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                    JOURNAL FOR MONDAY 26TH DECEMBER, 2022
______________________________________________________________________________

SUBJECT: Updated in-game help system merged to public dev branch
   DATE: Mon 26 Dec 19:57:57 GMT 2022

I’m still working hard with tight deadlines. This has left little time for any
of my own programming. However, Christmas is mostly behind us and as the bank
holidays fall on Sundays I get a few extra days to play before returning to
the day job :)

Today I spent some time improving the in-game player help system. A large part
involved moving the help page formatting out of the HELP command processing
and into the server start-up processing. This has reduced the footprint of the
help library in memory and improved performance when displaying help pages.

Help topics can now have a group specified so that related topics can be
grouped together. A topic may also appear in more than one group. For example:


    %%
       Topic: MAIN
    Synopsis: Main help categories

    The following main help categories are available:
    %%
       Topic: COMMANDS
       Group: MAIN TOPICS
    Synopsis: Commands grouped by category

    The following categories of commands are available:
    %%
       Topic: ALL
       Group: MAIN TOPICS
    Synopsis: Help for all commands
    %%
       Topic: TOPICS
       Group: MAIN
    Synopsis: All help topics
    %%


Here the topics COMMANDS, ALL and TOPICS appear under the MAIN topic. The
COMMANDS and ALL topics also appear under the TOPICS topic - which lists all
topics.

When /HELP or /? is used without a topic the MAIN topic is displayed:


    >/HELP
    Topic: MAIN
           Main help categories

    The following main help categories are available:

       COMMANDS  Commands grouped by category
            ALL  Help for all commands
         TOPICS  All help topics
    >


Here we can see the three topics COMMANDS, ALL and TOPICS grouped under MAIN.
We can then dig down further into the help pages:


    >/HELP TOPICS
    Topic: TOPICS
           All help topics

       COMMANDS  Commands grouped by category
            ALL  Help for all commands
           MISC  Miscellaneous commands
          ITEMS  Item commands
          COMMS  Commands for communicating
           HELP  Using the help system
    >/HELP ITEMS
    Topic: ITEMS
           Item commands

    The following topics are available for interacting with items:

           DROP  Drop items onto the ground.
            GET  Pick up items.
            PUT  Place items into a container.
           TAKE  Remove items from a container.
    >/HELP GET
    Topic: GET
           Pick up items.

    Usage: GET <item>...

    The GET command is used to pick up items, from your current location, and
    put them into your inventory.

    Examples: GET APPLE

    See also: DROP, PUT and TAKE


One last addition, when a player is consulting the in-game help system any
observers at the same location will get a message:


  Diddymus seems to be looking for answers...


Aren’t we all?

Now I just have to write all of the help topics and provide some details on
data/help.wrj in the /docs directory.

The new help system has been merged into the main dev branch for those
interested. However, by default the help system is disabled and players will
see:


  >/HELP
  Sorry, help is currently unavailable.
  >


The in-game help system can be enabled by setting “Disabled: false” in the
data/help.wrj header record. Be warned, the current data/help.wrj should only
be used as a guide for now.

Happy holidays to everyone!

--
Diddymus


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