§4.3. Degrees of certainty
When we write:
A dead end is usually dark.
we are saying that it will be dark rather than lighted unless we should specify otherwise. So it would be fine to add:
The Tortuous Alcove is lighted.
because although dead ends are usually dark, this one is evidently an exception. On the other hand, if we had originally written
A dead end is always dark.
then Inform would not have permitted any exception to be made, and would have reported a problem if we had tried to make the Tortuous Alcove lighted. Besides "usually" and "always", we can also employ "seldom" and "never", which are their negatives. Thus, "never lighted" means the same as "always dark".
In a game with many staircases, we might want:
Defining the staircase this way means that we will never be able to get away with (for instance) a folding ladder into the attic which is sometimes closed up. So alternatively we might do
We could then write a rule so that whenever the player types CLIMB [any staircase], the command is diverted to an enter command, while all other doors refuse to respond to such treatment. Still, this kind is now usable, as we see in this trivial example:
But these are refinements for a later chapter. |
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In a game with many staircases, we might want:
Defining the staircase this way means that we will never be able to get away with (for instance) a folding ladder into the attic which is sometimes closed up. So alternatively we might do
We could then write a rule so that whenever the player types CLIMB [any staircase], the command is diverted to an enter command, while all other doors refuse to respond to such treatment. Still, this kind is now usable, as we see in this trivial example:
But these are refinements for a later chapter. In a game with many staircases, we might want:
Defining the staircase this way means that we will never be able to get away with (for instance) a folding ladder into the attic which is sometimes closed up. So alternatively we might do
We could then write a rule so that whenever the player types CLIMB [any staircase], the command is diverted to an enter command, while all other doors refuse to respond to such treatment. Still, this kind is now usable, as we see in this trivial example:
But these are refinements for a later chapter. |
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