David Millar wrote:
> Hello. I'm working on a text adventure game right now, and I seem to be
> kind of stuck. There's a huge chunk of code called moreaction() that
> pulls scripted events for certain locations. It's ever-changing so I'm
> not looking for specifics, but can anyone suggest good ways to clean up
> or condense the code without sacrificing clarity? The latest version of
> the source is found at http://thegriddle.net/python/v006.txt Any help is
> much appreciated :) - Dave M.
One way to help with this is to use functions and a dispatch table. For
example instead of
elif lookup == "COVER":
print "\nYou close the book and stare dumbly at the cover,
sideways:"
return
elif lookup == "TOC":
print "\nYou glance over the table of contents. You have
recipes for the following:"
b = book.keys()
b.sort()
for r in b:
print "*",r,
print "*"
return
elif lookup == "SYRUP":
print "\n* SYRUP *"
print "* SYRUP is an interesting drink."
return
you could write
def cover():
print "\nYou close the book and stare dumbly at the cover,
sideways:"
def toc():
print "\nYou close the book and stare dumbly at the cover,
sideways:"
return
elif lookup == "TOC":
print "\nYou glance over the table of contents. You have
recipes for the following:"
b = book.keys()
b.sort()
for r in b:
print "*",r,
print "*"
def syrup():
print "\n* SYRUP *"
print "* SYRUP is an interesting drink."
return
dispatch = dict(COVER=cover, TOC=toc, SYRUP=syrup)
fn = dispatch[lookup]
fn()
That is the basic idea. There are a lot of possible complications and
variations. If some of the functions need arguments, you need to make a
common protocol for passing arguments and returning values. You might
want to make the functions methods of a class so they can share state.
Clever use of introspection can make the dispatch table unnecessary.
You might want to look at the cmd module in the Python standard library
as an example of this approach.
Kent
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