Character description change on first interaction

Authoring Inform 7
1

Hi everyone,

I’m trying to get inform to print a different default description of my character until a variable called “met” for that character is true, but it’s not working. I feel like I have to be making this more complicated than it needs to be. Help?

I have this code here:

A person can be met or unmet. A person is usually unmet.

The merchant is a man. The merchant is in The Plaza. The merchant is unmet. “[if unmet]Only one person here seems uninterested in following the crowd of people or shepherding them along their way. No one seems to pay him much attention.[otherwise]The merchant is sitting here under his awning, watching the world go by.”.

I want that first chunk of text to be printed until he becomes met, but only the second chunk is printing no matter what. I thought the problem might be that [if unmet] checks if the player is unmet rather than the merchant, but changing to [if the merchant is unmet] doesn’t do anything. He changes from unmet to met after a conversation (ask, tell, show, etc).

Does anyone know how to implement this idea? Thank you :slight_smile:

2

Your code above works as written.

The Plaza is a room.

A person can be met or unmet. A person is usually unmet.

The merchant is a man. The merchant is in The Plaza. The merchant is unmet. “[if unmet]Only one person here seems uninterested in following the crowd of people or shepherding them along their way. No one seems to pay him much attention.[otherwise]The merchant is sitting here under his awning, watching the world go by.”.

Plaza
Only one person here seems uninterested in following the crowd of people or shepherding them along their way. No one seems to pay him much attention.

Is it possible that you’re setting the merchant to be “met” elsewhere in the code? You can type SHOWME MERCHANT in the game to display the flag.

>showme merchant
merchant - man
location: in the Plaza
unlit, inedible, portable; transparent, male, unmet; singular-named, improper-named
description: none
(etc)

3

Yes, I had a funky rule elsewhere in the code that was messing up when he was met. Thanks for the advice about showme.