§7.5. After rules
There is pleasantly little to be said about "after" rules. If an action has survived all the rules in its way, and has actually succeeded, then we need to give the player a response which acknowledges this. Inform's normal rules will be sufficient to say something undramatic: for instance, if "taking the napkin" has succeeded then it will reply "Taken." to the player.
An after rule is an opportunity to say something more interesting:
After taking the diamonds, say "Taken!"
(Well, slightly more interesting.) After rules automatically end the action (as a success), which is what we would want in the above case. Allowing it to continue would simply result in "Taken." being printed as well. However, should we really need to do something and then carry on:
After taking the diamonds: say "(Mr Beebe looks up sharply.) "; continue the action.
![]() | Start of Chapter 7: Basic Actions |
![]() | Back to §7.4. Try and try silently |
![]() | Onward to §7.6. Reading and talking |
Suppose we want to make the player's life slightly easier by examining everything he picks up, if he hasn't already examined it.
Carry out rules are explained in more detail in the chapter on advanced action handling. For now, it may be enough to know that what we put into this carry out rule for examining will happen any time anything is examined, but that it will not interfere with the rest of the predefined behavior of the action. The player will still see the object description and so on, as usual.
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Suppose we want to make the player's life slightly easier by examining everything he picks up, if he hasn't already examined it.
Carry out rules are explained in more detail in the chapter on advanced action handling. For now, it may be enough to know that what we put into this carry out rule for examining will happen any time anything is examined, but that it will not interfere with the rest of the predefined behavior of the action. The player will still see the object description and so on, as usual.
Suppose we want to make the player's life slightly easier by examining everything he picks up, if he hasn't already examined it.
Carry out rules are explained in more detail in the chapter on advanced action handling. For now, it may be enough to know that what we put into this carry out rule for examining will happen any time anything is examined, but that it will not interfere with the rest of the predefined behavior of the action. The player will still see the object description and so on, as usual.
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