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In my example below, I have a magazine, and when the player tries to take it, a coupon falls out. The idea is that once the coupon appears it appears in his inventory. My code doesn't quite work (probably the last line). Any suggestions?



Thanks in advance

The last line (the now-phrase) is not inside any rule, and phrases always have to be inside a rule to do their job.
Change the full stop after the output text to a semi-colon, and declare the coupon, and it'll work as expected.

(As it stands Inform takes the last line for an assertion: it creates a person called "Now the player" (!), who carries a thing called "Chaps Free Pit Beef Sandwich Coupon"; they're both off stage.)

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Man ska inte tro allt man tänker.

If you use an Instead phrase rather than After, the player won't ever be able to take the magazine. And since you probably don't want to make that a magical coupon-relocating machine, you should change the line to so that it never fires more than once.

You'll need to be careful with rules such as "After taking the magazine for the first time", because if taking the magazine for the first time ends in failure, this rule will never fire.

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"Will you stop breaking the fourth wall? It's costing me an absolute fortune to replace it!"

Right! So:

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Man ska inte tro allt man tänker.

Wow, I didn't realize that. That's a little counterintuitive. Thanks!

Thanks for the help. It's working for me now.

I like this, but it introduces another problem in the future. If we want to give the coupon to a cashier, who puts it in a cash register (potentially off-stage, so that we don't have to implement a cash register) we could open the magazine again and re-take the sandwich.

I don't know how complex we want to make this example or if my worries are justified, but here's what I have. It does seem a bit tangled, but hope it adds something.



Now we can throw the coupon off-stage easily.

You can just use the built-in property "handled" which will be set when the player first has the thing in their inventory.

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