Sorry for posting a lot lately, I’m trying to learn how this works. I’m trying to make a screwable action, but when I try screwing something it always says either “its fixed in place” or “nothing obvious happens”. Help?
[code]A thing can be screwable or nonscrewable. A thing is usually nonscrewable.
Screwing is an action applying to one thing.
Screwing with is an action applying to two things.
Understand “screw [something] with [something preferably held]” as screwing with.
Understand “screw [something]” as screwing.
Understand “unscrew [something] with [something preferably held]” as screwing with.
Understand “unscrew [something]” as screwing.
Carry out screwing:
If the noun is nonscrewable:
say “You can’t screw [the noun].”;
else:
say “You screw [the noun].”.
Carry out screwing with:
If the noun is nonscrewable:
say “You can’t screw [the noun] with [the second noun].”;
else:
say “You screw [the noun].”.[/code]
And feel free to post lots of questions! When I visit the forum it’s much more fun to see a coding question instead of just six new attempts at posting from spammers.
By the way, creating an action “screwing with” applying to two things isn’t going to work; it needs to be “screwing it with”. The “it” functions as a place-holder for a noun; so when you write a rule such as
Instead of screwing the candlestick with the screwdriver: say "Nothing obvious happens."
Inform understands “screwing the candlestick with” as the “screwing it with” action.
If you do as HanonO suggests and use “turn” as your command, then you’ll get all the built-in synonyms (turn/rotate/twist/unscrew/screw) for free. But if you prefer to free up the “screw” command and use it for your own new action, you can do so with
Understand the command "screw" as something new.
This tells Inform to forget that “screw” is a synonym of “turn”, and now you can use it for something else.