Section 18.7 - Closing Remarks on Program Small

There are lots of ways to extend this program; it's a small world, after all. You could add lots of specialized types of Item (door, key, weapon, etc.). You could add multi-playerness (this would involve finding a way to get data from multiple players, say a bindings to BSD-style sockets, and switching from Text_IO to an IO routine that would use the interface). You could permit dynamic creation and modification of the world at run-time (add a "wizard" command, and then add wizard-only commands like @create object, @destroy object, @view object, and @set object attribute=value). I haven't implemented independently active monsters, or a combat system, or magic; you might want one or more of them. Perhaps you could permit scripts to be executed at run-time.

The best way to understand Small is probably to look at it. There are several ways you can look at it:

• You can look at the source code for program Small as a set of hypertext documents; you can easily wander about the whole program in a little time, stopping and examining whatever parts interest you.
• You can view the source code as a single large ASCII file.
• You can download the source files as a "zip" file.

You are strongly encouraged to wander about and look at the hypertext source code for Small, but you do not have to. The Lovelace home page has a link to Small if you choose to look at it later.

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