§10.9. Heat
Since we prefer not to simulate burnt skin, and it is unsporting to kill a player outright merely for touching a hot object, heat is mostly used as a reason why something cannot be picked up at a given moment. This very basic puzzle is demonstrated in Grilling.
With the naked eye, it is not always easy to detect what is too hot to touch - a point made in both Masochism Deli, where the only solution is to keep picking up potatoes until one doesn't burn, and in Hot Glass Looks Like Cold Glass, where infrared goggles turn the scales.
If a hot object is not to be touched, will it stay hot forever? It might well, if it is a steak on an electric grill, but not if it is a recently-baked apple pie sitting on a window-sill. Entropy simulates the gradual return of temperature to equilibrium.
See Electricity and Magnetism for items which shouldn't be touched because they are hot in a different way
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Descriptions of objects can be used in "Instead" rules: we can not only say "Instead of taking the steak", but also "Instead of taking something" or "Instead of taking something which is on the grill". That last rule is useful if, for example, we want to prevent the player from interacting with anything on a specific supporter:
We could just as easily adapt this rule to affect a container: "Instead of taking something which is in the ice chest," for example. Note also that in older versions of Inform, the pattern "get all from..." was treated differently from "get steak", and had to be accounted for separately. This is no longer the case; this instead of taking... rule will handle all the phrasings which the player might use to try to acquire this object. |
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Descriptions of objects can be used in "Instead" rules: we can not only say "Instead of taking the steak", but also "Instead of taking something" or "Instead of taking something which is on the grill". That last rule is useful if, for example, we want to prevent the player from interacting with anything on a specific supporter:
We could just as easily adapt this rule to affect a container: "Instead of taking something which is in the ice chest," for example. Note also that in older versions of Inform, the pattern "get all from..." was treated differently from "get steak", and had to be accounted for separately. This is no longer the case; this instead of taking... rule will handle all the phrasings which the player might use to try to acquire this object. |
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