So I’m currently using Eric Eve’s Conversational Framework and have run up against something I’m not sure how to deal with. I would like for the player to be able to ask about the name of a room in the game. However, I don’t seem to be able to do this. If I try instantiating the name as a separate subject (as per Section 7.2 of the extension’s documentation) it runs afoul of the fact that the name is already in use for the room. If I just try implementing this:
After quizzing Aresa about the Vault: say "'Nothing interesting there,' she says."
then compile/run just gets me “There is no reply” when I ask about the Vault in-game.
Is there a workaround that I’m not thinking of? Other than having the player and the game refer to the room by two separate names, which seems awkward…
Thank you in advance for your time, and sorry to be so bad at this!
Include Conversation Framework by Eric Eve.
The Vault is a room. Aresa is a woman in the Vault.
Understand "vault" or "the vault" as "[vault]".
After asking Aresa about "[vault]":
say "'Nothing interesting there', she says."
The problem is that rooms aren’t things. I’m glad you brought this up because I’m working on a conversation extension and I’ve been wondering whether to include rooms (and doors, and backdrops) as possible conversational topics.
You can fix the problem pretty easily, though. Adding these lines should work (not tested):
Understand "ask [someone] for [any visited room]" as requesting it for.
Understand "ask [someone] about [any visited room]" as quizzing it about.
Understand "tell [someone] about [any visited room]" as informing it about.
Understand "ask about [any visited room]" or "a [any visited room]" as implicit-quizzing.
Understand "t [any visited room]" or "talk about [any visited room]" as implicit-informing.
Understand "ask for [any visited room]" as implicit-requesting.
If you want to be able to talk about rooms you haven’t even visited, you can remove the visited token. If you don’t want to clutter the “ask for” syntax (asking for a room would be pretty weird), you can skip the lines that involve that.
“After” lines will only come into play if the action succeeds. Something got blocked before your “ask” action went through. To get a better view of how your actions are being processed, type ACTIONS ON when you start playing.
(Be sure to study the diagram of before…check…instead…after…report if you haven’t already.)
If you just want to get one quip for one topic, try replacing “after” with “instead.” If that doesnt do, try putting “vault” in quotes, so instead of asking about a known object (room) in the game, the parser will just listen for the phrase “vault” in the text of your remark.
If that doesn’t do the trick, you might have to rename the room. You can tweak the “printed name” to stay the same, but the player (who only sees the printed name) might run into guess-the-verb, so choose synonyms carefully.
Thanks all for the help! It is working now. Merlin: I did try “instead of” instead of “after” and got the same “There is no reply,” so I ended up going with capmikee’s solution.