"Actions" are what we get if we try to break down a narrative into its irreducible parts. We might casually say that we are "going shopping", but this involves many smaller steps: going north, going east, entering the shop, examining a loaf of bread, taking it, giving money to the baker, and so on.
An action is an impulse to do something. This may or may not be a reasonable aspiration, and may or may not be achieved. The player's exploration of an interactive fiction is made by a sequence of actions, so much of the designing process comes down to responding to these actions.
We write actions using present participles. For instance, if the player types "take napkin" or "get the napkin" or something similar then the resulting action would be written as:
taking the napkin
The details of what words the player actually typed are unimportant to us: we deal only in actions.
Every action ends in success or failure. In this context, success means only that the player's intention has been fulfilled. If the player sets out to take the napkin, but finds a million-pound banknote in its folds instead, the action will be deemed to be a failure.
The testing command ACTIONS causes Inform to log every action as it happens, and what its outcome is. (ACTIONS OFF turns this off again.) For instance:
>s
[going south]
Security Vault
You can see a metal door here.
[going south - succeeded]
>close door
[closing metal door]
You close the metal door.
[closing metal door - succeeded]
>take door
[taking metal door]
That's fixed in place.
[taking metal door - failed the can't take what's fixed in place rule]
A good way to get a sense of the constant flow of actions is to use this command and then wander around an existing work, trying things out. ACTIONS can also give an insight into the web of rules governing play: there are more than ten different ways an attempt to take something can fail, for instance.
An action is ordinarily handled by running it through Inform's extensive rulebooks of what might be called normal behaviour. An action such as "taking the napkin", for instance, will be run through numerous checks to see if it is physically reasonable, and then provided all is well, the napkin will be moved into the possession of the player.
Instead, though, we can bypass the rules to do with an action and do something else:
Instead of eating the napkin: say "Why not wait for the actual dinner to arrive?"
This is an example of a "rule": a set of circumstances followed by a list of instructions. When those circumstances apply, the instructions are carried out. In the case of an "instead" rule, after this is done the action is immediately ended (and counts as a failure, since the original intention has been thwarted).
A friendly alternative can be used when there is only a single instruction, as here: in such rules the colon can be replaced with a comma. Thus:
Instead of eating the napkin, say "Why not wait for the actual dinner to arrive?"
Despite what was said in the previous section, instead rules do not quite bypass all of the usual rules. Inform knows that certain actions require light: for instance,
examining the napkin; looking; looking under the dining table
and if it is dark then none of these actions will be allowed, and any instead rules about them will not even be reached. Similarly, Inform knows that most actions require physical access to their objects: so "taking the napkin" would be blocked if the napkin were, say, inside a closed glass bottle, whereas "examining the napkin" would not. So an instead rule can only take effect if the action has already passed these basic reasonability tests.
"Before" rules genuinely precede checking of any kind. They also differ from instead rules in that they do not automatically stop the action in its tracks. Rather, they are provided as an opportunity to ensure that something else is done first. For example:
Before taking the napkin, say "(first unfolding its delicate origami swan)".
whence
>GET NAPKIN
(first unfolding its delicate origami swan)
Taken.
We have seen that instead rules automatically stop actions, whereas before rules automatically allow them to continue. We sometimes want to change this. The magic word "instead" can therefore be tacked on to any instruction in a before rule, and will have the effect of immediately stopping the action at that instruction. Thus the following two rules are (almost) equivalent:
Before taking the key, instead say "It seems to be soldered to the keyhole."
Instead of taking the key, say "It seems to be soldered to the keyhole."
It is also possible to be explicit about stopping the action:
stop the action
This phrase stops the current rule, stops the rulebook being worked through, and finally stops the action being processed. Example:
Before taking the key:
say "It seems to be soldered to the keyhole.";
stop the action.
Finally, we can prevent Inform from stopping the action when it otherwise might:
continue the action
This phrase ends the current rule, but in a way which keeps its rulebook going, so that the action being processed will carry on rather than being stopped. Example:
Instead of taking the napkin:
say "(first unfolding its delicate origami swan)[command clarification break]";
continue the action.
An "instead" rule ordinarily stops the action when it finishes, so the "continue the action" is needed to make things carry on. (This rule would have been better written as a "before" rule, in fact, but it shows the idea.)
As a general principle, it is good style to use instead rules whenever blocking actions, and before rules only when it is genuinely necessary to do something first but then to continue: in fact, it is good style to use "stop the action" or "continue the action" as little as possible.
