1 The Inform Library version 6/12 introduces two fun new ways of
2 storytelling. First, you can use first-person and third person
3 narrative voices. Second, you can use past tense. The typical way to
4 write interactive fiction has been for the game to talk about the player
5 in the second-person narrative voice in the present tense. For example:
8 You put the cookie on the table.
10 That's how Infocom usually did things and is Inform's default. Now
11 suppose you, the author, want the story to read more like an
12 autobiography. Consider this:
15 I put the cookie on the table.
17 This is the first-person narrative voice. Third-person narrative voice
21 George puts the cookie on the table.
23 To cause these alternative narrative voices, the player object needs to
24 have a narrative_voice property with a value of 1 or 3. Setting it to 2
25 results in the old regular behavior. It's most convenient to do this in
26 the Initialise() routine like this:
30 player.narrative_voice = 1;
33 For third-person mode, some additional properties are necessary:
37 player.narrative_voice = 3;
38 player.short_name = "George Jones";
39 (player.&name)-->0 = 'George';
40 (player.&name)-->1 = 'Jones';
43 The name property must be specified like this. There are five slots to
44 which you may add dictionary words.
46 Using these modes may require a bit more discipline when it comes to
47 writing your prose and dealing with the default responses from new verbs
48 you introduce. If the player always controls the same character and/or
49 the narrative voice never changes, you can write your verb subroutines
50 to always talk about George. If the player changes characters or the
51 narrative voice changes, things get a bit more complicated. Problems
52 like that can be solved by careful use of the CSubject functions which
53 are detailed at the end of this document.
55 Previously if you changed the player-character to something other than
56 selfobj, the former player-character would be described as "Your former
57 self" when typing "LOOK". If you want to change bodies like this, you
58 must set player.short_name even if you use the old regular second-person
59 voice. Make sure the narrative_voice, short_name, and name properties
60 are all sensibly set for all possible bodies the player might control.
62 An interesting way of using the third-person voice is to give the PC a
63 generic name like "detective" (put that in the short_name and name
64 properties). Then take away the PC's proper attribute. This will cause
65 the library to address the PC as "the detective" and correctly
66 capitalize the word "the". For instance:
70 player.narrative_voice = 3;
71 player.short_name = "detective";
72 (player.&name)-->0 = 'detective';
76 This results in a room description like this:
79 The detective puts the folder on the table.
84 This is the 13th Precinct's squad room.
86 The detective can see a table (upon which is a folder).
89 The detective is carrying:
93 The default article used to describe a non-proper PC is "the". If you
94 want to talk about "a detective", just set player.article to "a".
96 There is another property for the player object: nameless. This has
97 meaning only in the first-person or second-person narrative voices.
98 Normally if you're using either of these voices and the PC switches
99 bodies, the PC's former body is referred to as "My former self" or "Your
100 former self". If you want the former body to be referred to some other
101 way, set player.nameless to false and set the name and short_name
102 properties to something appropriate. If third-person narrative voice is
103 used, the nameless property is ignored. "The detective" isn't
104 namelessness. It's just not a proper name.
107 The Library uses the CSubject subroutines to figure out when to say "I",
108 "You", or "George". You can use them too. The most important of these
109 is CSubjectVerb(). It handles the conjugation of verbs used by the
110 actor. These are its parameters:
111 obj The actor who is doing something.
112 reportage Boolean: causes the actor to "observe"[1]
113 nocaps Boolean: Don't capitalise if "you" is used[2].
114 v1 1st person "I" present verb.
115 v2 2nd person "You" present verb[3].
116 v3 3rd person "He", "she", or "it" present verb.
117 past The past tense form of the verb[4].
119 [1] In the Library itself, "reportage" is used in SubjectNotPlayer()
120 which determines the correct conjugation for certain actions performed
121 by NPCs. If this is "false", then this will happen:
123 Sally achieves nothing by this.
124 If this is "true" then this happens:
126 Sally observes that she achieves nothing by this.
127 This sort of thing can be important if you want to imply that the NPC is
128 aware of the result of an action.
130 [2] When the second-person voice is used, responses very often begin
131 with "You". Suppose you want to put a conjunction like "but" in front
132 of "you". For instance:
134 But you can't have any pudding if you don't eat your meat!
135 See that "you" is not capitalised. If you omit this parameter, it will
136 be false and therefore the game will capitalise "you". If you want to
137 use a conjunction as in the above example, pass "true".
139 [3] The v2 parameter is usually not necessary because the first and
140 second person present forms of verbs are usually the same. Unless you
141 have something special planned, pass 0 for v2.
143 [4] Past tense can be useful for implementing a flashback. For
146 This vase was very expensive-looking.
149 Here's an example of using CSubjectVerb():
150 CSubjectVerb(actor,false,true,"close",0,"closes","closed"); " ",
153 The default is to use the present tense. If you want to change to the
154 past tense, set player.narrative_tense to PAST_TENSE. To change back,
155 change it to PRESENT_TENSE. If you're doing something more complicated,
156 like going back and forth between the present and the past, it can be
157 handy to create a "past PC" with its own posessions and properties.
158 That one always has its narrative_tense set to PAST_TENSE. Then when
159 you want to flash back, simply call ChangePlayer() appropriately.
161 There are frequent situations where you need to select between present
162 and past tense forms of phrases in ways that CSubjectVerb() is not
163 appropriate. Use the Tense() function for that. The Library itself
164 uses Tense() to keep things straight. Here's how to use it:
165 print "After the storm, there still ";
166 Tense("isn't", "wasn't");
169 There is a helper function called Tense() that doesn't quite fit in with the CSubject
170 functions. This one takes two parameters: present and past. Its purpose is to keep the
171 tense of various verbs straight. It's not meant for sorting out narrative voices, but
172 instead is applied after that has been sorted out. In fact, Tense() is used extensively
173 in the CSubject helper functions to do just that.
175 Most of the rest of the CSubject functions are wrappers for commonly used verbs: "is",
176 "isn't", "has", "will", "can", "can't", and "don't". These have only three parameters:
177 obj, reportage, and nocaps. You can call these with two or one parameters if you like.
178 The functions will receive 0 (also false) for missing trailing parameters.
179 CSubjectVoice() is similar to CSubjectVerb() except that the name of the subject is not
183 along with sample calls:
186 CSubjectIs(x1,true,true); " already closed.";
190 CSubjectIsnt(actor,true,false);
191 " in anything at the moment.";
194 CSubjectHas(actor,false,true); " better things to do.";
197 CSubjectWill(actor,true,true); " first have to close ", (the) x1, ".";
200 CSubjectCan(actor,true,true);
201 " only get into something free-standing.";
204 CSubjectCant(actor,true, true);
205 " usefully blow ", (thatorthose) x1, ".";
208 CSubjectDont(x1,true,true); " seem to fit the lock.";
212 CSubjectVoice(player, "do", "do", "does", "did");
214 CSubjectVerb(player, false, true, "want", "want", "want", "want");