People as Parts

Authoring Inform 7
1

I think I found a really clever solution for an NPC who always follows the PC everywhere: Just make the NPC a part of the PC. (You are allowed to say that people are parts of other things, including people. It’s gross. But it comes in handy.) I like this a lot better than I like writing a rule for moving that NPC around every time the PC moves.

As it turns out, the block-taking-a-person “I don’t suppose the NPC will care for that” rule supersedes the block-taking-a-part “That seems to be a part of yourself” rule, which works great for me.

I anticipate, though, that there are other default responses for parts of things that might be really confusing if they show up describing a person. Can you think of any? Or, can you think of any other problems that might result from attaching an NPC to the PC?

2

Puts me in mind of this thread. I have nothing actually useful to add.

3

If I might ask, is there a reason why you wouldn’t just “Every turn: now NPC is in the location.”? You could set a flag to turn it on or off, as necessary.

4

The every-turn rule is slightly more CPU-costly. It wouldn’t be significant slower, even in a low-end interpreter, but I often look for the cheaper solution out of habit. (Sust so that I don’t paint myself into a corner, say, when the game bloats into having a dozen NPCs.)