"Every Turn" Rule: Inserting more turns

Authoring Inform 7
1

So I’ve got some “extras” - walk on characters that show up in certain rooms and spout some dialogue for color. I don’t want them to show up “every turn” in the room. I’d like it to be every few turns. How do I do that? One trick I’ve figured out is to not print anything in the “cycling” section, like so…

However, this sometimes inserts an extra line break, and when multiple characters are talking, you get multiple line breaks. So, anybody know another way to get the meter maid to show up every five turns?

2

I’d use:

If a random chance of one in three chance succeeds

Edited to add: sorry, I don’t have a PC handy, or I’d provide context. Someone more helpful will be along shortly!

3

Thanks, but I’m still not quite sure how to make that work with the above code. Care to elaborate?

4

I use a lot of [run paragraph on] and [paragraph break] type things when I want randomized (or cycling) strings to say nothing. For example:

[code]Cave is room.

The talking rock is in the cave.

Every turn when the player can see the talking rock:
say “[one of]The talking rock mumbles about something igneous.[or][run paragraph on][or][run paragraph on][or][run paragraph on][or][run paragraph on][or][run paragraph on][cycling]”
[/code]

There are, of course, many more elegant ways to do it. I saw elegance on TV once.

5

The “[run paragraph on]” trick worked perfectly! Thanks!

6

To show the message every five turns:

Every turn when the player can see the Meter Maid and the remainder after dividing the turn count by 5 is 0: say "A Meter Maid is slapping tickets on car windshields."

To show the message at random approximately every five turns:

Every turn when the player can see the Meter Maid and a random chance of 1 in 5 succeeds: say "A Meter Maid is slapping tickets on car windshields."

Replicating the [one of] method so that the message is shown immediately when the meter maid is first seen and then after every five turns is a bit trickier:

[code]The Meter Maid has a number called message remainder. Message remainder of Meter Maid is -1.

Every turn when the player can see the Meter Maid and the message remainder of Meter Maid is -1:
now the message remainder of Meter Maid is the remainder after dividing the turn count by 5.

Every turn when the player can see the Meter Maid and the remainder after dividing the turn count by 5 is the message remainder of Meter Maid:
say “A Meter Maid is slapping tickets on car windshields.”[/code]

It could be further refined to reset the remainder every time the player enters the room where the meter maid is.