Begin a new scene after x number of turns

Authoring Inform 7
1

I want a new scene to begin after a fixed number of player turns but I can’t get it to compile.

[code]Scene A is a scene. Scene A begins when play begins.
Scene B is a scene.

When the Scene A begins:
Scene B begins in 25 turns from now.
[/code]
For some reason the compiler rejects this. I tried different ways of saying it, like “after 25 turns” and others, but I have not been able to get this to get accepted by the compiler at all.

Alternatively I could also write something along the lines of

[code]Scene A is a scene. Scene A begins when play begins.
Scene B is a scene. Scene B begins when Scene A ends.

When the Scene A begins:
Scene A ends after 25 turns.
[/code]
But that is not working either.

Can someone please tell me what I am doing wrong here?

2

It’s AFAIK impossible to declare the ending of a scene in a rule like that. What you could do is to hook it to a world state:

[code]Scene A is a scene. Scene A begins when play begins.
Scene B is a scene. Scene B begins when Scene A ends.

Scene A ends when the time since the entire game began is 9 minutes.[/code]

or simply

Scene B is a scene. Scene B begins when the time since the entire game began is 10 minutes.

and that would accomplish the same thing.

3

You can tie the scenes together as well:

Scene A is a scene. Scene A begins when play begins. Scene B is a scene. Scene B begins when the time since Scene A began is 25 minutes.
(“The entire game” is a normal scene just like any other, except that it starts automatically.)

25 minutes is of course slightly different from 25 turns, but if you don’t use the internal clock it should function as expected.

4

Isn’t it kind of strange that you can work with the turn count everywhere else in the game but not when it comes to defining scenes? I would have thought using turns is a fundamental element of adventure games, actually more so than time or real-time based elements.