5.0.31 out now

It has been a little while since the previous release, somewhat hampered by work, computer crashes and relocating the website, but the new release is finally available.  This brings some exciting new enhancements, plus a few critical bug fixes.

Allow item functions to filter by property value (ID 18857)

Item functions have, since 5.0.26, been able to restrict a list (of characters, objects etc) to those having a particular property.  This has been taken one step further by allowing to restrict by properties with a particular value.

So for example, if you wanted to know how many heavy items the player was carrying, you could use the function

   %Player%.Held.Weight(Heavy).Count

Allow Increase and Decrease variables (ID 18856)

Rather than only allowing you to Set variables to a value (which means having to write a function when increasing or decreasing the value of a variable), you can simply select Increase or Decrease from the first dropdown on the Variable Action screen, like so:

Expose Characters in locations (ID 18796)

Item functions that resolve to a Location can now access all characters within that location.  For example, to list all characters in the same location as the Player you could use:

   %Player%.Location.Characters.List

Allow a separate window layout per game (ID 18795)

Each game you play will now store it's window layout separately.  This is handy because you may resize the map in one game to be a particular size based on that game layout, but have a completely different layout for a different game.  It is also very useful for the Multiple frames enhancement below.

Relative Locations (ID 18794)

You can now use an Item Function to reference one location from another.  For example, to return the name of the location to the north of the player's current location, you could use:

   %Player%.Location.LocationTo(North).Name

Allow List function to list items per row (ID 18788)

The List Item Function can now take a parameter "Rows", which will return the list items on individual rows rather than being comma separated.  For example:

   %Player%.Held.List(Rows)

%item% (ID 64)

Tasks can now refer to Referenced Items, rather than just Referenced Objects or Referenced Characters.  A Referenced Item is either a Location, Object or Character that the player referred to in the command.

For example, you could create an "examine %item%" task, that would match on "examine bird", "examine Hamish" or "examine bedroom".

Properties of items (ID 18784)

In conjunction with the new Referenced Items, properties can now be assigned to items generally.  This can allow more efficient tasks to be written for properties that any item could have, such as odour, colour, sound etc.

Referenced Text CONTAINS Keyword (ID 18706)

Restrictions can now check to see whether a text variable contains a particular value, like so:

Add Front End For Handling Synonyms (ID 18631)

Synonyms have been supported in ADRIFT 5 for some time now. However, there was no way to edit them in Developer.  This has now been added.

For further info, see http://help.adrift.co/Synonyms.html.

User Functions (ID 18608)

User Defined Functions allow you to create your own custom functions, with parameters if necessary, that you can use within any text section or expression.

For further info, see http://help.adrift.co/UserDefinedFunctions.html.

Multiple text output frames (ID 180)

It is now possible to output text into a different text frame from the default.  To do this, simply use the new "window" tag.  This takes the name of the frame as an attribute, like so:

   <window Location><cls>%Player%.Location.Description</window>

This will bring up the additional frame, which can be repositioned wherever you want it, like so:

The remaining changes are bug fixes, and are as follows:

Bug Fixes

• Crash when executing multiple tasks using actions (ID 18853)
• Variable Wait length (ID 18849)
• Having a numbered array with an empty last entry corrupts save file! (ID 18845)
• Exception if hidden object has character on or in it (ID 18835)
• Variables dissapear + unexplainable "Key already exists" errors (ID 18821)
• Property Hidden does not exist (ID 18819)
• Options - Wait - resets when developer runs again (ID 18816)
• Date created / Date modified are broken (ID 18815)
• Item clash loading from multiple libraries (ID 18797)
• Restrict key names to alphanumeric characters (ID 18787)
• Ability to prioritize alternative descriptions (ID 18779)
• Using keys with functions very confusing (ID 10011)