A short intermission

Well, that turned out to be a longer haul than I anticipated, and I want to thank anyone who managed to follow me through the whole process.

Actually, this has turned out to be a fair example of my usual work process. Start with a simple idea, take detours to make the stuff I need to make the stuff I'm working on work. Find out once again that even simple ideas get complicated when a computer is involved; and eventually, hopefully, get something working.

I do have one more conditional test case I want to run - the evolving case I mentioned at the start of the procedure:

You see a machine with a big red button. What do you do?

> PUSH THE BUTTON

The machine goes "hummmmmmmm...."

You see a machine with a big red button. What do you do?

> PUSH THE BUTTON

A light begins to flash

You see a machine with a big red button. What do you do?

> PUSH THE BUTTON

A disembodied voice intones "SELF DESTRUCT MECHANISM ACTIVE"

You see a machine with a big red button. What do you do?

>RUN AWAY

Women and disembodied narrators first.

But I think I'll leave that until later. My next task is to convert the existing hand-coded narrative stuff into XML.  And to that end, I think I may take a crack a narrative editor application. I could do with the change of pace...