Bizarre every turn bug

Authoring Inform 7
1

There’s a moment in my game where if you make one choice, everything keeps working. If you make the other choice, a bunch of every turn rules ceases to operate from that point on.

The every turn rules that fail are all unnamed, without rule names or extra qualification. They just say ‘Every turn: (do stuff)’

I noticed that if I added a qualification, the rules kept operating after the problem spot. IE - If I change it from ‘every turn:’ to ‘every turn when player is a heroine:’ (which is always true in my game), it keeps working.

Any ideas of what could be going wrong? You’d think this would be easy to nail down, given that I can look at the code right before the branch which leads to the problem, but the code there seems to be completely unremarkable.

It asks a question using this thing:

[code]To decide what text is the yesno_answer:
let the answer be “MAYBE”;
let the exitvalue be 0;
while the exitvalue is 0:
let keypress be the key_pressed;
if keypress is 89 or keypress is 121:
let the answer be “YES”;
let the exitvalue be 1;
otherwise if keypress is 78 or keypress is 110:
let the answer be “NO”;
let the exitvalue be 1;
decide on the answer.

To decide what text is the yesno_answer_with_question (question - some text):
say “[question][line break]”;
decide on the yesno_answer.[/code]

Then it goes:

if answer is "NO": let way be the best route from location to Home; say "[line break]He waves and walks away to the [way]."; now dont_report_this_turn is 1; now Don is returning; [a possible state for the character] try Don going way; rule succeeds; if answer is "YES": say "[line break]'Sure,' you say.[line break]".

If you chose yes, the game keeps working. If you chose no, ‘every turn:’ rules cease to operate. I haven’t seen this anywhere else in the game, or at other times you answer yes/no questions.

2

Hm, looks like it might be some complex interaction with Eric Eve’s Variable Time Control, or something I’m doing with it.

I noticed that after the problem spot, there was one character whose every turn rule was always the last to fire (of the every turn rules that survived.) I deactivated the circumstances leading to that rule going off, and that unlocked the game.

Then I put the circumstances back on, disabled the core rule of Real Time Control, and that also unlocked the game.

3

This is a combination of two things:

  • putting in the condition changes the order of the “every turn” rulebook. (Check it in the index.)

  • “rule succeeds” and “stop” both stop the rulebook, not just the rule. I know, I get confused too. Use “continue the action” or “make no decision” to exit the rule but continue the rulebook.

4

Thanks again. Argh, I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve tripped on that. But when it happens in your every turn rules, it seems the effect is pretty spectacular.