PsL Monthly 1994 January

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Text File | 1990-02-24 | 13.7 KB | 373 lines

Ad-Lib Fill-in Entertainment (ALFIE) Copyright (c) 1990 by Barbara L. Baser All rights reserved. Version 1.0 February 1, 1990 What's it all about? ALFIE generates "fill in the blanks" party games similar to the popular Mad Libs commercial product. Briefly, the idea is that party guests are asked for a list of words to fill in blanks appearing in a story they can't see. All they are told is the type of word needed next -- noun, verb, adjective, exclamation, etc. When the whole story is read back with the blanks filled in by words chosen at random, the results are usually hilarious. The "story" used by ALFIE is an ordinary ASCII file, which can be created with EDLIN or any other text editor you like. Blanks to be filled in are signalled to the program by one or two characters starting with the "@" or "%" character. For example, a blank which will contain a noun is indicated in the text file by "@n" (no quotes are typed), while a past tense verb is indicated by "@t" and a present-tense verb by "@v". During the party, the computer presents the list of words by type, then displays the completed story with the blanks filled in by the responses from the guests. If the story turns out to be especially good, it can be printed or the merged file can be saved. Enjoy!!! Setting up the input file Use any text editor or word processor you like to create the input "story", so long as your editor can output a straight ASCII file with no control characters, and with lines terminated by the carriage return (ASCII 13), line feed (ASCII 10) sequence. - Page 1 - ALFIE Documentation Blanks to be filled in within the text file are indicated by sequences of two or three characters of which the first must be "@". The second character determines the "type" of word: noun, verb, adjective, etc., which the computer will ask for to fill in the blank. The following is the list of standard type codes recognized by the program. @a Adjective @b animal ("Beast") @c Color @d aDverb @e Expression (e.g., "Ods Bodkin" or "Gadzooks") @f Flavor (sour, yucky, etc.) @F Female person @l pLace @M Male person @n singular Noun @o Odor @p Plural noun @P Person @t verb, past Tense @v Verb, present tense @V "ing" form of Verb, e.g. walking @# number In some cases, the above list of standard types will not be specific enough for a given blank in your story. For these cases, ALFIE allows you to define three "special" types with the codes @s1 through @s3. "Special" type codes aren't required at all, but if one or more are used, the prompt text the computer will use in asking for the word must be defined on the first one to three lines of the text file. For example, to add the special types "a vegetable" and "an emotion", the first two lines of the story must appear as follows: @s1a vegetable @s2an emotion "Special" prompts are limited to 30 characters, and are terminated by the carriage return-linefeed sequence (what the computer normally produces when you hit the Enter key). In the above example, when the computer encounters @s1 in the main body of the story, it will prompt the guests with the message "Please type in a vegetable"; when it encounters @s2, it will prompt "Please type in an emotion". If you'd like to force the first lower-case letter in the response to be capitalized, use the "%" character instead of the "@" character in the code. This feature is good for fillins in titles and starting sentences. Obviously, neither the "@" nor the "%" character may appear in the main text. - Page 2 - ALFIE Documentation When you're entering the main story line, insert the type code just as if you were typing a word, surrounded by blanks. If, for example, you enter See the @n run! and the guests enter "dog" at run time, the line in the final story will read See the dog run! If, on the other hand, you enter See the@nrun! the final product will read as follows: See thedogrun! This is usually not the intended outcome, although it can be used creatively for some special effects. For example, See the @ns run! produces the final output See the dogs run! without requiring you to use the @p (plural noun) type code. Terminate each line with the "Enter" (carriage return- linefeed) sequence. These can be inserted at any convenient position, since the computer reformats the text after inserting responses in place of the type codes to make sure it fits in an 80-column screen. Because of this reformatting, if you want blank lines to appear in the final story you must enter into the text file one more blank line than the number you want. For example, to have one blank line in the final story, enter two blank lines in the text file at that position. Also, even though it's good style to leave two spaces between a period and the beginning of the next sentence normally, this may cause a blank space at the beginning of a new line in ALFIE, so it should be avoided. After experimenting a bit, you'll be able to tell how often and where in the text that fillins should be left to maximize the possibilities for hilarity. It's usually (but not always) a good idea to space fillins several words apart, since consecutive random words tend to read as gibberish. Where do you get "stories" to use as a basis for the game? All sorts of articles work well -- horoscopes, advice columns, advertisements, even recipes! Just pick something short (at first) and try it on an unsuspecting friend. - Page 3 - ALFIE Documentation Running the game Once you have a number of input files set up, you're ready for an evening's entertainment. Seat one of your guests at the computer and enter ALFIE. As usual, all input should be followed by the Enter key. The computer will first ask for the name of the input text file to use. Key in the name of one of your creations, and turn the keyboard over to your guest. For every location you set up with a type code, the computer will prompt for a word or words. (Two and three word responses with blanks in the middle are OK, by the way, but excessively long responses will confuse the reformatting procedure. Encourage your guest to use short two-word sequences if he'd like: "spare tire" is fine, but things like "antidisestablishmentarianism blivet" should be avoided.) Also, some words are inherently funnier than others. For example, there are more humorous possibilities in "rutabaga" and "slimy" than in "boy" and "nice", even though these words are of the same types (noun and adjective, respectively). Try to steer the group toward snappy, off-the- wall words and away from ordinary words used in everyday conversation. When the computer reaches the end of the text file, it will stop and tell you to press a key to display the story. Gather all your guests around the screen and have one read the story aloud. With some luck (and some skill on your part in choosing the text and fillin spaces and in guiding the fillins toward humorous words), your guests will spend the next few minutes falling over themselves laughing. If the story is especially good ("a keeper"), you can print it to LPT1 or save it to disk. In the latter case, BE SURE not to use the same file name in storing the merged story as you used in setting up the text file, or your original input will be overwritten and therefore not available for re-use. Supplied disk files The following is a listing of files supplied with ALFIE: ALFIE.EXE The program ALFIE.DOC This manual RECIPE.FIL A sample input file RECIPE.LIB Output from a sample session using RECIPE.FIL as input. PIRATE.FIL Another sample input file, illlustrating special word types and rated R PIRATE.LIB The resulting output file from the above - Page 4 - ALFIE Shareware Notification If you use ALFIE and find it enjoyable, your shareware contribution of $8.00 will be gratefully accepted. Registered users will receive future upgrades at no charge. Make checks payable to Barbara Baser and mail to: Cogitate, Inc. P. O. Box 413 Southfield, MI 48034 If you have suggestions for improvements or features you'd like to see in future versions, or if you find any program errors or run into problems, you can contact me on CompuServe (76703,4252), or Delphi (MSWIZ) detailing the problem you are encountering. You are encouraged to upload ALFIE.ZIP to other BBSs and on-line services; however, the archived file must be uploaded in its entirety and contain all the originally supplied files, documentation, and this shareware notice. ALFIE may not be sold as a commercial program; doing so is illegal and contrary to United States copyright law. ----------------end-of-author's-documentation--------------- Software Library Information: This disk copy provided as a service of The Public (Software) Library We are not the authors of this program, nor are we associated with the author in any way other than as a distributor of the program in accordance with the author's terms of distribution. 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