Chapter 7: Other Characters

§7.1. Getting Acquainted; §7.2. Liveliness; §7.3. Reactive Characters; §7.4. Barter and Exchange; §7.5. Combat and Death; §7.6. Getting Started with Conversation; §7.7. Saying Simple Things; §7.8. Saying Complicated Things; §7.9. The Flow of Conversation; §7.10. Character Emotion; §7.11. Character Knowledge and Reasoning; §7.12. Characters Following a Script; §7.13. Traveling Characters; §7.14. Obedient Characters; §7.15. Goal-Seeking Characters; §7.16. Social Groups

arrow-up-left.pngContents of The Inform Recipe Book
arrow-left.pngChapter 6: Commands
arrow-right.pngChapter 8: Vehicles, Animals and Furniture
arrow-down-right.pngIndexes of the examples

§7.1. Getting Acquainted

Talking about characters presents some special challenges. For one thing, some characters are referred to by a proper name, but others are not: so the story might want to talk about "Jack" but also about "the drunk pedestrian". In the absence of other information, Inform attempts to divine our intentions based on the words with which we defined a new character: but we can always override its guess with an explicit statement, such as

The Great Malefactor is proper-named.

Belfry demonstrates further how titles are set at the start of play.

The relation between the player and the other characters is not always static, however. Sometimes we want the player to learn a character's name part-way through play, and start referring to "the drunk pedestrian" as "Fernando". Similarly, the status of another character may change due to some twist of the plot. Gopher-wood shows how to change the name of a character mid-story, and Peers handles changing the character's rank.

Alternatively, of course, the player character may already know some of the other characters when the story begins, even if the player does not. In that case, we may want to add a tag-line or so of identification to a character's name when he first appears in the story. A Humble Wayside Flower shows one way of doing this.

Another occasional challenge is dealing with such commands as EXAMINE DR. THISBY. The problem here is that Inform by default will understand the full stop after "Dr" to be the end of one command and the beginning of another, and will try to interpret "Thisby" as a verb. If we do have a story populated by such formally-addressed characters, we may turn to Punctuation Removal, which provides a phrase to remove the full stops in standard titles before attempting to interpret the command.

Other characters have physical characteristics as well as names, of course, and Meet Market demonstrates one way of implementing people with notable features.

Finally, in some IF, the roles of characters may change from playing to playing. If we are writing a replayable murder mystery, we might want to select a new culprit each time the story starts; for this, see Clueless.

* See The Human Body for more on body parts and physical description

* See Memory and Knowledge for a way to refer to characters whom the player knows about but who aren't currently in the room


arrow-up.pngStart of Chapter 7: Other Characters
arrow-left.pngBack to Chapter 6: Commands: §6.18. Alternatives To Standard Parsing
arrow-right.pngOnward to §7.2. Liveliness

*ExampleBelfry
You can see a bat, a bell, some woodworm, William Snelson, the sexton's wife, a bellringer and your local vicar here.

*ExampleClueless
A murderer for the mystery is selected randomly at the beginning of the game.

We have already seen that we can give things value properties -- a lamp has a brightness, for instance. Relations give us additional flexibility: since we may relate various things to various values, it is possible to describe a thing as having more than one value at the same time.

To demonstrate:

paste.png "Meet Market" by "K M and Eric Rossing"

Feature is a kind of value. The features are snub-nosed, gangly, comely, bright-eyed, and sulky.

Appearance relates various persons to various features. The verb to appear means the appearance relation.

Meet Market is a room.

Bob, Carol, Ted, and Alice are people in the Meet Market.

Bob appears snub-nosed and gangly.

Ted appears sulky and snub-nosed.

Carol appears comely and bright-eyed.

Alice appears bright-eyed and comely.

Yourself appears sulky and gangly.

Instead of looking:
    say "The snub-nosed ones: [list of people who appear snub-nosed][line break]";
    say "The gangly ones: [list of people who appear gangly][line break]";
    say "The comely ones: [list of people who appear comely][line break]";
    say "The bright-eyed ones: [list of people who appear bright-eyed][line break]";
    say "The sulky ones: [list of people who appear sulky][paragraph break]".

Test me with "look".

The same logic might be used to provide characters who have complex mood states: a person might be angry and sad, not merely one or the other -- feelings being what they are.

*ExampleMeet Market
A case in which relations give characters multiple values of the same kind.

We have already seen that we can give things value properties -- a lamp has a brightness, for instance. Relations give us additional flexibility: since we may relate various things to various values, it is possible to describe a thing as having more than one value at the same time.

To demonstrate:

paste.png "Meet Market" by "K M and Eric Rossing"

Feature is a kind of value. The features are snub-nosed, gangly, comely, bright-eyed, and sulky.

Appearance relates various persons to various features. The verb to appear means the appearance relation.

Meet Market is a room.

Bob, Carol, Ted, and Alice are people in the Meet Market.

Bob appears snub-nosed and gangly.

Ted appears sulky and snub-nosed.

Carol appears comely and bright-eyed.

Alice appears bright-eyed and comely.

Yourself appears sulky and gangly.

Instead of looking:
    say "The snub-nosed ones: [list of people who appear snub-nosed][line break]";
    say "The gangly ones: [list of people who appear gangly][line break]";
    say "The comely ones: [list of people who appear comely][line break]";
    say "The bright-eyed ones: [list of people who appear bright-eyed][line break]";
    say "The sulky ones: [list of people who appear sulky][paragraph break]".

Test me with "look".

The same logic might be used to provide characters who have complex mood states: a person might be angry and sad, not merely one or the other -- feelings being what they are.

**ExampleGopher-wood
Changing the name of a character in the middle of play, removing the article.

**ExamplePeers
The peers of the English realm come in six flavours - Baron, Viscount, Earl, Marquess, Duke and Prince - and must always be addressed properly. While a peerage is for life, it may at the royal pleasure be promoted.

***ExampleA Humble Wayside Flower
Relations track the relationships between one character and another. Whenever the player meets a relative of someone he already knows, he receives a brief introduction.