I7: Can I understand persuasion as a mistake?

Hello helpful people,

I have the following line in my little project:

Understand "answer [text] to [someone]", "tell [someone] about [text]", "ask [someone] about [text]" or "ask [someone] for [something]" as a mistake ("Use [bold type]TALK TO[Roman type] to converse with people. For complete instructions, type [bold type]HELP[Roman type].").

This is similar to what Quip-based Conversation by Michael Martin does, but this way “tell …” commands don’t take a turn.

Is it possible to do a similar thing for commands like:

Alice, drink the potion
and
White Rabbit, why are you late?

I have tried “[someone], [text]” but it fails to match the player’s command.
As I understand, there’s no real grammar for persuasion. It’s like the “oops” command. It just happens in the parser.
Am I sadly out of luck on this one or is this possible?
If not, can I fool Inform into treating these like mistakes? i.e. Hint displayed, no turn used.

You won’t be able to use the “understand … as a mistake” phrase for persuasion due to the fact that it is dealt with differently at I6 level. The best way to do it would be like this.

[code]“Test”

Include Quip-Based Conversation by Michael Martin.

Bypass check is a truth state that varies. Bypass check is false.

To say bypass every turn: now bypass check is true.

The QBC talking cue is “[bypass every turn]Use [bold type]TALK TO[Roman type] to converse with people. For complete instructions, type [bold type]HELP[roman type].”.

This is the bypass every turn rule:
if bypass check is true begin;
now bypass check is false;
rule succeeds;
end if.

The bypass every turn rule is listed before the every turn stage rule in the turn sequence rules.

The Testing Room is A Room. Mr Monkey is a person in the testing room.

Test me with “ask monkey about something / tell monkey about something / say something to monkey / monkey, x yourself”.[/code]

This works with the grain of the extension and stops time passing so that they don’t take a turn.

Hope this helps.

1 Like

Yep, that helped tremendously. I’m going to use a variant of what you’ve posted. Thanks!