If you have a room with two exits that are in the same direction ....

for example there are two exits on the east wall. As you face the east wall one of the exits is on the left and the other is on the right.
How would you associate these two exits with the compass buttons?
I realize that you could use ne and se but what if you have already used those .

Is the compass fixed? can buttons be added to it?

You could manually create two "east" exits using "Add Exit" (then select "east" from the Type dropdown), but then you'll get an unhelpful disambiguation menu when you go east, asking you whether you want to go "east" or "east". You could give each exit a prefix, but the disambiguation menu doesn't display those (it might be a useful enhancement perhaps).

The compass is indeed fixed. One way around this, which would be a fair bit of work, would be to code your own compass pane. Disable the standard panes, code an HTML file to display a compass. Compass buttons run Javascript code to call ASLEvent to send commands into Quest, and Quest can use RunScript requests to enable/disable buttons as appropriate. More info here: http://quest5.net/wiki/Using_Javascript. Not for the faint hearted though!

Alex wrote:You could manually create two "east" exits using "Add Exit" (then select "east" from the Type dropdown), but then you'll get an unhelpful disambiguation menu when you go east, asking you whether you want to go "east" or "east". You could give each exit a prefix, but the disambiguation menu doesn't display those (it might be a useful enhancement perhaps).

Okay, I'm playing around with it. For each exit, what is the diffrence between type and alias? What do each of those get used for? Also, which one associates it with a compus button, or is there some other way that the compus button associations are set? What does the prefix normally get used for? What about the name field?

Alex wrote:The compass is indeed fixed. One way around this, which would be a fair bit of work, would be to code your own compass pane. Disable the standard panes, code an HTML file to display a compass. Compass buttons run Javascript code to call ASLEvent to send commands into Quest, and Quest can use RunScript requests to enable/disable buttons as appropriate. More info here: http://quest5.net/wiki/Using_Javascript. Not for the faint hearted though!

That is beyond my pay grade for now but I will keep it in mind.

Thanks

The alias controls what name is displayed, and the compass buttons look for exits named "east", "west" and so on. The alias is set automatically by the type so you shouldn't need to change it manually.

The type is used so that compass directions get the "alt" names you would expect, e.g. "ne" is a shortcut for "northeast". If you set the alias but not the type, "ne" wouldn't work.

The prefix is used when displaying the room description. In English the prefix is blank for compass directions, although you could add one if you wanted, for example a prefix of "to the" would make the room description say "You can go to the north".

The name is used if you want to refer to your exit in a script, for example to lock or unlock it - in fact if you make the exit locked, the Editor warns you that you need a name, otherwise your script will have no way of referring to that exit to unlock it.

Alex wrote:The alias controls what name is displayed, and the compass buttons look for exits named "east", "west" and so on. The alias is set automatically by the type so you shouldn't need to change it manually.

The type is used so that compass directions get the "alt" names you would expect, e.g. "ne" is a shortcut for "northeast". If you set the alias but not the type, "ne" wouldn't work.

The prefix is used when displaying the room description. In English the prefix is blank for compass directions, although you could add one if you wanted, for example a prefix of "to the" would make the room description say "You can go to the north".

The name is used if you want to refer to your exit in a script, for example to lock or unlock it - in fact if you make the exit locked, the Editor warns you that you need a name, otherwise your script will have no way of referring to that exit to unlock it.

Okay, thanks. I think that completly understand how it works and can get the most out of the current features.

Suggestion, the compass buttons should look at the type instead of the alias and then if there is more than one of the same type, give the menu listing the aliases. That way if there are two east exits (based on type), when you click the east compass button then instead of selecting from east or east you could select from something like "right hand door on east wall" and "left hand door on east wall". Now if the user uses the shortcut alt name "e" that would be the same as clicking on the compass East button and the user would have to select from the same menu. I wouldn't involve the prefixes at all.

Sorry it I sound bossy and demanding. Clearly you have put a lot of work and thought into the whole thing and I think the program is spectatular. Hope you don't mind all these sugestions. You can take them or leave them.

For now I can almost get it to work just the way I want and I think it will be fine except that the two east exits are listed in Places and Objects so some users who are use to glancing at the compass may not realize they can go east at all let alone two diffrent eastern doors. Oh well, that's their problem, all the info is there in at least two places already. If they can't look around the screen then they are handycaping themselves.