In a scene, the player will get some new text every turn, with a possible “game effect” activity on that same turn that may change, for example, a description to acknowledge the recent new information from the text. Here is the setup of the system:
Every turn when (scene) is happening:
repeat through Table of (scene) Events:
if there is a statement entry:
say "[statement entry][line break]";
if there is a game effect entry:
carry out the game effect entry activity;
blank out the whole row;
break.
And the Table of (scene) Events will have a “statement” column for text, and a “game effect” column for activities.
The problem for me is that I need for there to be a gap in the events where nothing happens, neither statement nor game effect. However, if I make an actual blank row, the above code will not acknowledge the gap and go on to the next row for that turn.
My solution is to create a “null” activity which does nothing, but can be put into the game effect column as a placeholder like this:
Table of (scene) Events
statement game effect
"(statement 1)" effect1
"(statement 2)" --
-- null
"(statement 3)" effect2
However, this leaves the question of how I would accomplish a gap in a coding situation where there was no game effect column, like the “Day One” Documentation Example. Since a statement of “” still causes an odd extra empty line in the game, I can’t use it as a placeholder. Instead, I could make a new “placeholder” row which has values irrelevant to the game in its column, like this:
Table of (scene) Events
statement placeholder
"(statement 1)" --
"(statement 2)" --
-- true
"(statement 3)" --
The “true” is merely a random value so the row isn’t blank.
Are these the ideal ways of handling these issues? They work, but seem awkward.