[I6]: Doing things the first and subsequent times?

Authoring Inform 6
1

Still very much a newbie, I was wondering if there was a particular solution for a situation one should come across quite often.

For examle, when the player asks the NPC the same question twice, there surely should be a different response to the second question. (“I already told you”, or such.)

I know, this can be realized with flags attached to the situation, raising them etc., but this seems to be a bit cumbersome if it is to be repeated every time, so I wondered if there is a particular mechanism which would help to decide whether any situation is encountered for the first time, or if it’s already “known”, something like –

life[; ask: switch(second){ 'runestone': firsttime("It's an ancient runestone."); "Have you already forgotten?"; }

Or similar.

Is there a mechanism like this in place, or does it have to be reimplemented each time?

Cheers,

syzygy

2

You could probably do it using the “[stopping]” command inside a text.
See section 5.7 of the documentation, near the bottom.

3

That’s Inform 7, not Inform 6. Different languages.

4

You might want to download my EventList extension for I6. (It’s in the if-archive, at http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXinfocomXcompilersXinform6XlibraryXcontributions.html.) It allows you to create TADS-style event lists of various kinds, including the “stopping” kind. After creating such a list with the replies you want, you can call the list object from your life or orders routine (or from wherever you like).

5

I use a lot of flags in I6, honestly.

6

The “general” attribute is great for doing one-shot stuff. Consider this:

Object -> TeflonBlock "teflon block"
  with name "block" "of" "teflon",
  description "It's a block of slippery teflon.",
  before [;
  Take:
    if (self hasnt general) {
      give self general;
      "You try to pick up ", (the) self, " but it slips out of your fingers.";
    }
    print "Carefully, you pick up ", (the) self, " so it doesn't slip.^";
    AttemptToTakeObject(self);
    rtrue;
  ];
7

Thanks everybody for the replies!

Jim, I’ll check out your library. Sounds promising!

David – So, this is what the “general” attribute is for? Up to now I was a bit stumped as to its purpose…

Cheers,

syzygy

8

The general attribute is for anything you want to use it for. This is a common case.

9

The “general” attribute is intended as a catch-all for whatever one-off purpose you can think of. I’ve used it for one-shots, toggling frozen/unfrozen state, and more. For lots more examples of the use of the general attribute, see the source code for my Shadowgate reimplementation.

10

If you have a lot of oneshot text, you can do something like this:

Constant MAX_ONESHOTS = 100;
Array oneshots --> MAX_ONESHOTS;

[ show_once text i ;
    for (i = 0: i < MAX_ONESHOTS && oneshots-->i != 0 : ++ i) {
        if (oneshots-->i == text)
            return;
    }
    if (i < MAX_ONESHOTS) {
        oneshots-->i = text;
        print (String) text;
    } else {
        print "*** ERROR: Too many oneshots ***^";
    }
];

And make sure that MAX_ONESHOTS is large enough.