Chapter 17: Activities
17.36. Printing the player's obituary

1. When it happens. The obituary is the text "*** You have died ***" or similar, usually followed by the final score.

2. The default behaviour. Printing the aforementioned text, then the final score, and reducing the status line to a largely blank state.

3. Examples. (a) For a work with no meaningful score, it would be odd to wind up with a final reckoning of 0, so:

Procedural rule: ignore the print final score rule.

(b) Or we could add to the verdict:

After printing the player's obituary: say "And you visited [number of visited rooms] place[s]."


369
* Example  Finality
Not mentioning UNDO in the final set of options.

RB
370
* Example  Battle of Ridgefield
Completely replacing the endgame text and stopping the game without giving the player a chance to restart or restore.

RB

Occasionally, a piece of IF is sufficiently serious that it feels bathetic to offer the player the usual restore-restart-undo-quit options at the end. The following would replace "*** You have died ***" with a centered epitaph, then quit the game when the player hits a key.

This example relies on a standard extension to avoid any fancy programming:

"Battle of Ridgefield"

Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.

Ridgefield is a room.

Instead of doing something when the turn count is greater than 1: say "Alas, you no longer have the strength."; end the story.

Rule for printing the player's obituary:
    say paragraph break;
    center "In defense of American Independence";
    center "at the Battle of Ridgefield, April 27, 1777,";
    center "died Eight Patriots who were laid in this ground,";
    center "Companioned by Sixteen British Soldiers,";
    center "Living, their enemies,";
    center "Dying, their guests";
    say paragraph break;
    wait for any key;
    stop game abruptly;
    rule succeeds.

371
* Example  Jamaica 1688
Adding a feature to the final question after victory, so that the player can choose to reveal notes about items in the game.

RB


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