The starboard is a direction. The starboard has opposite port. Understand "s" as starboard when the location is nautical.
The port is a direction. The port has opposite starboard. Understand "p" as port when the location is nautical.
The fore is a direction. The fore has opposite aft. Understand "f" as fore when the location is nautical.
The aft is a direction. The aft has opposite fore. Understand "a" as aft when the location is nautical.
Does the player mean going a nautical direction when the location is nautical: it is very likely.
Index map with fore mapped as north. Index map with aft mapped as south. Index map with port mapped as west. Index map with starboard mapped as east.
A room can be nautical or earthbound. A room is usually not nautical. A direction can be nautical or earthbound. A direction is usually not nautical. Starboard, port, fore, aft, up, down, the inside and the outside are nautical.
Each room on the boat is declared as being nautical:
Cockpit, Saloon, Engine Room, etc are nautical.
All shortcuts work (‘p’ for port, ‘s’ for starboard etc), except aft. I’ve said that ‘a’ is the shortcut. This is what happens when I first type ‘a’ and then try ‘aft’ for the first time:
>a
What do you want to a?
>aft
There's no one here to talk to.
>aft
Engine Room
You are in the engine room
It looks like “a” might be understood as a shortcut for asking it about, or some action like that - you could test it with ACTIONS and see what you get. That’s not something the standard rules do, so is that something you changed elsewhere, or are you perhaps using a conversation extension that might have added it?
(Without knowing the exact issue, I’m not 100% sure of the fix, but “Understand the command “a” as something new” before you define the new use of it as a shortcut for aft will likely work).
That could make sense because this wasn’t a problem I had when I started the game. I suspect, as you do, that it’s coming from an extension, probably Conversation Responses and Conversation Suggestions by Eric Eve.
Ah, yup, there it is, in the Conversation Framework extension that I presume is required for both of those:
Understand “ask about [text]” or “a [text]” as implicit-asking.
You can either delete that last bit from your version of the extension, or I think the “understand the command “a” as something new” idea I mentioned in my previous post should fix it, though I don’t use extensions much so I’m not positive whether you can override them the same way you can the standard rules.
I assume that if I place this new ‘understand ‘a’ as something new’ AFTER my extension declaration, my new rule takes priority (I’m assuming Inform compiles from top to bottom).