Chapter 2 noted that surveys of Inform source text showed that the three most popular phrases used by authors are "say", "if" and "now". The fourth most popular is "try", which allows us to trigger off actions ourselves, rather than waiting for the player to type something which generates them. Thus:
try (action)
This phrase makes the action, which has to be named literally, take effect now. Example:
Instead of entering the trapdoor, try going up.
It's as if the player had typed GO UP as a command. Note that the action has to be specific:
try eating something;
is not allowed, since it doesn't say exactly what is to be eaten.
The word "try" is intended to make clear that there is no guarantee of success. For example:
Before locking the front door, try closing the front door.
could go wrong in any number of ways - perhaps the door is closed already, perhaps it is not openable, perhaps somebody has wedged it open. It would be safer to write:
Before locking the front door:
try closing the front door;
if the front door is open, stop the action.
There's no need to say anything if closing didn't work, because the closing action will have done that already. A neater approach still is to use:
silently try (action)
or…
try silently (action)
This phrase makes the action, which has to be named literally, take effect now, under the "silent" convention which means that routine messages aren't printed. Example:
try silently taking the napkin;
Silence is maintained only if this new action, the taking of the napkin, is successful (so if the napkin is successfully taken, the text "Taken." will not appear): if the action should fail, a suitable objection will be voiced as usual.
So now we have:
Before locking the front door:
try silently closing the front door;
if the front door is open, stop the action.
And this is neater because it won't produce a pointless "You close the front door." message.
See Also
Stored actions for how to store up actions as values and try those, too, so that isn't necessary to name the action as literally as in the examples above.
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.
A few actions apply not to items alone, but also involve what might be called conversation. The first is the one used for looking things up in books (which is conversation of a kind, even if the author is not present): "consulting … about …". For example,
In the Grove is a book of sybilline verses.
After consulting the book about "grove", say "The Grove is a sacred yadda, yadda. There's a tree, that sort of thing. Wisdom."
After consulting the book about "future events", say "It's a bit, what's the word? Delphic."
Note that what follows "about" here is a piece of text in double-quotes, and not the name of something. It can be almost any text at all, and in fact we shall later see (in the chapter on "Understanding") that we can match complicated patterns of words, too.
Similar actions are used for conversing with people:
After asking the Sybil about "verses", say "She blushes."
After telling the Sybil about "persians", say "She nods gravely."
After answering the Sybil that "I am mad", say "She sighs."
These would be produced by commands like "ask sybil about verses", "tell sybil about persians" and "answer i am mad". Answering is little-used except that it also catches commands like "sybil, something unrecognized", which inexperienced players sometimes type. Asking and telling, however, are important actions and the difference between them is often worth preserving. If you would prefer to make "tell sybil about X" do the same as "ask sybil about X", the following rule would serve:
Instead of telling the Sybil about something, try asking the Sybil about it.
Games with a lot of conversation often involve great heaps of rules like the ones above, which can be repetitious to type out. We shall also later see (in the chapter on "Tables") that we can tabulate questions and answers in a much more concise way, if we prefer.
See Also
Topic columns for table-based ways to store and retrieve conversation.
A fully-implemented book, answering questions from a table of data, and responding to failed consultation with a custom message such as "You flip through the Guide to Central American Birds, but find no reference to penguins."
The five senses are all simulated with actions. Sight is so informative that it is handled by a whole range of actions: "looking", which describes the general scene; "examining something", which takes a closer look at a specific thing; "looking under something", and so on.
The other senses have one action each: "listening to something", "touching something", "tasting something" and "smelling something". It makes no sense to touch or taste the general scene, but listening and smelling are a different matter: we often just listen, without listening to anything specific. If the player types the command "listen", Inform understands that as listening to the current location: similarly for the bare command "smell". Thus:
Instead of listening to the Seashore, say "The song of gulls."
Instead of smelling the Cave, say "Salt and old seaweed."
A description can include more than one choice of action. For instance:
examining or searching the desk
matches either of "examining the desk" or "searching the desk". We can have more than two actions, of course:
examining, looking under or searching the desk
The actions combined like this need to be compatible with each other, at least a little. For instance, this will generate a problem message:
waiting or searching the desk
because it makes no sense to "wait the desk". On the other hand, this is fine:
waiting or searching
The general rule is that if we specify one or more objects ("the desk" in the above example), then each of the actions we quote must take at least that many objects.
