E-Visiclues! is a Javascript system that emulates the old INFOCOM hint books for video games. The basic premise was that they reveal only the amount of help that a person needs,
and no more. The books were designed using 'invisible ink'. A player would look up a topic and then run the special marker over the book to reveal the first hint. If still stuck they would then
reveal the second hint, so on. This gave a player a gentle nudge in the right direction, thus giving them a chance to figure the solution out on their own, and only giving the exact answer when the
person has completly given up.
HOW THIS SCRIPT IS DIFFERENT FROM OTHERS ON THE NET
As far as I know, there IS nothing quite like it on the net. When designing a help site for the video game I wrote, I realized an electronic 'Invisiclues' is the type of hint site I
wanted to make. I figured someone out there must have made this script by now, but I could not find it anywhere. The closest I came was a script that gave multiple hints, but it would only support
one question per page. I was turned off by the idea of spreading out my help site over the 23 or so pages I would need (and this was a VERY small game) just for the hints, so I went to some forums to
see if anyone could modify it for me. No one showed any interest in helping, and I could not reach the original writer as all his emails were out of date. So finally I set out to re-design the script
on my own. At this time I had no real knowledge of Javascript at all. (I still don't really). Luckily it is similar to basic and pascal, both of which I have had some experience.
Anyway, after struggling to understand it all, here it is! I believe it to be far more faithful to the look and feel of the original 'Invisiclues' books, and will save a vast amount of web pages in
the long run. Like it's ancestor, this script is completly free do download, use and distribute, provided the appropriate header remains intact. I have only tested it with Mozilla and Internet
Explorer, but I don't see why it wouldn't work in any browser, provided it supports a semi-recent version of Java. It is completly customizable to suit you own needs. just to avoid any potential
legal hassels, I feel obligated to say use at your own risk, though it seems entirely stable to me.
NEW!
Visi-clues Ralphmerridew from the AVAST IF system forum was kind enough to take my code and re-write it. It's more streamlined and easier to enter your questions and answers. It will also keep all the previous hints for a particular question in the box until you go to a new question.
One issue with this is that if your answers are larger than the box, a scroll bar pops up. Problem is, if you then add a new hint, the scrollbar jumps back to the top of the box. You can work around this by
1) Modifying the code so it doesn't save old answers
2) Make the textbox bigger, and/or your answers shorter, or...
3) use the old code.
The issue is being worked on. In the meantime, however the old code still has some functionality the new one doesn't, so I've decided to post both for now. Pick your flavor and enjoy.
CLICK HERE to see a sample page and/or obtain the script for yourself.
CLICK HERE to see a sample page and/or obtain the NEW version of the script for yourself.
HOW TO GET IT, AND HOW TO USE IT
click on one of the links above, and evaluate both versions. Decide which is more to your liking. Then right-click and select view page source. Copy the source code into your own html page. Be sure the appropriate bits go in the heading, and the other bits go in the body,
otherwise it won't work. Adjust the noted values (look for the lines starting with
