Can the can't take items out of play rule fire?

Authoring Inform 7
1

I cannot manage to make the can't take items out of play rule fire. It seems that the basic accessibility rule always takes place before, stopping the action.

I tried that:

The widget is a thing. [It starts out of play.]

Instead of jumping: try taking the widget.

You can type ACTIONS before jumping to see what rule stopped the action.

I also tried placing the widget in scope and type TAKE WIDGET directly, to the same effect.

If it appears that the rule is useless, maybe it should be removed from the standard rules?

2

The widget would need to be in scope to succeed try taking. You don’t wan’t “can’t take items out of play” rule to fire, technically! It’s working as intended by preventing the player from taking something that doesn’t exist in play.

You could write Instead of jumping: now the player carries the widget.

3

I managed to get the can't take items out of play rule to fire by turning off the basic accessibility rule:

Lab is a room.

There is a rock.

Hoovering is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "hoover [any thing]" as hoovering.

Instead of hoovering: try taking the noun.

The basic accessibility rule does nothing when the noun is the rock.

It’s hard to imagine a circumstance in which one would both want to turn off the basic accessibility rule and leave the can’t take items out of play rule just as it is, though.

It seems to me as though the rule’s functionality perhaps got moved into the basic accessibility rule at some point, and the rule remains as a backstop?

4

You don’t need to have the widget in scope if the action is made programmatically. And yes, you do want that check rule to fire so that it prevents the taking action! The thing is, that rule is never reached (thus making it useless) because the taking action (or any other action, for that matter) is always blocked by the basic accessibility rule first when the object is off-stage. It’s just strange that the taking action specifically also provide a rule for that case.

And my example was a fairly contrived one, just to show the issue.

True, one could do that. But as you said, it seems strange to have two protections, but only for the taking action. Unless there is some edge case where it matters, but I can’t think of one.

Thanks for the answers! It’s not a big issue, anyway. I was just reviewing the responses of the French extension, and it occured to me that the response from the can't take item out of play rule never showed up. And the response for the basic accessibility is the same, so I was wondering.

So is it worth a bug report? :slightly_smiling_face:

5

I think like Matt experienced, he bypassed basic accessibility and got it to fire. It’s likely a backup rule just for that case - say you have a rule like The basic accessibility rule does nothing when the player is holding the telekinesis orb. You want the player to be able to move things in other rooms and inside locked boxes, but you probably don’t want them messing with stuff that’s off-stage at all. Or perhaps you’ve rewritten the basic accessibility rule to do other things - the secondary rule makes sure off-stage is truly not ever an accessible location to the player.

6

(Sorry for the long post, I didn’t plan to write so much on such a unimportant thing. :sweat_smile:)

In my opinion, if you decide to remove the basic accessibilty rule, then you know you are messing with something “dangerous”, so you wouldn’t need an additional safeguard (as matt implied). On the contrary, that safeguard becomes a hindrance if you remove the basic accessibilty rule specifically to allow the taking action to succeed in such cases. And why only the taking action has this protection, and not every other action requiring a touchable noun?

In your example, you don’t need to remove the basic accessibility rule. You should just add the things in other rooms and in the locked boxes to scope when holding the orb (or make the boxes transparent) and write a rule for reaching inside (section “Changing reachability” of the “Advanced Actions” chapter).

I can only see two reasons for the can’t take items out of play rule: it was useful before (because the basic accessibilty rule worked differently) and it wasn’t removed (it was forgotten or something); or it is useful in some edge case where the basic accessibility doesn’t apply (but I can’t think of one).

After some reasearch, I found that the rule that really makes the action fail is the access through barriers rule, which is called by the basic accessibility rule.

The access through barriers rule is more specific than the can't take items out of play rule (it also takes account of closed containers amongst other things), so we could imagine a scenario where you’d remove the can't access through barriers rule because you’d want the player to be able to take things inside closed containers and other rooms, but not things out of play.

But in that case, as I wrote above, you don’t have to mess with all the low-level machinery: you could just use a rule for reaching inside (this rulebook is invoked by the can't reach through barriers rule).

The more I search, the more it seems that the can't take things out of play rule is some kind of leftover that wasn’t removed.

Well, I may have put way too much effort in this issue… But still, it looks like it’s worth a small bug report? (not a really important one, but still.)