Designing Games with Xconq - Other Forms

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## Other Forms

GDL forms in this section are those that do not really fit anywhere else.

- Default Display Style
- The Random State
- Debugging Support

### Default Display Style

The exact style of display depends on the user interface and on user preferences, but for some games, you may want to encourage a particular style by making it be the default.

GlobalVariable: `unseen-char` str

This variable is a string whose first character will be used to represent unexplored terrain. If the string consists of two characters, the second char will be scattered throughout a field of the first char. Defaults to `" ?"`. (At present, this is used only by the curses interface.)

GlobalVariable: `unseen-color` str

This variable is the name of a color that will be used to represent unexplored terrain. Defaults to `"black"`.

GlobalVariable: `grid-color` str

This variable is the name of a color to use to draw the cell-separating grid. Defaults to `"dark-gray"`.

GlobalVariable: `unit-name-color` str

This variable is the name of a color to use when drawing unit names and numbers. Defaults to `"white"`.

GlobalVariable: `contour-color` str

This variable is the name of a color to use to draw the elevation contour lines. Defaults to `"saddle-brown"`.

GlobalVariable: `meridian-color` str

This variable is the name of a color to use to draw meridians of latitude and longitude. Defaults to `"black"`.

GlobalVariable: `frontline-color` str

This variable is the name of a color to use to draw country borders against other countries. Defaults to `"red"`.

GlobalVariable: `country-border-color` str

This variable is the name of a color to use to draw country borders against unpopulated areas. Defaults to `"pink"`.

GlobalVariable: `shoreline-color` str

This variable is the name of a color to use to draw shorelines (liquid adjacent to non-liquid terrain). Defaults to `"blue"`.

GlobalVariable: `bigicons` t/f

When true, this variable says to draw unit images to fill the entire cell rather than the "unit box" within the cell.

TableTT: `drawable-terrain` t1 t2 -> t/f

This table is true when terrain of type t1 should be drawn over terrain of t2. In practice, you would set this to `false` to suppress the drawing of terrain that extends into an inappropriate types, such as river connections protuding into lakes or seas. Defaults to `true`.

MaterialTypeProperty: `resource-icon` n

This is a value between 1 and 4 that indicates that a material type is to be drawn in each cell indicating that an advanced unit is producing material in that cell. The value is used by the Mac interface to select one of several icons.

### The Random State

It is useful to be able to restart the random number generator consistently.

GlobalVariable: `random-state` n

This variable is the state of the random number generator. If this is not used, then the initial state of the random number generator will be set in a system-dependent way.

### Debugging Support

Form: `print` value

This form prints to a console or file (depending on the interface) the object value, in GDL syntax.

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