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Date: Fri, 03 Aug 2001 08:49:35 -0400
From: John Colagioia <JColagioia@csi.com>
Organization: No Conspiracy Here...
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Subject: Re: More Inform weirdness
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Daryl McCullough wrote:

> John says...
> >I had actually gotten that far.  I just wanted something a little
> >more...pleasant.  Essentially (for now), it's an NPC commenting on
> >actions.  I'd like him to have his own, standardized vocabulary, rather
> >than (coincidentally!) using the same text that the player typed each
> >time.
> In that case, wouldn't it work to give the NPC a "react_before"
> for each action that the NPC might comment on? For example,
> there's this code in the Designer's Manual:

That works, and was my conceptual starting point, but it has two problems.
First, it requires me to create a switch statement containing every verb I
might think needs a useful commentary--including any verbs I add to the game
later.  Second, it requires me to maintain that same large, unweildy piece of
code.  If I change a verb's meaning, I have to go digging through; add a new
sense in which the verb is used, more digging, and so on.  I've been
programming long enough to know that I'll screw something up eventually,
doing things that way...

What I'd much rather do (and I actually have other plans for this idea--this
is just the second or third baby step to the "final goal") is have the react
before read something along the lines of:
    ...
    react_before
        [ ;
         "~Oooh,~ ", (name) self, " shouts with a sudden flash of
understanding.  You're going to ",
            (somehow_print_the_canonical_name_of_the_verb) action, " ", (the)
noun, "! Clever...";
        ];
This way, when I add a new verb, the maintenance is already taken care of,
for me.

Now, yeah, there'll be other problems guaranteeing that I get "the right"
verb text, but that's a lot easier to fiddle with, once the ANY one is
knowable.


