Noobie question about "understand"

Authoring Inform 7
1

Hello, im new here, and already seeking for help xD. Probably is a really stupid question .

Well, i created an action (Nosing).

Room1 is a room. here is a banana and a screw.

nosing is an action applying to one thing.
understand "nose [screw]" as nosing.
instead of nosing the screw, try smelling the screw.

instead of smelling anything, say "Smells like a [noun]".

It works fine…

>nose screw Smells like a screw

but Inform tends to try to supply the noun if user dont give any:

>nose
(the screw)
Smells like a screw

Which is a feature i dont want (with any other objects or such)

i can “fix” with understand "nose [anything]" as nosing. but then ill have to write exceptions for all objects i dont want to “nose” or viceversa…

is there a command or something to disable ANY attempt to supply ANY missing word?

thx!

2

Yep: Understand "nose" as a mistake ("Nose what? Try again.")

3

You may get the right result if you use

Understand "nose [something]" as nosing.

Since more than one object is now acceptable for the nosing action, the parser won’t assume one.

You’ll have to write a rule to handle the default case (“nose banana”, “nose player”, etc). But that’s a good thing overall. Players learn the game’s verbs by experimenting, and that only works if all verbs can be parsed with all objects.

4

first of all: thanx guys for replying! and so fast!

@Zarf: I’ve tried your solution before but the problem is if i want to “understand” a built in verb with a specific item, lets say “take”, it would cause troubles.

for example.

Understand "nose [something]" as taking.

On the other hand, I guess Ron’s approach would fit. Im not in my PC so could not try it yet, but tomorrow hopefully ill try it.

Thx guys!

5

What problems does that example cause? I’ve done it.

(To exactly match the library’s behavior you would want

Understand "nose [things]" as taking.

…because the taking action accepts multiple objects. Most other actions don’t, though, so stick with [something] for your own actions.)

Or did you mean the other way around?

Understand "take [wrench]" as nosing.

You can do this, but it’s almost never the right way to customize an action. Better to write an instead rule:

Instead of taking the wrench:
    try nosing the wrench.

That will catch all synonyms (“get wrench”, “pick up wrench”, etc.) I think it also gives better disambiguation behavior.

You might use an Understand declaration if you don’t want to catch synonyms. For example,

Understand "take [pill]" as medicating.

That would not catch “get pill” or “pick up pill”. That might be what you want, but it still risks confusing players.

6

hello zarf, thanks again, you have been very helpful!

I didnt explain myself well, (not native english speaker)

but still you gave me the correct answer :smiley:.

What I tried to explain is that i wanted to assing differnt “nosing” depending on the object being “nosed” xD.

I thought it as:

understand “nose [wrench]” as nosing.
understand "nose [Fred] as talking. (yah nonsense)

but the right way to do it (i suppose) is like you told me:

understand "nose [something]" as nosing.
instead of nosing the wrench, try smelling the wrench.
instead of nosing Fred, try talking to Fred.
etc.

of course what i try to achieve its not related with “nosing” xD but i get the idea now.

Thank you mate!