§14.11. Changing the text of responses

These responses are named so that they can be changed. Most IF authors dislike one or two of the existing responses, and some would like to change almost all of them to give the text a different style; and extensions for IF in languages other than English change literally every response, of course.

It's very easy to change responses:

The print empty inventory rule response (A) is "Your hands are, like, totally empty. Lame."

and we can even do this dynamically during play:

now the print empty inventory rule response (A) is "Your hands ...";

just as if we were setting a variable.


arrow-up.pngStart of Chapter 14: Adaptive Text and Responses
arrow-left.pngBack to §14.10. Responses
arrow-right.pngOnward to §14.12. The RESPONSES testing command

The most straightforward way to alter the response text for something in the standard rules is to select the Index tab, then select Actions, then pick the particular action whose text we'd like to alter. Under action details, there will be icons that look like speech bubbles.

Clicking on the speech bubble will show what the current response text is, and give us an option called "set".

If we click "set", this will automatically paste in the response name that we need to change. We can put this inside a "when play begins" rule in order to make that change take effect from the start of the game, like so:

paste.png "Responsive"

An Anonymous B613 Cell is a room. "There isn't much to see in this bare room. What there is, you've already seen sometime in the last twenty years."

When play begins:
    now print empty inventory rule response (A) is "[We] [have] absolutely nothing.".

Test me with "i".

*ExampleResponsive
Altering the standard inventory text for when the player is carrying nothing.

The most straightforward way to alter the response text for something in the standard rules is to select the Index tab, then select Actions, then pick the particular action whose text we'd like to alter. Under action details, there will be icons that look like speech bubbles.

Clicking on the speech bubble will show what the current response text is, and give us an option called "set".

If we click "set", this will automatically paste in the response name that we need to change. We can put this inside a "when play begins" rule in order to make that change take effect from the start of the game, like so:

paste.png "Responsive"

An Anonymous B613 Cell is a room. "There isn't much to see in this bare room. What there is, you've already seen sometime in the last twenty years."

When play begins:
    now print empty inventory rule response (A) is "[We] [have] absolutely nothing.".

Test me with "i".

The most straightforward way to alter the response text for something in the standard rules is to select the Index tab, then select Actions, then pick the particular action whose text we'd like to alter. Under action details, there will be icons that look like speech bubbles.

Clicking on the speech bubble will show what the current response text is, and give us an option called "set".

If we click "set", this will automatically paste in the response name that we need to change. We can put this inside a "when play begins" rule in order to make that change take effect from the start of the game, like so:

paste.png "Responsive"

An Anonymous B613 Cell is a room. "There isn't much to see in this bare room. What there is, you've already seen sometime in the last twenty years."

When play begins:
    now print empty inventory rule response (A) is "[We] [have] absolutely nothing.".

Test me with "i".