NDW
  • Home
  • Games
    • All Games
    • Game Bundles
    • Shelved Games
  • Extra
    • Mini-Games
    • Soundtracks
    • Focal
    • Press Room
    • Resources
    • Amelia Darnell
  • Blog
  • Shop
  • NDW
  • Home
  • Games
    • All Games
    • Game Bundles
    • Shelved Games
  • Extra
    • Mini-Games
    • Soundtracks
    • Focal
    • Press Room
    • Resources
    • Amelia Darnell
  • Blog
  • Shop
  • NDW
Search

NDW Blog

The "Source" of Trouble

9/7/2022

0 Comments

 
Hello fellow sleuths! Have you ever wondered what the programming of the Nancy Drew games looks like? Let's have a little glance at some of it!
Actually, before we have a look, I'm going to give you a little bit of a history lesson! In the very early days of HeR Interactive, lead programmer Wayne Sikes created a scripting language called HIF which was a proprietary language developed and used solely by HeR for their games. HIF was first introduced with The Vampire Diaries, then carried over and further developed with the Nancy Drew series. Unfortunately, it was very clunky and difficult to use. In 2008, programmer Peter Christiansen introduced a new language to HeR which was easy to learn and very versatile: Lua. Lua is a common scripting language in today's world and is used by several game programmers. It was used for Nancy Drew games 19-32 as well as both Dossier games.

I want to show off a little bit of some of the HIF code as a taster into the early days of ND. This particular snippet is from Nancy Drew: Message in a Haunted Mansion. See if you can figure out where in the game this might occur:
Picture
Fascinating stuff! This piece of code is being viewed in Microsoft Visual Studio. Notice how all the text is white. If this were a common scripting language, such as C++ or Lua, there would be colors all over the place signifying that parts of it are being affected by certain words, symbols, and numbers (if that makes sense). To give a better idea of what I mean, let's take a look at this code snippet from Nancy Drew: The Deadly Device. Try and decipher which part of the game it belongs to:
Picture
This snippet is a little easier to figure out. As I mentioned earlier, this segment of code has a lot more color. It also has collapsible dividers which can help keep things organized and allows the script to be "minimized" into specific branches.

What do you think of all this? Does any of it make sense to you? Or does it just look like a jumbled mess of words, letters, and numbers? I personally really love looking through all of this and find it all super fascinating. It's really interesting to get into the minds of the programmers and see how they figured out how to program certain puzzles and scenes. I must admit, there is one set of script files that I'm particularly excited to talk about... but I'll save that for another time! For now, I'll keep you wondering what I have in store.

That about wraps up today's post. Until next time detectives!

Huw
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    April 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    December 2023
    October 2023
    July 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2020
    October 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    December 2016
    November 2016

    Categories

    All
    Amateur Sleuth Blog
    Amelia Darnell
    Behind The Scenes
    Beta
    Blog
    Books
    Collaboration
    Concept Art
    Confidential
    Dare To Play Blog
    Digital River
    Easter Eggs
    FastSpring
    HeR Employees
    Her Interactive
    LEGO
    Livestream
    McKenzie & Co. More Friends
    Mega Marathon
    Merchandise
    Mobile Mysteries: Shadow Ranch
    Mystery Of The Seven Keys
    Nancy Drew: Alibi In Ashes
    Nancy Drew Books
    Nancy Drew: Codes And Clues
    Nancy Drew: Curse Of Blackmoor Manor
    Nancy Drew: Danger By Design
    Nancy Drew: Danger On Deception Island
    Nancy Drew Fans
    Nancy Drew: Ghost Dogs Of Moon Lake
    Nancy Drew: Ghost Of Thornton Hall
    Nancy Drew: Ghost Of Thornton Hall Mobile
    Nancy Drew: Last Train To Blue Moon Canyon
    Nancy Drew: Legend Of The Crystal Skull
    Nancy Drew: Message In A Haunted Mansion
    Nancy Drew: Midnight In Salem
    Nancy Drew Music
    Nancy Drew: Mystery Of The Seven Keys
    Nancy Drew News
    Nancy Drew: Sea Of Darkness
    Nancy Drew: Secret Of The Old Clock
    Nancy Drew: Secret Of The Scarlet Hand
    Nancy Drew: Secrets Can Kill
    Nancy Drew: Secrets Can Kill: Remastered
    Nancy Drew: Shadow At The Water's Edge
    Nancy Drew: Stay Tuned For Danger
    Nancy Drew: The Creature Of Kapu Cave
    Nancy Drew: The Deadly Device
    Nancy Drew: The Final Scene
    Nancy Drew: The Haunted Carousel
    Nancy Drew: The Haunting Of Castle Malloy
    Nancy Drew: The Phantom Of Venice
    Nancy Drew: The Secret Of Shadow Ranch
    Nancy Drew: The Shattered Medallion
    Nancy Drew: The Silent Spy
    Nancy Drew: Trail Of The Twister
    Nancy Drew: Treasure In The Royal Tower
    Nancy Drew: Warnings At Waverly Academy
    ND Projects
    NDW Website
    Outdoors
    Programming
    QnA
    Real Life Stuff
    Sale
    Secret
    Soundtracks
    StoryRetold
    Teaser
    The Case Of The Missing Clue
    The Vampire Diaries
    Twitch
    Unboxing
    Update
    Walkthroughs
    Wordpress Blog
    YouTube

    RSS Feed

Contact | Privacy Policy | Copyright | Sitemap
Created by Nancy Drew Walkthroughs. © All rights reserved.
  • Home
  • Games
    • All Games
    • Game Bundles
    • Shelved Games
  • Extra
    • Mini-Games
    • Soundtracks
    • Focal
    • Press Room
    • Resources
    • Amelia Darnell
  • Blog
  • Shop
  • NDW