Okay, so I’m working my way through the manual chapter by chapter, and I’m currently looking at Chapter 3.6. Either/or properties – more specifically, the exameple “Tamed” at the bottom.
Those of you who have been helping me with my own game might recall I was having some difficulty dealing with the player entering containers and supporters when a pronoun is used or when a noun is not used at all i.e. “Enter closet” versus “enter” or “enter it” when there is a closet, a couch, and a rocking horse in the room.
So from what I recall, I was told that unless specified, the parser will automatically try to enter the first container/supporter that is mentioned in the source. However, in “Tamed”, the first container that is mentioned is a cage. Yet, when the player tries to “go in” or “in” it automatically puts the player inside the magician’s booth (or rather, in the room Starry Vastness which is inside from the starting room), instead of the cage despite the fact the cage is mentioned first in the source.
Here is my reasoning for why this happens, and I’d like to make sure I have it right, if anyone can confirm. First of all, “go” is an action for a direction and “get in/on” is an action for containers/supporters. Secondly, if the player merely types “in”, the parser reads that as a direction as well, as opposed to getting in the cage. So the parser moves the player to the inside room instead of inside the cage. My thought is that if the Starry Vastness room didn’t exist, it would automatically try to put the player inside the cage. Is this right? Or does it have more to do with the verbs “in” versus “enter”?