actor name substitution not working (adv3Lite)

[jford]

With Harry safely off to beta-land, I’ve shifted gears to a new scenario.

I have a non-player character with a generic name (other test subject) until the game player does some things, then the NPC gets a proper name.

The Adv3Lite Tutorial offers code for making this work (The Art of Conversation, Queries and Suggestions)…

When Angela tells the player character her name, we want her displayed name to change from ‘the flight attendant’ to ‘Angela’. To do that we need both to change her name property and to set proper = true (to indicate that she now has a proper name), so that she’s not referred to as ‘the Angela’. It will be convenient to define a makeProper() method that does this for us and then returns her name:

angela: Actor ‘flight attendant; statuesque young; woman angela; her’
@planeFront
"She’s a statuesque and by no means unattractive young woman. "

shouldNotAttackMsg = 'That would be cruel and unnecessary. '

globalParamName = 'angela'

makeProper
{
    proper = true;
    name = 'Angela';
    return name;
}

;

In my code, it looks like this…

// other candidate character
otherAstronaut: Actor 'other test subject;other candidate' 
    "The test subject is approximately your age, with a trim, physically fit
    physique not unlike your own.<.p>"
    
    globalParamName = 'otherAstronaut'
    person = 3
    contType = Carrier
    
    setName
    {
        proper = true;
        name = 'Alexi';
        return name;
    }
;    

It does not work as expected. After I call setName, when I enter talk to Alexi in the game window, I get…

talk to Alexi

You see no alexi here.

But if I use the character’s generic name I get…

talk to other test subject

Alexi does not respond.

What am I missing?

Jerry

[jford]

Well, that was fast…found it.

I needed to add the new name to the character vocabulary, by adding this to the setName function…

addVocabWord('Alexi', MatchNoun);

Now it works.

[Eric_Eve]

That’s right. In the Angela example in the Tutorial, ‘angela’ was already in Angela’s vocab property, so it didn’t need adding in the makeProper() method, whereas your set-up was slightly different.

Your solution is fine, and I’m glad you managed to find it so fast. An alternative would have been to do this:

setName()
{
    replaceVocab('Alexei; other test; subject candidate man');
    return name;
}