After some consideration I’ve decided to go with the four box method from Text Format 3. With that decided, I’m ready to figure out what I need to actually program for this.
I think I’ll make a TextWorld class which contains the four text areas and handles the input and output. The text areas themselves will have to be expanded from the textField base class, so that I can add scroll bars.
The TextWorld will also contain a list of rooms linked by exits and the locations, objects, and mobiles contained therein, which will populate the four text areas.
There’ll need to be a room class, a general thing class, and subclasses of thing for exit, location, and mobile. Each one will have to have its own Context Menu object, so there’ll need to be a class for that. The Mobile will have a holder for a behavior object. Each behavior script will be a different object. That’ll define how each object behaves apart from their context menu interactions.
That should be enough to get me started. After that I can start experimenting.