1My own (Billy's) observations: 2 3Inventory still contains some messages which cling onto the screen for far 4too long (such as "You add the item to your pack."). inv.c 5 6The messages which are sometimes given while you're travelling need to have 7a morewait() after them. aux3.c 8 9It would be really, really nice if confirmation would default to a no. It'll 10probably work to change ynq() in util.c to accept spaces and default to 11'quit', but I don't know whether that will work... I'll try, though. It 12seems to be working OK. There are some situations where a 'quit' response 13seems to waste a turn, though; I'll have to puzzle that out. 14 15It would be nice if I could control the duration of inventory mode. For 16example, when picking something up I'd like to automatically leave inventory 17mode as soon as the up-in-air slot is empty (of course, this would not be 18the case when the user had deliberately entered inventory mode, only when 19they'd been pushed into it). This isn't hard, but I have to find time... 20 21Wow. I just got a MAJOR patch donated which makes color possible on Unix 22ncurses systems. Tres cool. Now to make it work on MSDOS, which 23unfortunately can't do color anymore. If this can be done, I'm going to be 24able to postpone rewriting Omega's color 'graphics' (text, actually) system 25and get down to actually fixing problems and adding stuff. Confirmation! 26It works, and works reasonably well. It's not perfect -- the new system is 27something of a hack, and doesn't set up things like bright backgrounds 28(although it uses them, which makes things blink), but adding it makes the 29DOS code identical to the Unix code, which allows me to remove a huge 30amount of #ifdef code. Yay! This also makes the DOS version work under NT, 31which is a great victory. Hack or not, this patch just made my job a LOT 32more fun. Now I can concentrate on fixing the gameplay and later on writing 33a _REAL_ display subsystem (graphics, text, whatever), and I can skip 34worrying about fixing a broken subsystemm. 35 36I've just changed the license from its former status, which was essentially 37"don't make any money off of this, and ask my permission before you change 38this" to the GNU Library GPL. This change has two purposes: first, to make 39it easier for programmers to change Omega (by not being _required_ to ask 40permission); and second, to make it possible to distribute later expansions 41to Omega without source code, so that puzzles and secret levels could be 42kept secret. I have not included any clauses prohibiting making money from 43Omega; I believe that the (L)GPL gives sufficient incentive against that, 44while still allowing for value-added work, such as tech support and 45(profitable) CDROM distribution. There are two important things to me: 46first, that people get to enjoy Omega for free; and second, that people get 47to make additions to Omega without having to release all the puzzles in 48those additions. 49 50In case you're wondering, I do have specific permission from Laurence to 51make this license change. Laurence, if you have any problems with any 52aspect of this license, let me know and I'll post the correction. 53 54Future plan: modernize the source code by using a K&R-to-ANSI converter and 55going over it with a fine-toothed comb. Are there any objections? Any 56non-ANSI systems still out there? 57