![]() | Chapter 18: Rulebooks | ![]() ![]() |
| 18.15. Phrases concerning rules |
![]() | This section and the previous one are about a feature which is being withdrawn from Inform in future. Experience shows there are equally good ways to achieve the same ends without needing procedural rules. As elegant as they were, they often confused users, and they were expensive at run-time (that is, they made everything work more slowly). Withdrawing them from Inform will make it possible to make more efficient story files, and will simplify the language.
The "ignore" phrase is only one of a suite, which should only be used in procedural rules. The full list is:
ignore (rule)
reinstate (rule)
reject the result of (rule)
accept the result of (rule)
substitute (rule) for (rule)
restore the original (rule)
move (rule) to before (rule)
move (rule) to after (rule)
These rule-changing instructions allow apparently casual sentences to wreak havoc with the model world. This, for instance, is quite the recipe for mayhem and perplexity:
A procedural rule:
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| Example UptempoAdjust time advancement so the game clock moves fifteen minutes each turn. |
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| ![]() Example Lethal Concentration 1A poisonous gas that spreads from room to room, incapacitating or killing the player when it reaches sufficient levels. |
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| ![]() Example Swigmore U.Adding a new kind of supporter called a perch, where everything dropped lands on the floor. |
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| ![]() Example SolitudeNovice mode that prefaces every prompt with a list of possible commands the player could try, and highlights every important word used, to alert players to interactive items in the scenery. |
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| ![]() ![]() Example Lethal Concentration 2Poisonous gas again, only this time it sinks. |
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