I want to redefine an action, and have it apply only when the player is in a certain location. Anyone ever done this?
Instead of jumping when the player is in the Garden: say "No. Bad. No jumping here."Not sure an instead rule would get it.
The action I want to redefine is “rub.” I want the player to rub shaving foam onto his face, but the only success I’ve had is:
[code]Instead of rubbing foam:
say “You work the foam into your face.”;
now player wears foam.[/cdoe]
If I do it this way, the instruction “rub foam into face” is not allowed by I7, but I think this is going to be the most common statement among people who play the game; that is, they’re not going to write “rub foam,” but “rub foam into face.”
So add a new action.
Rubbing it into is an action applying to two things. Understand "rub [something] into [something]" as rubbing it into.That sure did get it, Draconis. Thanks. I must just be able to get “Solid Gold” ready for beta today!
Can you write “rub” as a synonym for “put”? I don’t rub shaving foam into my face, I put it on there. 
Good point!
I think “wear foam” would have been my first guess, followed by “rub foam on me”.
Mini-rant below. Didn’t mean to, but that’s how it came out!
[rant]Heh, “wear foam” is a brilliant example of an IF player who has the standard verbs in their head and goes around trying to interact with the world using only those verbs, trying to fit the world to the verbs they know it’s going to work. It’s an interesting discussion that I think was being had elsewhere, and harks back to the way olden days of strange constructs like “go window” and “water on”.
I’m not saying it’s wrong to do this - I’m pretty sure we all do it. It’s just interesting to note! We’re sort of shackled to the standard verbs; and players who are not end up trying to guess-the-verb quite badly. People keep talking about how innaccesible IF is to the non-IFer, maybe this is part of what they mean?
FWIW, “rub foam on me” seems natural to me. I think I’d also try “put on foam” - and the irony is that “put on foam” is a direct synonim of “wear foam”, so I’m just as constrained in my mindset as you are!
Part of the problem is probably that it’s hard to come up with a specific verb for a very simple action, and the standard verbs are sort of reliable that way; they cover pretty much most of everything you can do.[/rant]
There’s no substitute for beta testing!
Re: the minirant:
It’s even worse than you know!
For several years, I worked on GemStone IV, where (generally speaking) I could map new functionality onto existing verbs to handle special situations, but I couldn’t create new verbs. So (for example) if I wanted to make a way for a player to pirouette, I couldn’t create a PIROUETTE verb - but I could create a special pair of pants and add a verbtrap for TURN PANTS to produce a pirouetting message.
As an author, I’ve kicked this habit (hooray!) but as a player, I still keep forgetting that nonstandard verbs might be available.