventure game programmers.  Reading through it I came across a section talking about implementing new verbs.  This really interested me as I have played all of the old classic SCUMM adventure games and know a fair amount of how SCUMM worked.  

The coolest thing about the verbs in SCUMM was that they could be custom built for each game.  This is very noticeable if you look at Loom compared to any of the other games.  The core of my current engine that I am calling SWINE is really similar to SCUMM in a lot of ways and mulling over the idea of custom built verbs as the main interface and I finally landed on a decent solution with my approach.

So I got the first pass of my concept of a verb interface integrated into the data format, updated the logic tools and engine side code to read in the new logic and data.  I'm going to play around with the current implementation and stress test it more to make sure I am happy with it.  But that is pretty much the point I am at with the engine in general now.

I have all of the major pieces in place but they still have some rough edges.  Now I really should spend the next stretch putting them all through their paces by finishing the block out of the game I am working on with my boy.  Hopefully I will have more interesting things to share as he and I start to wireframe up the game.

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