I have solved most of the compilation eras in Armed but I am having difficulty with the following. “end the game in death” is exactly as the handbook shows but will not compile no matter what type of format I try to use here.
After someone shooting something (called the target) with something (called the boomstick): [this is the shot to death rule]
if the target is the player begin;
if the player is dead begin;
say "[The person asked] shoots you with [the boomstick], and you drop to the ground, dead.";
end the game in death; [THIS IS LINE IN QUESTION]
end if;
end if;
continue the action.
In addition I am having issues with the following which will not compile this way or by using begin/end if.
Check stabbing something (called the target) with something (called the pigsticker) (this is the harikari rule):
if the target is the player:
end the game saying "You have committed suicide!"
And the final deal is that I cannot seem to find any other wording for “ignore” that will allow this to compile.
if corpse is dead begin;
ignore the can't take people's possessions rule;
end if;
If you’re using 6L02 or 6L38 then “end the game” isn’t used anymore. You have to say
end the story saying "You have committed suicide!
and for “end the game in death” you have to spell the message out:
end the story saying "You have died"
The replacement for “ignore the… rule” can be modeled after example 377, “Lollipop Guild,” or section 19.5 of Writing with Inform, “Changing the behaviour of rules”; it’s “the… rule does nothing when…” In this case I think it might be
The can't take people's possessions rule does nothing when the noun is enclosed by a dead person.
which would miss some edge cases (when a dead person is enclosed by a live person) but might be OK. Or it might just be simpler to write a new rule to substitute for the can’t take other people’s possessions rule (you’d just have to replace the line “if the owner is a person” with “if the owner is a live person” or whatever the adjective for “not dead” is. It’s not a simple vocabulary change like replacing “end the game” with “end the story” though.
I am using 6L38. I have not come across these variations in any of my searches so far (primarily Aiken’s Handbook (2009) and the Inform Documentation that came with the program). Is there an updated handbook available that covers the various changes in allowable language?
Thanks again for this help, it is very much appreciated.
Aikin’s 2009 handbook is definitely going to give you information about the older versions of Inform. Jim doesn’t keep it updated for various reasons, I don’t think, so you won’t find an updated version there.
Probably the most comprehensive way to find out what has changed is to look through the changelogs. The big changes came between 6G60 and 6L02, so you might want to look at the 6L02 changelog when stuff no longer works. In particular, the last issue is that procedural rules have been removed; the changelog gives you a brief explanation of how “ignore” has been removed from the language and can be replaced by “does nothing.” As it says there it’s a bit of a last resort to use “does nothing”; in this case I think that just writing a new can’t take people’s possessions rule (by inserting “live” in the appropriate spot) and declaring that the new rule substitutes for the old rule is simpler.
