Consulting

Authoring Inform 7
1

I can never seem to look up an old post; there must be something wrong with my searching skills.

Long ago someone gave me this code for looking up items in an encyclopedia:

[code]Briefly consulting about is an action applying to one topic.
Understand “look up [text]” or “read about [text]” or “read [text]” as briefly consulting about.

Check briefly consulting about:
if the player is not carrying the guidebook,
say “You aren’t carrying the guidebook.” instead.

Carry out briefly consulting about:
try consulting the guidebook about the topic understood instead.[/code]

I see now that “consulting” is built in. Is there some benefit to defining this extra verb? Will the out-of-box verb allow me to consult more than one type of thing about topics?

2

Looks like the purpose of that action is to give a shorthand for the actual consulting action and a sensible answer when the player doesn’t have a book to consult at hand. As you can see the last rule redirects the action to the standard consulting action. So the benefit is basically a cleaner error message and a convenient shorthand for the player (so that they can just LOOK UP OVERHAND KNOT instead of having to type LOOK UP OVERHAND KNOT IN THE GUIDEBOOK every time.)

Yes. The first noun defines what item is being consulted.

3

Oh, I see. Cool, thanks!