How to railroad a PC (a3lite)

Authoring TADS
1

After an hiatus, I restart my sharing of useful TADS3 routines & tricks:

If some Imp want to railroad a PC (that is, forcing him/her/it/whatever to follow a fixed path thru the map, without deviation, but allowing him/her/etc. to interact with the content of the “stations”) I have creatively cooked :wink: this nifty test scene:

// testing the [SPOILER] mechanism in the lf corridor
mwtest: Scene//, EventList
startsWhen = (gLocation == corrN)
endsWhen = (gLocation == corrS) 
recurring = nil
whenStarting() {"Testing the [SPOILER] ...";}
whenEnding() {"Testing done. Has worked ???";}
eachTurn() {
  if(gActionIs(Travel) && gAction.direction != southDir) {
  gActor.getOutermostRoom.lookAroundWithin();
 }
}
//preAction(lst) {}
//eventList = []
beforeAction () {
  if(gActionIs(Travel) && gAction.direction != southDir) {
    "you can only press onward south";
  exit;
}
}
finishOff(howEnded) {"That's all, folks !";}
; //mwtest

In the testbed above, the player chan move only in the south direction, but if he/she/&c. wants to examine, take & mess in general with the locations along the path, he can do (and I suspect that is a more elegant solution re. the various *BeforeAction and *PreAction)

For more meandering tracks, one needs to check also the PC’s current location and set accordingly the allowed/disallowed directions, but in my current case, there’s only one curve (east) in my railroad…

Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.

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