The code I have below is sufficient but obviously hacky for what I want to do, namely, I want to be able to refer to a non-person as “him” or “them” after examining them, in the way you can say “x annoying encyclopedia britannica kid.ask him about report due on space” … but I can’t figure a simple way to assign genders to non-persons, since they don’t have the female/male property.
The code below does so but obviously introduces problems if an actual person is in the room. Example 298 gives me some clue how to do things but I don’t understand how to define the last interacted object, or the term Inform uses for it–and I don’t know where to look.
[code]“biff” by andrew
room 1 is a room.
the statue of Millard Fillmore is scenery in room 1. description of Millard Fillmore is “Bingo!”
the cut-out paper doll chain is a thing in room 1. description of doll chain is “It works!”
Biff is a person. Biff is in room 1. description of Biff is “Uh oh! Biff doesn’t like you staring at him. He’s going to beat you up once this game is over. Worse, test command 2 doesn’t work.”
understand “him” and “man” as Millard Fillmore when Millard Fillmore is visible.
understand “them” as doll chain when doll chain is visible.
test himthem with “x fillmore/x him/x biff/x him/x paper doll/x them”
[/code]
I think you can just say “The statue can be female or male. The statue is female.” to get the pronouns registering.
To have “them” register the doll-chain, say “The doll-chain is plural-named.” However, this cuts off “it”. I don’t have an easy way for an object to register for singular and plural pronouns.
To set the/-- pronoun it to (O - an object): (- LanguagePronouns–>3 = {O}; -).
To set the/-- pronoun him to (O - an object): (- LanguagePronouns–>6 = {O}; -).
To set the/-- pronoun her to (O - an object): (- LanguagePronouns–>9 = {O}; -).
To set the/-- pronoun them to (O - an object): (- LanguagePronouns–>12 = {O}; -).
Room 1 is A Room.
The statue of Millard Fillmore is scenery in room 1. The description of Millard Fillmore is “Bingo!”.
The cut out paper doll chain is a thing in room 1. The description of doll chain is “It works!”.
After examining Millard Fillmore:
set the pronoun him to the noun.
After examining cut out paper doll chain:
set pronoun it to the noun;
set pronoun them to the noun.
Biff is a person in room 1. The description of biff is “Uh oh! Biff doesn’t like you staring at him. He’s going to beat you up once this game is over. Worse, test command 2 doesn’t work.”.
Test me with “x fillmore / x him / x biff / x him / x paper doll / x it / x them”.[/code]
Thanks to both suggestions–for some reason I thought female and male were reserved for people/animals only. I don’t know why. It seems like a stupid mental block I placed for myself. Sadly, there will be others.
It’s also always good to have an inform 6 approach to the situation. Every time I realize I don’t know what I’m doing about it but like how clever it is, it pushes me closer to learning it, and that’s a good thing. I mean, it took me a while before I really started poking into Graham Nelson’s standard rules, but I’m finally comfortable with that. And an example like this helps me know what to google/search for in any Inform 6 coding examples.
Double genders is an issue that pops up now and then. I once wrote an extension to allow objects to have two genders at the same time (so that a horse or a statue can be both “her” and “it”). You find it here: [url]https://intfiction.org/t/pronouns-it-and-he-for-the-same-object/3016/1]. (You need to change the name of the file to ‘Second Gender.i7x’ before installing it.) Perhaps it’s time to submit it to the extensions page.
The built-in extension Plurality by Emily Short lets you declare the doll-chain to be ‘ambiguously plural’, and that will make it respond to both “them” and “it”.
Nope, I’m wrong. The statue also needs to be animate, and this is not directly accessible from I7.
This works:
A thing can be animate.
The animate property translates into I6 as "animate".
The statue can be female or male.
The statue is animate female.
This gives the statue animate-style responses to several actions, of course. (E.g. “There is no reply” instead of “You can only do that to something animate.”)
To set the/-- pronoun it to (O - an object): (- LanguagePronouns–>3 = {O}; -).
To set the/-- pronoun him to (O - an object): (- LanguagePronouns–>6 = {O}; -).
To set the/-- pronoun her to (O - an object): (- LanguagePronouns–>9 = {O}; -).
To set the/-- pronoun them to (O - an object): (- LanguagePronouns–>12 = {O}; -).
Room 1 is A Room.
The statue of Millard Fillmore is scenery in room 1. The description of Millard Fillmore is “Bingo!”.
The cut out paper doll chain is a thing in room 1. The description of doll chain is “It works!”.
After examining Millard Fillmore:
set pronoun it to the noun;
set the pronoun him to the noun.
After examining cut out paper doll chain:
set pronoun it to the noun;
set pronoun them to the noun.
Biff is a person in room 1. The description of biff is “Uh oh! Biff doesn’t like you staring at him. He’s going to beat you up once this game is over. Worse, test command 2 doesn’t work.”.
Test me with “x fillmore / x it / x him / x paper doll / x it / x them”.[/code]
Yes, you’re quite right, of course.
(I was only referring to the 2 ways of making an object animate, so I didn’t mean to imply anything about your code.)
