Put a thing on a soft thing automatically in I7

[matt_weiner (matt w)]

RIDICULOUS NITPICK AHEAD

@chinkeeyong

The phrase “instead,” meanwhile, is simply shorthand for “and stop the action.” “Say X instead,” means the same thing as “Say X; stop the action,” or even “Say X; rule fails.” When Inform 7 encounters any if these phrases, it ends the rule, and the rulebook, in a failure outcome, regardless of the default outcome of the rulebook.

There’s actually an extremely subtle difference between “rule fails” on the one hand and “instead” and “stop the action” on the other hand:

@zarf

“instead” and “stop the action” end the rule in failure, which stops the current rulebook. “rule fails” ends the rulebook in failure, which stops it and also sets its outcome value to failed.

No, there’s no good way to remember this.

This almost never should make a difference for any practical purpose. It only came up for me because I was doing something fancy where I had to call a custom rulebook, pass its results to another custom rulebook, and then use the “if rule failed” test to check whether that rulebook had done anything. Code here using this extension, in case anyone wants to look.

But again, it’s very unlikely that you’ll encounter a case where this makes a practical difference.