Understand and "climbing"

Authoring Inform 7
1

Greetings, all.

I dug up my source code from “a long time ago” (a time period, not a title) and I encountered the dreaded error message:

Problem. You wrote ‘Understand the commands “ascend” and “descend” as climbing’ : but ‘understand the command … as …’ should end with a command already defined, as in ‘understand the command “steal” as “take”’.

I closely read Sections 17.1 through 17.4, but I’m still stumped.

A little help from you folks with Giant Brains? Thanks in advance for everything.

Cheers,

[ From Emily Short's "Bronze." ]
[From Ex. 43 "Something Narsty" and Ex. 89 "Hayseed." ]

A staircase is a kind of door. A staircase is usually open. A staircase is seldom openable. Understand "stairs" or "stair" or "staircase" as a staircase. Understand "upstairs" or "downstairs" as a staircase.

Instead of climbing a staircase:
	try entering the noun. 

[This is the "problem child" with Inform 7 build 6M62.]
Understand the commands "ascend" and "descend" as climbing. Understand "go down [staircase]" as climbing. Understand "go up [staircase]" as climbing.
2

Try


understand the command "ascend" as "climb”.

And so on.

3

You don’t need the command at all, do you? Shouldn’t this work:

Understand "ascend [something]" or "descend [something]" as climbing.
4

I think the advantage of using “the command” is that way “ascend” inherits all the same grammar that works with “climb” in the standard rules, so they act as complete synonyms without needing any additional Understand statements to pick up alternate syntaxes. I’m not sure whether any of those exist for climbing, though - maybe climb on, climb over? Easy enough to write the appropriate rules, as you say, but since the OP was using that approach I assume there’s a reason for it!

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5

Actually, you’re right. The standard rules have:

Understand "climb [something]" or "climb up/over [something]" as climbing.
Understand the command "scale" as "climb".

So if you want ASCEND UP STAIRS to work, you should do it the Understand the command way.

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6

Mike and FriendOfFred,

Thanks for your insight and comments. I copied the code above from Emily Short’s “Bronze,” so maybe I’m missing something else from that source.

Cheers,

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