Nice to see a flurry of activity after a slow day! Props to Marshal on the map, I’ll get that into the OP later. Also nice to see Eleas’ perspective on the overall story. Updated source and Parchment.
Understand "rubble/chunks/granite/chunks of granite" as the fallen masonry.Why does summoning a non-visible non-person return “That’s not something you can see now.”? Of course it’s not: that’s why I’m summoning it! I could edit it, but I might be missing something.
New:
[code]Understand “sinews” as the skeleton.
Understand “fang/jaw” as the fangs.
Understand “cop/police/policeman” or “police man” as Sgt Duffy.
Understand “kid” as the child.
Understand “pile” or “crate” or “pile of crates” or “pile of abandoned crates” as the abandoned crates.
Instead of going down while in Rocky Ledge:
try going southwest.
Instead of attacking the child:
say “Never.”
Instead of rubbing the obsidian cat when the obsidian cat is not handled:
try taking the obsidian cat.
The smock is scenery in the Cave Entrance. Understand “tatters” as the smock.
Instead of cutting the vines:
say “There is already a narrow opening through the vines. It would not be wise to make the passage more obvious.”[/code]
Amended:
Understand "rubble/chunks/granite" or "chunks of granite" as the fallen masonry.Gorobay - it’s probably the “you can’t summon a thing” combining with “you can only summon something you can’t see” in an odd way.
I have to say, it is really interesting to see how this is going together.
[code]The abandoned crates are a openable, closed, opaque container. A container can be locked or unlocked. A container is usually unlocked. The abandoned crates are locked.
Instead of opening the abandoned crates if they are locked (this is the munitions opening rule):
say “[one of]They don’t seem to open easily[or]You can’t find any place to get a good grip[or]Even after all this time, the crates are still sealed tightly[at random]”;
otherwise,
say “The side of a crate grudginly yields to your efforts and comes off with a loud squeal.”;
now the abandoned crates are open.[/code]
Although, I’m willing to bet that this is not quite going to work how I want it to… (aka feel free to tweak)
Also, by “locked” I was more meaning… unable to be opened by your bare hands…
Try this:
[code]The abandoned crates are an openable, closed, locked container.
Check opening the abandoned crates (this is the can’t open the locked abandoned crates rule):
if the abandoned crates are locked:
say “[one of]They don’t seem to open easily[or]You can’t find any place to get a good grip[or]Even after all this time, the crates are still sealed tightly[at random].” instead.
Report opening the abandoned crates (this is the report opening the abandoned crates rule):
say “The side of a crate grudgingly yields to your efforts and comes off with a loud squeal.” instead.[/code]
Updated source / parchment and tidied the source (a little bit). Just so you know my broadband at home is down and not likely to be fixed before Monday so that’ll be the next update. Have a great weekend guys!
[code]Stone Steps are southeast of Lightless Shaft.
the description of Stone Steps is “This is a tunnel carved into stone. The tunnel slopes sharply downwards to the southeast, but crude stone steps have been carved to assist with footing.”[/code]
Let’s get this thing rolling, my little potato pancakes! I’m finding this fun and educational, like “infotainment” or something.
[code]It is naturally dark.
The rock staircase is scenery in Stone Steps. The description is “Cut into the solid rock of the cave with some rough tool.” Understand “stone/carved/rough/crude” and “stairs/staircase/steps/step” as the staircase.
The dark niche is a fixed in place container in Stone Steps. “A small niche has been cut into the wall at this point.” Understand “small” as the niche.[/code]
and for Section - Perilous Perch:
Instead of unlocking the closed passage with something, try inserting the second noun into the noun.to catch “open crack with sword”.
I’m curious about this Sergeant Duffy. What’s up with this summoning thing? Is the player really able to summon arbitrary people into the room?
Maybe she can summon Duffy because he is not really a person, but either a figment of her imagination or some sort of holographic type technology. I’d like to think he is a sort of external representation of her own logic thinking (and so maybe should be complemented with another more emotional persona?). So Duffy is really not much help except for asking about things, and then he can kick in with facts and reasoning.
If this is the case, it makes sense if you can not only summon such characters but also dismiss (or dispel?) them.
Also, in my mind, Sergeant Duffy talks with a Yorkshire accent.
I’m not sure about conversations, is Conversation Responses something people like to use?
[ addition - at the top ]
Include Conversation Responses by Eric Eve.
[ addition - in section summoning ]
A person can be imaginary. A person is usually not imaginary.
Dismissing is an action applying to one thing. Understand "dismiss [somebody]" as dismissing.
check dismissing something:
if the noun is the player:
say "Sometimes you wish you could just disappear, but it doesn't work like that.";
stop the action;
if the noun is not an imaginary person:
say "[The noun] does not respond to your dismissal.";
stop the action;
carry out dismissing:
say "[The noun] nods a goodbye, walks off, and is gone.";
now the noun is off-stage;
[ addition - section - Sgt Duffy NPC ]
Sgt Duffy is imaginary.
