[I7] Another asking about question.

Authoring Inform 7
1

I can’t get this to work because I’m missing the proper code.
What I want is an NPC giving the same response when I SHOW a thing to him, when i ASK him ABOUT the thing, and when I ANSWER him THAT the thing.

Here’s some example code that doesn’t work. The part between brackets gives an error, the part about Asking about does nothing. ATM I can only show things to.

[code]Before showing an Object listed in the Table of Shows to NPC:
say “’[Analisys entry].’”;
stop the action.

Instead of asking NPC about something:
if the second noun is an Object listed in the Table of Shows: <— or “noun”
say “’[Analisys entry].’”;
else:
continue the action.

[Instead of answering NPC that something:
if the topic understood is an Object listed in the Table of Shows:
say “’[Analisys entry].’”;
else:
continue the action.][/code]

The table has ofc the Object column with named objects and the Analisys column with some text.

Thank you!

2

There is no second noun in the action of asking it about (only a topic understood – as in answering it that); that is why the rule has no effect.

I don’t know if there is a way to convert a snippet to the object the text of the snippet is may be a name of.

You could of course write new syntax for the showing it to action (or for some set of new actions), like

[code]Understand “ask [someone] about [something]” as showing it to (with nouns reversed).
Understand “ask about [something]” as showing it to.

Understand “answer [someone] that [something]” as showing it to (with nouns reversed).
Understand “answer [something]” as showing it to.

Understand “[something]” as showing it to.

Rule for supplying a missing second noun while showing something to: now the second noun is NPC.[/code](It won’t trap the "NPC, " syntax though.)

3

Can I hardwire it like this?

Understand "NPC, [something]" as Answering NPC that something.

Anyway: that is a trick but a very clever one. Thanks. Will try it later.

4

The problem is Inform won’t let you write understand texts with commas inside. Perhaps there is a way round it, but then it wouldn’t be any obvious way; I know that the issue has come up on the forum before.

5

I think Eric Eve’s conversation extensions had a way of handling it. I’ve tackled the problem in a couple different ways. Check out my Speech Motivations extension, which was originally inspired by Dr. Eve’s extensions:

eyeballsun.org/i/Speech%20Motivations.i7x

The comma is difficult, but I work around it by parsing the topic understood using my Disambiguation Override extension:

Check answering someone that (this is the convert answering it that to exclaiming rule): Let the subject matter be the most likely match between the topic understood and "[any known thing]"; if the subject matter is not nothing, instead try exclaiming the subject matter to the noun;

The extension is in the same folder, here:

eyeballsun.org/i/Disambiguation%20Override.i7x

It provides some utilities for making sure everything works out nicely when you try to match a topic against an object - including a means of finding out which objects matched, and a method of preventing weird “which do you mean” questions.

6

Great, Captain! I will look at it!