I7: Saying hello

Authoring Inform 7
1

I’m starting on learning how to do conversation. While ASKing and TELLing NPCs something seems to work for me, I searched for quite a while and found nothing about how to actually parse “npc, hello”. Sorry for asking such a simple question, but how’s that done?

After saying hello to NPC: say "Hello back".

results in

You wrote ‘After saying “hello” to NPC’ , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is ‘saying hello to NPC’. But that did not make sense as a description of an action. I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.

2

I keep getting this error message as well. I’ve tried many different types of conversation types, but this message keeps coming up.

3

Yet again, ACTIONS to the rescue!

The action’s name is therefore “answering it that”.

Instead of answering NPC that "hello": say "Hello back."

4

sigh My non-working code is from the printed manual I’m using (page 275)… But now it works, thanks! Now onwards to more complicated stuff…

5

You mean Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7? The chapter on conversation relies on an extension that defines the “saying hello to” action.

6

Indeed! Gonna look into that, thanks!