additional screen messages outside of my says

Hello -

I’ve adapted this slightly from an earlier thread (thanks for the steal) regarding passwords and doors. Here I want the player to give the ‘password’ which is a persons name to a waiter so he can get a table. I am new to all of this so I might be going around the houses to get where I want. All constructive comments welcomed! Thanks

The dining car is a room.

Understand "Here/Dining/Car/Food/Menu/Table" or "dining car" as "[Food]"

Instead of asking the waiter about "[Food]": 
  say "The waiter smiles at you broadly, 'Hello sir, do you have a reservation?"; 
  now the waiter is apprehensive.

Instead of saying yes in the presence of an apprehensive waiter:  
    	say "You smile broadly, 'I do, yes' you reply.";
	now the command prompt is "Wonderful, what name is the reservation under sir? >";
	now the waiter is calm;
	continue the action.
	
Instead of saying no in the presence of an apprehensive waiter:
	say "Ahhh well I don't have any tables available for you. So sorry";
	now the waiter is calm.
	
After reading a command when the command prompt is "Wonderful, what name is the reservation under sir? >":
	if the player's command matches "Biggins" or the player's command matches "biggins": 
		say "Yes sir, please come this way. I believe we have a booth for you.";
		move the player to the booth;
		now the command prompt is ">";
	otherwise:
		say "Oh no, I don't have anything under that name.";
		now the command prompt is ">";
		reject the player's command.

The booth is a room. The booth is north of the dining car.

Now it works fine, and everything, however when the player responds to the waiter with yes/no i get an auto message (along with my actions and says) of

That was a rhetorical question.

and when the person arrives in the booth in the above scenario I get a
That’s not a verb I recognize.

any thoughts?

Thanks
xx

N

A good general strategy is to run your game, type “rules” and “actions,” and then go through your commands. That’ll show you which actions are being performed and which rules are firing, which might help you see where the extra rules are coming from.

Offhand, it looks to me as though “That was a rhetorical question” is a standard rule for saying no or saying yes, and that it’s happening because your “instead of saying yes…” rule contains “continue the action.” If you don’t need anything more to happen than what’s in your rule, you don’t need to continue the action.

Also, you don’t reject the player’s command when it matches “biggins,” so I think the game is trying to process biggins as a regular command, which makes it a verb it doesn’t recognize. Try adding “reject the player’s command” to that part of the if-then as well.

(You might also want to write a rule to block going north from the dining car.)

You can also drop the apprehensiveness property and use the “if the player consents” method. It forces the player to say either yes or no which may or may not be what you want.

Instead of asking the waiter about "[Food]": say "The waiter smiles at you broadly, 'Hello sir, do you have a reservation?"; if the player consents: say "You smile broadly, 'I do, yes' you reply."; now the command prompt is "Wonderful, what name is the reservation under sir? >"; otherwise: say "Ahhh well I don't have any tables available for you. So sorry".

Thank you all that did it! Teamwork!