Hey there,
I’m brand new to inform, working on my first game. I’ve got some questions if you experts wouldn’t mind indulging me. Sorry for the long post, but I saved them up so I didn’t flood the forum.
Question: Does this forum or the Inform community in general have a Discord?
I’m in the Narrative Games discord but they don’t have an Inform channel and I feel awkward asking Inform questions. Also it’s pretty quiet in there most of the time. It would be cool to hang out around people that are making IF and talking about it.
Question: Can I be more efficient with some of my declarations?
Just for example, I have some Instead rules laid out like so:
[code]Instead of going to the Triangle Hole by cog boat:
say “There’s no way you could haul the boat out of the canal. You’ll have to get out.”;
Instead of going to the Circular Hole by cog boat:
say “There’s no way you could haul the boat out of the canal. You’ll have to get out.”;
Instead of going to the Square Hole by cog boat:
say “There’s no way you could haul the boat out of the canal. You’ll have to get out.”;[/code]
This works fine, but instinctively I want to write something more along the lines of:
Instead of going to either the Triangle Hole, the Circular Hole, or the Square Hole by cog boat:
say "There's no way you could haul the boat out of the canal. You'll have to get out.";
This doesn’t work.
I tried the extension Alternatives by Eric Eve, but I couldn’t find a single scenario where I wanted to simplify what I had written into this format where it actually worked. I just feel like I am writing lots of inefficient little rules like this and I’m worried it’s because I don’t understand that there’s a better way to do it.
Question: What am I doing wrong here?
Rule for printing the description of a dark room (called the dark place) when the dark place is in the Waterway:
if the dark place is Canal3:
say "The waterway is dark. A faint glow of light emanates in the distance from a passage in the north wall." instead;
say "The waterway is dark.";
My idea here is that I have a number of rooms representing a canal. If it is dark, “The waterway is dark.” unless you are in Canal3, in which case the description mentions a lit passage to the north. The error message that kicks back here is:
I’ve also tried:
Rule for printing the description of a dark room when the room is in the Waterway:
and:
Rule for printing the description of a dark room when it is in the Waterway:
Question: In the Simple Chat extension by Mark Tilford, can you set a chat node to sc-inactive and sc-once at the same time?
I’m guessing not many people will know the answer to this, but when I tried it, it kicked back an error. I just wanted to set a chat node that was inactive by default, but once activated could only be used once.
Question: Is there a way to do exceptions?
For example:
The sun is a view. It is everywhere. EXCEPT X, Y, and Z.
It makes more sense to me to list exceptions to a rule when there are only one or two, rather than making a long list of places where it is. This isn’t a huge problem when you are creating a view or something like this but becomes a problem when you want to list a rule like:
“Instead of doing anything other than:”
Where you want to prevent the player from doing anything other than maybe two or three approved actions for a specific time. For example:
Instead of doing anything other than waiting during jackScene1:
say "Hey, I didn't say you could do that."
But I don’t want the player to only be able to wait. I would like the player to be able to look, wait, and push Jack off a cliff. All other functionality should fall under the “Instead of doing anything:” rule, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how to get any exceptions in there.
Question: What am I doing wrong here?
[code]Understand “ask [someone] about [any seen thing]” as interrogating it about. Interrogating it about is an action applying to two visible things.
Understand the commands “show” and “display” and “present” as something new.
Understand “show [something] to [someone]” or “display [something] to [someone]” or “present [something] to [someone]” as interrogating it about (with nouns reversed).
Understand “show [someone] [something]” as interrogating it about.
Carry out interrogating someone about something:
say “‘Sorry. I don[’]t know anything about that.'”;
Instead of interrogating Jack about an item listed in the Table of Jack Items:
say “[reply entry][paragraph break]”.
Table of Jack Items
item reply
“painted key” “Jack thinks it over. ‘You said you pulled it out of a painting?’”[/code]
I pretty much ripped this word for word out of an example in the documentation and I can’t get it to compile.
The example that I pulled it from is 297: Nameless.
Question: What am I doing wrong with my Glimmr include?
I was hoping to test out the Glimmr Automap extension. According to the documentation it says I just need to include Glimmr Automap and Glimmr Automap Tileset. When I do that, it kicks back the error:
I can’t really figure out what this is referring to.
I do have another extension, Glulx Text Effects which also references a Table of Common Color Values (continued), but that one compiles fine with no issues. Is there some kind of clash?
Phew, that’s a lot of questions. Sorry to drop a big one on ya, but like I said, I didn’t want to make a bunch of posts with all these nagging little things that I’ve been stumbling over. Any help is appreciated, even if it’s just pointing me in the right direction for something.
Thanks a bunch.