Removing synonyms/names for a thing

After you define a name for a thing using an understand statement, creating a synonym for that thing, is there any way to remove that name from the thing later on in the game?

I haven’t been able to find anything in the documentation.

If I understand what you’re asking, I think the easiest thing to do is make your “understand” statement conditional. If there’s something specific in the world model you’re cueing off, that’s easy to do – “understand ‘water’ as the bottle while the water is in the bottle”. Depending on what you’re trying to do, scenes might be a helpful tool, too: e.g. “understand ‘Eric’ as the monster while Scene Revealing Eric Was the Monster has ended.”

2 Likes

Yes, I believe that will work, thanks.

You might be surprised how specific you can be with this.

Understand "thief/burglar/scoundrel" as Bill when the player is in Bank Vault and the player can see Bill and the deed is carried by Bill and the banknotes are carried by Bill.

But then, you’d only be able to call him the thief at that very moment when all those conditions are met. If any of them changes, you won’t, so actually it’s better to use scenes as Mike Russo suggests. So you can say–

The Robbery is a scene.  The Robbery begins when Bill is in Bank Vault.  The Robbery ends when the player is in Bank Vault and the player can see Bill and the deed is carried by Bill and the banknotes are carried by Bill.

[inevitably Bill will be caught, we assume]

Understand "thief/scoundrel/burglar" as Bill when The Robbery has ended.
Bill's Downfall is a scene.  Bill's Downfall begins when The Robbery ends.

Just wanted to show how you can add quite a number of conditions to an Understand statement–but also to a statement for ending a scene or beginning a new one.

1 Like

You usually don’t need to include this sort of condition – outside of special cases, only things that are in scope (which usually also means that they’re visible) are understood anyway. So Bill won’t be understood as the thief if he’s not in the room even without this part.

(This may change if you’re using, say, a conversation system that allows referring to objects not currently visible. But then you’re likely to not want to limit it that way anyway.)

1 Like

Fair enough. Just an example off the top of my head, to show that you can include quite a number of conditions in an Understand phrase.