§6.8. Taking, Dropping, Inserting and Putting
We may want to change the default refusal message when the player tries to pick up scenery: Replanting demonstrates this case simply.
Removal modifies responses to successful TAKE commands, with the effect that when the player picks up an item, he gets a response such as "You take the book from the shelf."
Croft modifies the DROP command, so that objects dropped on specific surfaces get reported in a special way. Celadon allows the player to drop even objects he is carrying indirectly, for instance on a tray or in a sack.
Morning After introduces a simple rule that changes the behavior of the whole game: whenever the player takes an item he hasn't already looked at, he automatically examines it. This picks up the pace of exploration passages where the player is likely to be collecting a large number of objects.
By default, when the player tries to put or insert an item that he isn't holding, Inform prints a refusal message; Democratic Process and Sand offer ways instead to have the player first pick up the relevant items. (The former applies to single items the player is trying to place; the latter expands coverage to work even if the player uses a command affecting multiple objects.)
Taking also happens as a result of other commands. Such takes can be made unnecessary by turning off the "carrying requirements rule" under particular circumstances, or presented differently using the implicitly taking activity.
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![]() | Onward to §6.9. Going, Pushing Things in Directions |
By default, "TAKE OAK" in the example above will produce the response "That's hardly portable." This is fine under many circumstances, but also a bit generic, so we might want to override it for a specific game.
Here we've used an "instead" rule; we will learn more about these in the section on actions. This allows us to define our own results for taking an object. Note: "scenery" is a property of an object (about which we will hear more later). So when we use it in rules, we can talk about "some scenery", "something that is scenery", or even "a scenery thing" -- the last one doesn't sound much like English, but is a more plausible construction with other adjectives. |
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By default, "TAKE OAK" in the example above will produce the response "That's hardly portable." This is fine under many circumstances, but also a bit generic, so we might want to override it for a specific game.
Here we've used an "instead" rule; we will learn more about these in the section on actions. This allows us to define our own results for taking an object. Note: "scenery" is a property of an object (about which we will hear more later). So when we use it in rules, we can talk about "some scenery", "something that is scenery", or even "a scenery thing" -- the last one doesn't sound much like English, but is a more plausible construction with other adjectives. |
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