editing the Basic Help Menu by Emily Short

[liquidrain84]

In the Basic Help Menu by Emily Short, the first selection is “Introduction to [story title]”, and the proceeding screen displays “This is a simple [genre] game.”

Is there a way to add to and/or edit what is displayed on this screen?

[heartless_zombie]

Many Inform 7 extensions include documentation. To find the documentation for an extension, add the extension to your Inform 7 story and look for it in the extensions tab (on the top right half) of the Inform 7 app. Selecting the extension should open its documentation if there is any. If you select Basic Help Menu you can read how to configure it:

The Basic Help Menu provides a command HELP (with synonyms HINT, HINTS, ABOUT, and INFO) which will bring up a help menu. The menu includes some introductory instructions about playing interactive fiction, setting controls to manage verbosity and score notification, and a stub introduction.

For any given game, we are likely to want to modify the menu content. The extension defines a Table of Basic Help Options; Table of Instruction Options (which contains the help text); and Table of Setting Options (which lets the player turn score notification and verbosity on and off, but which is not included in the menu by default). We could change any of these by, for instance, selecting and modifying a line when play begins:

When play begins: choose row 1 in Table of Basic Help Options; now description entry is "This is a game about my grandmother's adventures during World War II..."
We could also add elements to a table by including a continuation in our own game file, so:

Table of Basic Help Options (continued) title description "Contacting the author" "If you have any difficulties with [story title], please contact me at..."
These additional lines would then be appended to the relevant menu.

We could also replace the Table of Basic Help Options with something else of our own choosing.

[code]The help request rule is not listed in any rulebook.

Carry out asking for help:
now the current menu is the Table of Joe’s Special Help;
carry out the displaying activity;
clear the screen;
try looking;
stop the action.[/code]
… which would not preclude our using the sub-tables defined in this extension elsewhere:

Table of Joe's Special Help title subtable description toggle "Instructions" Table of Instruction Options -- --
…

[liquidrain84]

Thanks, heartless zombie. I did read through the Documentation for the extension, but it did not give me any advice on what I wanted to accomplish. I’d like to take her default menu selection “Introduction” (and only this menu selection, nothing else), and add text to the proceeding screen.

[heartless_zombie]

This example from the documentation will set the text that appears in the proceeding screen for the Introduction option:

When play begins: choose row 1 in Table of Basic Help Options; now description entry is "This is a game about my grandmother's adventures during World War II..."

This works (it is row 1) because the menu option Introduction to [story title] is the first option in the menu. To reproduce what is normally printed you can copy the quote from the extension:

When play begins: choose row 1 in Table of Basic Help Options; now description entry is "This is a simple demonstration [story genre] game."

To change the text that appears for the Introduction option, simply edit the description entry quote.

[liquidrain84]

Aaaah, okay. Thanks again very much, heartless zombie. I did not understand the “Row 1” thing the first time around.