Greeting response for Sgt Duffy:
say "'Hello, Sergeant', you say.[line break]'Oh, hello luv.'"
response for Sgt Duffy when asked-or-told about Sgt Duffy:
say "Sgt Duffy is not inclined to talk about himself.";
[ Nice work adding some more ideas about Sgt Duffy. I threw him into the mix originally the way you might shout out “Private Detective” in a improv show. But the idea is you could summon Sgt Duffy to get advice. Whether you want him to be imaginary or real, and whether summoning should work on other people or things, I’ll leave to others. But lots of interesting cross-genre potential here. ]
Ahem 
On that note,
Instead of dismissing the child, say "Never."Hey people! Nice to see we’re up and running again. I’ll get the source and Parchment updated tonight. Oh, and thanks to ChrisC for helping to enforce THE RULE. Bwahahaha.
EDIT: Updated source and Parchment. If you’re compiling the source code yourselves, remember to download Conversation Framework as it’s required by Conversation Responses.
So, I have a few things to expand summoning a little more… as well as dismissing.
[code]The Fire Sprite is a woman. The Fire Sprite is friendly. The Fire Sprite has the description “A diminutive woman made entirely from a living flame. Known to be extremely curious, mischievous, and often accidentally destructive, fire sprites are one of the four elemental sprites able to be summoned onto the primary plane. Yours is known for her particularly fiery temper.”
[to add to the section about summoning]
if noun is the Fire Sprite:
if noun is not visible:
move noun to location;
say “[noun] appears in a burst of flame. [one of]You feel the temperature in the room rise dramatically.[or]The heat from the sprite is so intense you fall back a pace[or]You feel your forehead to make sure your eyebrows are still intact.[or]A shower of sparks bounces off everything in the room.[then at random]”;
else:
say “The Sprite gives you a look that would (and did) singe your eyebrows a little.”;
[to add to the section about dismissing]
if the noun is the Fire Sprite:
say “The sprite nods to you and then disappears in a puff of smoke.”[/code]
I was going to add a bit in there about how objects can be flammable or non-flammable and that most stuff is non-flammable (except for maybe ordinance crates) but everytime I’ve tried to write code like that it never works right for me, so I’ll leave it to one of the experts 
Too bad this stalled. I implemented a few mentioned-objects and possible actions in the opening areas. We may not take this strange story any further, but it can still be a little more complete, in its way.
Ears are part of the player. The description is “You can’t see them, but they’re slightly chapped from the brisk cliffside winds and filled with the roar of your own desperate, pounding pulse.”
Instead of smelling the wind: try examining the wind.
Instead of tasting the wind: try examining the wind.
Instead of touching the wind: try examining the wind.
Sky-Visible is a region. Rocky Ledge, Perilous Perch, and Cave Entrance are in Sky-Visible.
Understand “leap” as jumping. Understand “commit suicide” as jumping.
[new]
Instead of waiting while in Rocky Ledge, say “One, two, three heartbeats, and your breath is caught. Now it’s time to move along before you are, also.”
Instead of doing it for the second time: say “There will be time for contemplation after, hopefully, but for the time being you need to keep moving.”; move the player to Perilous Perch.
and this passage wasn’t achieving the desired results for me:
Instead of jumping in Rocky Ledge or jumping in Perilous Perch, say “While death [italic type]may[roman type] be preferable to what Jack and his gang will do to you if they catch you, you have not yet lost all hope of escape.”
I added "while"s and it seems to be performing as intended:
Instead of jumping while in Rocky Ledge or jumping while in Perilous Perch, say “While death [italic type]may[roman type] be preferable to what Jack and his gang will do to you if they catch you, you have not yet lost all hope of escape.”
My tweaks fail to address the strange message that will result should the player attempt > COMMIT SUICIDE when not at cliff’s edge.
This represents about a third of the items on my to-do list regarding this implementation, none of which get us any closer to a coherent, playable full game.
Hey, mostly useless, are you willing to keep this going on your part if people started this thread up again?
Should probably just start a git repository on github and not have to worry about the cooperation here.
I’m in for a GitHub experiment! How would that work, a public repo with pull requests? Or a shared repo? That’s probably easier, then whoever wants to push stuff needs to handle the merge conflicts.
But I liked the “round robin” feeling that came with using this thread as a sort of basic version control system - this is not just collaborative code, it’s also a story. But come to think of it I’m not sure why story development would need to be serialized, really.
But should we still use this thread to summarize changes? And what happens to the One Rule? Maybe the Other Rule is that you must write proper descriptive commit messages.
We should explain how this works though so people who are not git savvy gets a chance to join in.
Is everybody cool with this or does somebody feel this is hijacking an existing process?
Sorry for breaking the One Rule, but I’m on a bus (with just a phone) ATM. I’ll fix later I the rule still stands.
I would just create a new github account and tell everyone the password. This way everyone can just commit to it that way. On windows, SmartGit and others make git a GUI matter so it might not be that bad.
I really don’t recommend that. You can create an organization (it’s free for open source projects) and give full access to the repository to anyone who wants to join, using their own account.
Just a reminder that there is already a friend of inform7 organization on github.