Disambiguation message

Authoring Inform 7
1

I’ve just been looking at Inform again, after a few years absence. I’ve got an example where there are two similarly-named objects in a room and I’m using “does the player mean…” to choose one of them arbitrarily.

Suppose we have a red brick and a yellow brick in the room and we also specify “Does the player mean the red brick: it is very likely.”

Now, if the player says something like “TAKE BRICK”, Inform prints a line saying “(The red brick)” and proceeds to take it.

My question is how to I customise the text that Inform has produced? In this game, decision-making is part of the story so, rather than the bland bracketed message, I would quite like to make a feature of this. Something like: “Oh dear, another decision! You ponder the alternatives and decide to choose the red brick.”

Is this possible? I couldn’t find it in the manuals…but I wasn’t sure where I should be looking…

Thanks

Steve

2

The library message for taking is .

This can be altered with the following:

set LibMsg <report player taking> to "Whatever you want here."
3

Hi MTW and thanks for the reply. That only seems to change the message “Taken”. I was looking for a way to change the part that says “(The red brick)” ie disambiguating from the other brick. I looked through David Fisher’s Default Messages extension and still couldn’t find it.

4

Oh, sorry. I misunderstood. Maybe one of the more-experienced folks would know. I have Aaron Reed’s book and I peruse it daily. If I find an answer for ya, I will let ya know!

5

Hey Steve,

The solution for what you want is in the manual in this section:

17.28. Clarifying the parser’s choice of something

Enjoy

  • Wade
6

Perfect!

Many thanks

Steve