It should also be noted that the
player character is *not* a character in the "characters" window. To create the player character go to menu option "
Adventure : Player...". All other characters can be programmed with responses to particular
keywords, and can have a "walk" set on them, which causes them to move in a certain pattern at certain times. When battle mode is enabled, characters can be set as "
ally", "
neutral", or "
enemy", and in addition to the standard strength, defense, stamina settings, an attack speed, measured in turns, can be set. My favorite walk setting for enemy characters is "Follow Player : 20 : {L}" which means that every 20 turns, an enemy shows up in the same room with the
player. The {L} indicates that it is a looped action, so that instead of happening only after the first 20 turns, it happens every 20 turns thereafter, as well.(Of course, I only have one type of enemy in my game, so it works great...)
Objects really don't need much explaining. You name it (dresser), you give it a description (This is an antique chest of drawers.), you give it some characteristics by using a list of checkboxes (can be opened/closed, can put things on top of, is a container and can hold x objects), and you tell it what room it belongs in. Objects can also be defined as static or dynamic, meaning, is it furniture, or can you take it with you? Dynamic objects can have starting points on or in other objects or characters. (Peril-Sensitive sunglasses : begins worn by character Zeta)
Tasks can also be created to give more flexibility in commands. When prompted to do so by either the player, or another instruction in the game (such as the death of an enemy character), the task executes a series of commands and reports on them, if desired. Commands executed by tasks range from moving objects and players to adjusting variables, and even ending the game.
Events can be defined to add a particular feel to a setting. For instance if your player is on a boat, an event could be defined so that as long as the player is on the boat, every three turns the game prints "The boat rocks, making you seasick." or some such thing. Events can be used in combination with tasks to produce effects like XP based levelups. (The game does not actually track XP, I wrote some tasks to do it.) Event levup1 triggered by killmouse1 executes task levup1 which cannot execute until XP=5, but raises Stamina, Strength, and Defense by 1. I'm trying to figure out how to give it an equation to compare the XP value to so that I won't have to write one of these freaky loops for every level.
Adrift theoretically allows sound and graphics in games, but I haven't played with that function yet.