Chapter 8: Change
8.8. Moving the player

The player is a thing, too, and can also be moved, which has the effect of instantaneous transportation, without the need for a suitable map connection to the new location. For instance:

move the player to the Bodleian Library

This will ordinarily result in a room description of the Bodleian Library being printed up, but that might not always be desirable. For instance:

Instead of waiting in the Schola Maleficorum: say "A bored demon catches your eye (they really do have very inquisitive fingers) and throws you back out into the Antechamber."; move the player to the Antechamber, without printing a room description.

Thus tacking on the option "without printing a room description", remembering to add the comma, omits the description which would otherwise be produced. A compromise is to use the option "printing an abbreviated room description": this gives a full description if the player has never been here before, but only a brief one if it is a familiar scene.

We will see further examples of phrase options such as "without printing a room description", which can modify the normal behaviour of phrases, in subsequent chapters.


97
 Example  Terror of the Sierra Madre
Multiple player characters who take turns controlling the action.

Suppose we have a game where we want the player to control two different characters, swapping bodies from one turn to the next. One player-character called "yourself" is predefined by default, but we can create more:

"Terror of the Sierra Madre"

Teresa is a female player-character. Teresa is in the Hay-Strewn Corridor. "Teresa stands opposite you[if Teresa carries something], her fingers wrapped tightly around [list of things carried by Teresa][end if]." Teresa carries a bulb of garlic and a cross.

And we need to make the "yourself" player-character interesting to look out from the outside, as well:

The initial appearance of yourself is "Maleska watches you from eyes entirely black." Understand "Maleska" as yourself. Yourself carries a skull. Yourself is male.

And if we wanted to give our two player-characters some different abilities:

The carrying capacity of a player-character is always 2. A player-character has a number called strength. The strength of Teresa is 3. The strength of yourself is 5

Now for the exchange of power. The player is a player-character that varies, which means that we can set it to another player-character when we choose:

Every turn:
    if the player is not Teresa, change the player to Teresa;
    otherwise change the player to yourself.

When play begins:
    change the command prompt to "[bold type][player][roman type] > ";
    change the left hand status line to "[player]";
    change the right hand status line to "STR: [strength of the player]".

And since we need to override the standard behavior that player-characters are called "yourself" under some circumstances:

Rule for printing the name of Teresa: say "Teresa".

Rule for printing the name of yourself: say "Maleska".

The Hay-Strewn Corridor is a room. "[if the player is yourself]The horse stalls are empty: you have already drained the animals, and carried off their corpses. The house will not long sustain you now.

The window throws on the floor a bright square of malevolent sunlight[otherwise]The stalls for horses run down one side of the room, but the house has long stood empty. A square window without shutters looks out over the ranch, away toward the Sierras[end if]."

Test me with "look / look".


PreviousContentsNext