For example, the following saves us writing the same basic rule three times over:
Instead of examining, looking under or searching the desk: say "There's no use poking around in that old desk."
The special description "doing something" (or "doing anything") matches any action, and "doing something to …" also allows the noun to be specified.
For instance, the following puts its object out of bounds:
Instead of doing something to the cucumber sandwich, say "Lady Bracknell stares disapprovingly down her pince-nez at you, in a way which no amount of hunger or curiosity could overcome."
We sometimes need to be a little careful here: "waiting" qualifies as "doing something", but not as "doing something to something", because there is no object. "Putting the handbag on the cucumber sandwich" would also not qualify as "doing something to the cucumber sandwich" - only to the handbag.
More often, we would like to restrict the range of allowable actions to a select few. For instance:
Instead of doing something other than looking, examining or waiting: say "You must learn patience."
(Or we can write "except" instead of "other than".) Or we might have an object, too:
Instead of doing something other than examining, taking or dropping with the dagger: say "Don't fool around with that dagger. It's exceedingly sharp."
Note the "with", which is crucial here. Without it, the rule is subtly different:
Instead of doing something other than examining, taking or dropping the dagger: say "Don't fool around with that dagger. It's exceedingly sharp."
This second version matches if the action is, say, taking a shield, or even just looking, because that would be an action other than examining the dagger, taking the dagger or dropping the dagger.
Once we begin applying rules to actions which are not entirely known in advance, we have a problem: there's no way to find out what specifically is happening. Consider the following:
Instead of examining something, say "It is none of your concern!"
This is fine as far as it goes, but clumsy. What if the player had examined a human being? Then "it" would be inappropriate. A better approach would be this:
Instead of examining something, say "[The noun] is none of your concern!"
The "noun" and, when necessary, the "second noun" are values which can be used in any rule about actions, and it follows that they can also be substituted into text, as this example demonstrates. Results might include:
Lady Bracknell is none of your concern!
The silver cigarette case is none of your concern!
This seems a good moment to mention that if you use "The" in a substitution, then a capitalised "The" will be used so long as this is grammatically correct (Lady Bracknell, as a proper noun, takes no article); "the" becomes a lower-case "the" along the same lines; and "a" a lower-case indefinite article.
Instead of examining something in the Drawing Room, say "Under Lady Bracknell's eye, you feel constrained. Besides, it is only [a noun]."
Three elaborations of action descriptions increase the range of possibilities further.
Instead of taking something in the Supernatural Void, say "In this peculiar mist you feel unable to grasp anything."
Like the objects to which the action applies, this location - the "in" clause - can take any description, not just an explicit place like "Supernatural Void":
Instead of listening in a dead end, say "You strain to hear further clues as to the course of the underground river, but to no avail."
But we often want a rule to apply in any of a set of rooms: and where, unlike the "dead end" example above, the rooms have nothing much in common except where they happen to lie on a map. For instance, we might want a rule to apply only inside a given building, or a garden consisting of five miscellaneous rooms. If so, we can create a "region" as a convenient way to refer to that group of rooms:
The Arboretum is east of the Botanical Gardens. Northwest of the Gardens is the Tropical Greenhouse.
The Public Area is a region. The Arboretum and Gardens are in the Public Area.
Instead of eating in the Public Area, say "The curators of the Gardens are ever among you, eagle-eyed and generally cussed."
Relative location can also be important: relative to other people, that is -
Instead of eating something in the presence of Lady Bracknell, say "Lady Bracknell disapproves thoroughly of gentlemen who snack between meals, and there are few disapprovals in this world quite so thorough as Lady Bracknell's."
As might be guessed, this applies when the action takes place in the same location as the person named: and of course that person can also be described more vaguely ("… in the presence of a woman", say), and can just as easily be an inanimate thing ("… in the presence of the radio set").
Lady Bracknell is a pushover compared to some matriarchs:
Instead of doing something other than looking, examining or waiting in the presence of the Queen: say "I'm afraid they take what you might call a zero tolerance approach to breaches of court etiquette here."; end the story saying "You have been summarily beheaded".
The last of the optional clauses we can tack on to the description of an action is the most general of all. We can add "when" and then any condition at all, as in:
Instead of eating something when the radio set is switched on, say "Something about the howling short-wave static puts you right off luncheon."
This supposes that the radio is so loud that it can be heard from any room: we could muffle it so that it's only audible from the room it is in like so:
Instead of eating something in the presence of the radio set when the radio set is switched on, say "Something about the howling short-wave static puts you right off luncheon."
