(02-13-2023, 11:56 PM)mnrvovrfc Wrote: Might take it to one extreme like I noticed in one of M$ help files long ago: store every possible word to be used in alphabetical order. And then each paragraph would be an array of integers summoning the words, with special codes eg. for period to end a sentence. Maybe store the array in backwards order, every other time, every third time, shorud the words with a simple encryption for better security.
Something like that, if they really really want to make it hard for someone to see the solution.
This all makes it harder on the programmer, too.
I think what Johann wants (correct me if I'm wrong) is for the source code to not be a spoiler, and ruin the game for someone looking at it.
If someone is dead set on seeing the solution then let them, as long as the game solutions aren't visible in plain text.
Simpler is better for the programmer, too, because they don't want to spend a lot of time "hiding" the solution in their code. They already have enough to worry about and do, like make sure the main game code works and the content and puzzles are fun with the right amount of challenge without being frustrating.
Now, for how to store the game text... For the array of words idea, I don't think the array has to be in alpha order. It's just replacing a word with a letter, sorting it won't make a difference. Instead of words, we could simply map each character to a different one.
We can keep all the text in a resource (txt) file that the game uses, and make an "encode/decode" program to convert the file between "clear text" & "scrambled".
Or we could keep the text in DATA statements and our utility can read the .BAS file and look for data statements (maybe just lines inbetween lines such as
REM BEGIN CONTENT
and
REM END CONTENT
) and encode or decode all non-comma non-space characters in each line after "DATA ",
and the output .BAS file is the same in every way except the DATA lines have encoded values. It might need to change a constant that you set at the top of the game which represents the game mode "clear text" or "encoded" for the content.
This is just off the top of my head, completely different ideas might come to
mind once I've looked at the actual program. Or maybe someone who has done this before knows something completely different. "And now for something completely different!" ?