Failed Instead command

I’m a bit new to Inform 7 if this seems to be a stupid question.

So I’ve made it so that when you kill an enemy, it drops a corpse. I decided not to allow the player to take the corpse with a command that looks like this:

Instead of taking the corpse: say "Yeah... no.".

However when I hit ‘Go’, I get an error message saying “Problem. You wrote ‘Instead of taking the corpse’ , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is ‘taking the corpse’. But that did not make sense as a description of an action. I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.
See the manual: 7.1 > 7.1. Actions

7.1 basically says to write it how I wrote it. I don’t see how it doesn’t make sense as a description of an action.

Anyone understand what Inform is trying to say?

It sounds like you haven’t defined the corpse as an object. Look in the World tab of the Index to see how Inform is putting things together.

Thanks for the response, Daniel, but every index tab is completely blank. Is there a specific way I have to activate it?

The Index tab is only filled after a successful compilation of your code. If you’re encountering a bug in your code that prevents the first compilation, you won’t have access to an index.

The index is blank until you compile successfully, so if you haven’t had a good compile yet nothing will appear there. Where do you define the corpse object? Could you post that part of your code?

Try this:

[code]The Crypt is a room.

The corpse is a thing in the crypt. The description is “Dead. Very dead.”

Instead of taking the corpse:
say “Ewww!”[/code]
Hit the Go button. It will compile, and you’ll have access to the Index.

By your description of the problem, I’m betting you defined a corpse as a kind of thing, so that everyone can have one. In this case, you don’t have a single thing called “the corpse”; you have “Goblin Jim’s corpse” and “the wyvern’s corpse” and “Hawkeye’s corpse” &c. Therefore, “taking the corpse” doesn’t make sense. However, you can write a rule about “taking a corpse”, which will apply no matter whose mortal coil the player is trying to abscond with.

Instead of taking a corpse (called the stiff):
	say "[We]['ve] done enough here. [The stiff] should rest in peace."

If you haven’t defined corpses as a kind like this, well, you should, because it’s the only way to get the behavior you describe.

Jim Aikin, turns out I had the part defining it as a ‘thing’ set up kind of wierd. After setting it up closer to the way you have it, it worked out.

Zahariel, no, I don’t have it set up that way, but maybe that will make things a bit easier in the future.