Hi, folks. I have a bit of an odd case on my hands - I have an item in my game that needs special handling wherever a pronoun would appear in the standard messaging. Specially, it needs to be referred to by its full name wherever a pronoun would normally be used. I’m using Plurality, and it looks like the it-them and it-they values cover all the needed cases, but I can’t figure out how to override these values for just one object, or whether it’s even possible to do so. Does anyone have any experience trying to do this kind of thing?
I don’t have any experience doing this, but it seems as though the relevant rule in Plurality should be easy enough to hack. Instead of this:
To say it-them of (item - a thing):
now the prior named noun is the item;
mark prior named noun in output;
if the item acts plural
begin;
say "them";
otherwise if the item is the player;
say "you";
otherwise if the item is male and item is not neuter;
say "him";
otherwise if the item is female and item is not neuter;
say "her";
otherwise;
say "it";
end if.
can you put this:
To say it-them of (item - a thing):
now the prior named noun is the item;
mark prior named noun in output;
if the item is the macguffin
begin;
say "the macguffin";
otherwise if the item acts plural
begin;
say "them";
otherwise if the item is the player;
say "you";
otherwise if the item is male and item is not neuter;
say "him";
otherwise if the item is female and item is not neuter;
say "her";
otherwise;
say "it";
end if.
and similarly for [It-them]? I don’t usually use the begin-end if syntax, but this seems pretty straightforward.
Huh. Just overwriting the whole rule hadn’t occurred to me, but I can’t think of any reason that wouldn’t work. Thanks!
You could also not override the whole phrase but add a special case (more specific phrases override less specific phrases):
To say it-them of (item - the King):
say "His Royal Highness".
That’s a much, much better idea!
If you want to generalize it, can you do that based on an adjective, like this?
[code]A thing can be pronoun-referrable or non-pronoun-referrable. A thing is usually pronoun-referrable.
To say it-them of (item - a non-pronoun-referrable thing):
say “[the item]”.[/code]
I don’t think so. I believe it has to be a kind (or a specific object).
I tried the adjective-based approach just now, and it seems to have worked. I’ll keep an eye out for unwanted side-effects.
Well, that’s nice to know. It seems to work for regular (non-say) phrases and “to decide” phrases as well. But not for adjective definitions.