[anything] stymied by containers?

Authoring Inform 7
1

I have an action:

barring is an action applying to one thing. understand "bar [anything]" as barring.
report barring something:
	say "bar [the noun].";

But if I enter “bar very small rock” when the very small rock is inside a container, the game tells me the container isn’t open.

This is an apparent limitation I wasn’t previously aware of. Am I doing something wrong? Or is there a work-around?

EDIT: Okay I figured that out (reaching inside rules), but that just brings up another question: can the reaching inside rules be modified for other actors? It doesn’t look like

Rule for reaching inside a container while barring:
	allow access;

will then allow

   try the gardener barring the radishes;

to succeed.

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This is a very annoying quirk of terminology.

If an action applies to “one thing”, that means one touchable thing. If it applies to “one visible thing”, it doesn’t have to be touchable.

Since barring is “an action applying to one thing”, by default the very small rock needs to be touchable, and the reaching inside rules are invoked to see if it is.

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As a side note, part of why this confusing terminology has stuck around is that nobody’s been able to think of a clearer way to put it. Being able to explicitly say “touchable thing” (as the opposite of “visible thing”) is the best I can think of; then the “one thing” version could be gradually deprecated in favor of touchable things and visible things.

4
  • an object
  • an accessible object
  • a carried thing
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5

The thing to note is the way that you’ve constructed your reaching inside rule. You seem to want:

Rule for reaching inside while an actor barring:
	allow access.

By default any action-based condition assumes that the actor is the player. If you want the condition to evaluate true when the actor is an NPC, you have to specify a wildcard for the actor by explicitly saying an actor <action name>.

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Yes! I was trying to do this:

    allow access.

Thanks for straightening me out.

7

This hasn’t been marked as solved – was there some other aspect about the issue that hasn’t been worked out?

Just FYI – Draconis’s point about the phrasing of the action declaration is worth considering. The reaching inside rules should only be preventing/allowing access when the action requires an implicitly or explicitly touchable noun. If you explicitly declare a visible noun, then only visibility is required, reaching inside won’t apply, and the [any thing] syntax will ensure that scope is adjusted as necessary for success.

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