intfiction.org

You can define multiple actions as a kind of action (see Section 7.15 of the Manual) and then use an instead rule which refers to the kind of action.

Robert Rothman

Well, first of all, I'd name the action "grabbing" if only to maintain consistency.

Secondary, you can easily add conditions to an instead statement, like so:

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~Björn Paulsen

Thanks for the post. I had to add:



To get it to work, but all is well now.

And any idea why Inform requires this? (assuming I'm doing everything correctly that is) It seems odd that Inform can infer things so easily when creating rooms, yet setting up an action requires two lines of:



Seems like the game could figure it out with just one line of code by assuming most actions work by having "ing" taken from them.


^^^ Should just work in my mind. Does it?


^^^^ Better yet, just Grab it as above would simplify things.

I'm not complaining about Inform as much as trying to figure out its reasoning.


Thanks,

Tom / Hardwater

If you remove -ing from "grabbing" you get "grabb".

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Vorple UI library — Beta testing site — Blog

That's good.

I wanted as compact an example as possible so I didn't add the understand statement, but yeah, you do have to define the vocabulary of actions separately. Juhana gives one reason for why Inform 7 works like that. Another reason is because the Understanding machinery is flexible enough to handle variations, so you'd frequently have to define synonyms and preferred interpretations for your new actions anyhow.

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~Björn Paulsen

WI 12.8 explains this design decision:

I've also written this:



I wouldn't want Inform to automatically try to understand "keyword [text]" as keywording, because I'd want the input "Keyword" to be understood as keywording "keyword", not as keywording "".

I am using Reactable Quips by Michael Martin (version 10) with plenty o' success for my NPCs. Now I am running into a hurdle where I want to have a handheld computer that the player can carry with them and ask computer about [awesome thing here].

Only people can be asked questions, so if I make the computer a person then it creates odd situations with the parser such as not being able to pick them up.

Is there a way to get Reactable Quips to function with an inanimate object? I've been trying to use the recipe of "9.6. Reading Matter", but sticking to the "ask" command still gives inanimate warnings.


Thanks,

Tom / Hardwater

At the Inform 6 level Inform only checks whether things are "animate"; so, if no Inform 7 code intervenes (I don't think it does in the Standard Rules – at least the ask and tell grammar allows you to address things in general rather than just people), you can do this:

or, more generally,

Then animate things can be asked and told about topics.

But since the rules and tables of the Reactable Quips extension are defined for people (not for things in general), you'd still have to go into that extension and change "person", "people", and "someone" to "thing", "things" and "something", to be able to use it when addressing animate things.

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Man ska inte tro allt man tänker.

Honestly, rather than hacking apart the extension and I6-level values, it may be simpler to make the computer a person and write exceptions allowing it to be picked up and carried like other things.