Glith (?) changing the initial appearance of a broken item

Authoring Inform 7
1

Could someone suggest how to change the initial appearance of an object if it is broken?

I have tried

if an item is broken:
        now the initial appearance of the item is now "shattered remains of [a item]";

but this results in ‘shattered remains of nothing’ rather than shattered remains of a vase.

Is this a glitch or have I gone about this the wrong way?

2

Your main problem (besides an extraneous ‘now’ that was likely just a typo) seems to be that you want i7 to resolve “[a item]” only once; but actually i7 remembers that substitution and re-resolves it every time it prints that text. So it will only grab that value of ‘item’ (and any other bracketed substituions) at the time of printing, by which point it may contain ‘nothing’ if it’s a temporary variable.

It’s important to remember this about i7’s string substitutions, and I had this problem plenty, but I forget now how I solved it. Just now I scanned my code to see if I could find an example, but it’s too needle-in-a-haystack-ish for me to search out casually. I’m sure someone else will be able point the way toward a workaround with less hassle. But it’s definitely not a glitch.

3

Hi,

Thanks for such a quick response -yes the second now is typo I didn’t bother to copy the code segment as doing so on an Android tablet is a pain.

So it looks like I need to somehow fix the text…hmm. no idea how to do that other than a mass of if (cases) :frowning:

4

You can use [an item described] to refer to the thing that’s currently being examined.

5

Aha! I found this old thread about this very subject – this is probably where I originally learned the workarounds – including Juhana’s – myself. (Man when do I get my eidetic-memory implants – I was promised implants and flying cars.)

6

Out of curiosity: the above seems to imply that you are coding i7 on an Android tablet, although possibly that’s not what you meant, but if it is, I’d love to know what are your workflows/tools for doing this? Did you just install the command-line compiler and use a text editor? Or, is there some Android-based IDE available? I’ve been wondering how well I could transition from coding primarily on my netbook to doing it on my tablet.

7

Hi,

There is a site called playfic. It allows you to write and test inform code and play other peoples stories. The only issue I have with using it that Android browsers are a bit of a Hobsons choice. As far as I can tell only Dolphin allows you to enter a tab directy in code, all the others use the tab key to move between windows.

I’ll have a look at the thread you suggested, thanks for the help.

8

Hmmm,

Having read these and the stuff on [an item described] I confess that by brain in beguinning to creak. I just lack the understanding hohum.

9

Well, this is probably more immediately readable anyway:

if an item (called the thing destroyed) is broken: now the initial appearance of the thing destroyed is "shattered remains of [a thing destroyed]";

10

No, that won’t work – you can’t use a temporary variable like that. (Unless you work through indexed text.)

Use “[item described]”.

11

Huh! Interesting. I had not even heard of playfic. Thanks!

Paul.