Character suddenly not answering one question

Authoring Inform 7
1

I have a character named CJ … Previously , when I “ask cj about key” he would respond " oh you mean this"… suddenly , he doesn’t recognize this question…

my source looks like this :

Instead of asking CJ about “access”: say “’ sure, its our phone number”.

Instead of asking CJ about “key”: say “‘you mean this?’”.

Instead of asking CJ about “the key”: say “‘you mean this?’”. CJ holds the small siliver Yale key

The can’t take people’s possessions rule does nothing

Instead of asking CJ about “greg”: say “‘hey, have you seen him?’”.

CJ answers about “access” and answers about “greg”… but no longer answers about “key”…

ask cj about key
There is no reply

I can still take the key from CJ, but when I ask about it - it somehow stopped working… any ideas ?

2

It seems to work. Are you sure there’s nothing else in your code that’s messing things up?

Trying the ACTIONS and RULES debugging commands may help diagnose the problem.

3

So I created a new file with just this below as my source… It lets me take the key… but again, if I ask CJ about the key, no reply…

“testcj” by James Fahey

Include Conversation Framework by Eric Eve.
Include Conversation Responses by Eric Eve.

The Driveway is a room. " The Driveway is wet from the rain. The Garage door is open and you can see two cars inside"

In the Driveway is a man called CJ.

Instead of asking CJ about “the key”: say “‘you mean this key?’”. CJ holds the small siliver Yale key

The can’t take people’s possessions rule does nothing

4

So you’re including Conversation Framework. That’s what’s causing the problem.

With CF, there are two relevant commands: “ask [someone] about [a text]”, which maps to the usual “asking it about” action, and “ask [someone] about [any known thing]”, which maps to the CF action “quizzing it about”.

Your command “ask CJ about the key” is being interpreted as the “quizzing it about” action, because “the key” matches an item in the game. (The ACTIONS command can tell us what action is being attempted.) So your rule should be

Instead of quizzing CJ about the key: say "'you mean this key?'".

(But it you’re intercepting all conversation attempts with “Instead” rules, then there’s not much point in including Conversation Framework in the first place.)

5

ahhh ! you got it - jrb ! not first time you saved me from going bonkers… thanks so much

6

Sidenote: “The can’t take people’s possessions rule does nothing” completely disables that rule - which means that the player will be able to grab anything any NPC in the game is holding at any time.

This might be what you want. However, you can disable it selectively:

The can't take people's possessions rule does nothing when the noun is the key and the key is carried by CJ.