Supplying a Missing Noun

Authoring Inform 7
1

Here’s what I’ve got:

[code]“Wolves”

The Canine Cave is a room. The Canine Den is north of the Canine Cave. The Cave Tunnel is north of the Canine Den. The Dead End is north of the Cave Tunnel.

A wolf is a kind of person. A wolf called the first wolf is in the Canine Cave. A wolf called the second wolf is in the Canine Den. A wolf called the third wolf is in the Dead End.

Section 1 - Howling

Howling is an action applying to nothing.

The block vaguely going rule is not listed in the for supplying a missing noun rules.

Carry out a wolf howling:
say “The wolf rears its head and lets out a bloodcurdling howl.”;
repeat with the monster running through wolves:
let the current place be the location of the monster;
if the number of moves from the current place to the location of the actor is less than 3:
let the way be the best route from the current place to the location of the actor;
try the monster going the way.

Every turn:
try the first wolf howling.[/code]

What I want is for the wolf’s howling to attract other nearby wolves, and it works, but a message appears during run-time that says “You must supply a noun.” This message appears once for each wolf except the howling one, presumably because it is running through them, but I can’t figure out what noun is missing. Any ideas? Here’s what the game looks like when it’s played:

2

For the wolves that are already in the location of the howling wolf (including the howling wolf itself), the ‘way’ variable is ‘nothing’, which doesn’t count as a noun – that’s why Inform complains about a missing noun: the wolves that are already in the howler’s location all try going ‘nothing’.

I guess the most transparent way to avoid it is to exclude wolves that have already arrived from the ‘monster’ variable.

Carry out a wolf howling: say "The wolf rears its head and lets out a bloodcurdling howl."; repeat with the monster running through wolves that are not in the location of the actor: let the current place be the location of the monster; if the number of moves from the current place to the location of the actor is less than 3: let the way be the best route from the current place to the location of the actor; try the monster going the way;

3

Thanks, works perfectly! My problem was that I thought that the “missing noun” was applying to the wolves NOT in the location, but it was actually the other way around.