Michael Frantz read my moaning and groaning about Javascript in the previous essay and kindly offered a simple suggestion for how I might solve my problem. It worked, and I have made goodly progress on the programming issues. I can display the main text as well as the options, and each option has its own radio button. I have also been able to change the font of the option text, although this required an odd hack. This code does not work:
a.innerHTML += '<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 1.2em;">’;
a.innerHTML += encounterList[5].Option[i].OptionText;
a.innerHTML += '</span><br/><br/>’;
This code does work:
a.innerHTML += '<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS"; font-size: 1.2em;">’+ encounterList[5].Option[i].OptionText + '</span><br/><br/>';
Thus, the string line addition operator (+=) does NOT do the same thing that the simple addition operator (+); chalk it up to one more idiocy of programming. {Moan} {Groan}
On another front, I’ve been researching Celtic legends so that I can include them in my encounters. I’ll have a number of encounters in which bards come to Camelot to tell the legends. This process was not at all what most people think. Bards were highly trained and memorized massive amounts of information, but they didn’t memorize it word-for-word. Instead, they had mnemonic algorithms that allowed them to closely approximate the original. The verbal mutations this permitted resulted in a slow evolution of the stories. The modern versions of the tales are not at all like the versions that they were using in the sixth century. Obviously, there was no Lancelot—he was a French hero added by the French bards about 600 years later. Of course, they had plenty of tales of heroes, but Arthur (obviously) wasn’t one of them. It may be that Gawaine was one of the original heroes. We know that the Green Knight was a medieval addition. The original Grail was not a chalice; it was a cornucopia that literally supplied endless food. The Fisher King definitely goes way back, but the version we know seems to have undergone radical change because it’s dramatically rather garbled. And of course, the Round Table and the knights in shining armor is not part of the original stories. (In fact, one scholar things that “Round Table” was originally a mistranslation of “round shield”.) I’m still trying to verify the authenticity of one legend about a woman teacher of warriors, and I definitely want to include something about the woman guarding a fountain.
I’ve got a bit more than fifty encounters for Act I, the purpose of which is to introduce the player to the characters, the society, and the overall situation. I need to add encounters telling more about the other characters. Then I need to move on to Act II, in which the player begins military operations against the Saxons. Here the player’s skill as a general will be tested. Act II will end when Mordred revolts.