Chapter 1: How to Use The Recipe Book
1.3. Disenchantment Bay

"Disenchantment Bay" is a simple work of IF used as a running example in Chapter 3 of Writing with Inform - not so much a tutorial as a convenient hook on which to hang some demonstrations of the basics. Because the resulting examples only use basic features and in the most straightforward way, they make for uninteresting "recipes" - so they are not included in the Recipe Book proper. But some readers might like to have all twelve stages of the example gathered on a single page: this is that page.


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* Example  Disenchantment Bay 1
A running example in this chapter, Disenchantment Bay, involves chartering a boat. This is the first step: creating the cabin.

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* Example  Disenchantment Bay 2
Disenchantment Bay: creating some of the objects in the cabin's description.

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* Example  Disenchantment Bay 3
Disenchantment Bay: adding a view of the glacier.

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* Example  Disenchantment Bay 4
Disenchantment Bay: fleshing out the descriptions of things on the boat.

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* Example  Disenchantment Bay 5
Disenchantment Bay: adding the door and the deck to our charter boat.

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* Example  Disenchantment Bay 6
Disenchantment Bay: locking up the charter boat's fishing rods.

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* Example  Disenchantment Bay 7
Disenchantment Bay: making the radar and instruments switch on and off.

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** Example  Disenchantment Bay 8
Disenchantment Bay: a pushable chest of ice for the boat.

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* Example  Disenchantment Bay 9
Disenchantment Bay: enter the charter boat's Captain.

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* Example  Disenchantment Bay 10
Disenchantment Bay: things for the player and the characters to wear and carry.

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* Example  Disenchantment Bay 11
Disenchantment Bay: making a holdall of the backpack.

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If we wanted, we could make the player's backpack infinitely capacious, so:

The backpack is a player's holdall.

...And now whenever the player character is unable to hold everything, he will automatically stow some of his possessions therein.

This is only useful if the player doesn't have infinite carrying capacity himself, so perhaps we also need

The carrying capacity of the player is 3.

Perhaps mercifully, items which are worn are not counted against the player's carrying capacity. We might want to let him take advantage of that, too:

The backpack is wearable.

This capacity system makes a compromise between the realistic and the absurd: on the one hand, it acknowledges that people can't carry an infinite number of items in their hands, while at the same time providing a sack that can.

Many games will have no use for object-juggling of this kind at all; others will want to be much more rigorous about questions of capacity and volume. Fortunately, it is easy to leave the whole business out by assigning no carrying capacity to anything.

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**** Example  Disenchantment Bay 12
A final trip to Disenchantment Bay: the scenario turned into a somewhat fuller scene, with various features that have not yet been explained.

WI


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