Going is an action defined like any other: it is the one which happens when the player tries to go from one location to another. But it is unlike other actions because it happens in two locations, not just one, and has other complications such as vehicles and doors to contend with. To make it easier to write legible and flexible rules, "going" is allowed to be described in a number of special ways not open to other actions, as demonstrated by the following example story:
"Going Going"
The Catalogue Room is east of the Front Stacks. South of the Catalogue Room is the Musicology Section.
Instead of going nowhere from the Front Stacks, say "Bookcases obstruct almost all passages out of here."
Instead of going nowhere, say "You really can't wander around at random in the Library."
Before going to the Catalogue Room, say "You emerge back into the Catalogue Room."
Note that "going nowhere" means trying a map connection which is blank, and if no rules intervene then "You can't go that way" is normally printed. Unless "nowhere" is specified, descriptions of going apply only when there is a map connection. So "going from the Musicology Section" would not match if the player were trying to go east from there, since there is no map connection to the east. Similarly, "going somewhere" excludes blank connections.
The places gone "from" or "to" can be specific named regions instead of rooms. This is convenient when there are several different ways into or out of an area of map but a common rule needs to apply to all: so, for example,
Before going from the Cultivated Land to the Wilderness, ...
Before going nowhere from the Wilderness, say "Tangled brush forces you back."
Note that it must be "going nowhere from the Wilderness", not "…in the Wilderness". (Note also the caveat that the regions must be named: "going from a region", or something similarly nonspecific, will not work.)
An important point about "going… from" is that, as mentioned in general terms above, it requires that there is actually a map connection that way: whereas "going… in" does not. Suppose there is no map connection north from the Wilderness. Then:
Instead of going north from the Wilderness, say "You'll never read this."
Instead of going north in the Wilderness, say "Oh, it's too cold."
The first of these never happens, because it is logically impossible to go north from the Wilderness: but the second does happen. (Technically, this is because "going north" is the action, and "in the Wilderness" a separate condition tacked onto the rule.) This distinction is often useful - it allows us to write rules which apply only to feasible movements.
This may be a good place to mention a small restriction on the ways we can specify an action for a rule to apply to, and how it can be overcome. The restriction is that the action should only involve constant quantities, so that the following does not work:
The Dome is a room. The Hutch is north of the Dome. The rabbit is in the Hutch. Before going to the location of the rabbit, say "You pick up a scent!"
because "the location of the rabbit" is a quantity which changes in play (the player can pick up the rabbit and take him to the Dome, for instance). However, we can get around this restriction by defining a suitable adjective, like so:
The Dome is a room. The Hutch is north of the Dome. The rabbit is in the Hutch. Definition: a room is rabbit-infested if it is the location of the rabbit. Before going to a rabbit-infested room, say "You pick up a scent!"
Adding to the previous example story, we apply rules which depend on travelling by a particular vehicle:
The book trolley is in the Musicology Section. "The book trolley, a sort of motorised tractor for trundling around through the stacks, is parked here." The trolley is a vehicle. Instead of going nowhere by the trolley, say "Don't go crashing the trolley into walls."
Instead of going to the Front Stacks by the trolley, say "The Front Stacks are far too confined for the trolley to manoeuvre into them."
And, lastly, rules which apply to movements through particular doors:
The green baize door is east of the Catalogue Room and west of the Clerk's Office. The green baize door is an open door.
Before going through the green baize door, say "Through you go..." After going through the green baize door: try looking; say "...and here you are."
(Note that these apply whether the action is "going east" or "entering the green baize door", each having the same effect.) The last rule is worth a second look: the normal way that a "going" action is reported is to produce the room description of the new location. So if an "after" rule stops the action before we get to reporting, we have to produce any room description by hand (hence the "try looking" to cause the looking action). Alternatively, we could simply say something and let the normal course of events take place:
After going through the green baize door: say "...and here you are:"; continue the action.
Finally, going is an action which can also happen while the player is pushing something from one room to another, and we can describe this like so:
Instead of going from the Office with the trolley, say "But it looks perfectly placed here. Why push any further?"
"Going" is not the only action which moves the player. Another is "exiting", an action which moves the player out of whatever he/she is currently in or on. This action is often caused by the player typing just OUT or GET DOWN, and there's no noun as such. But Inform allows the syntax "exiting from" to make it easier to write rules about the exiting of particular containers or supporters:
After exiting from the Mini Cooper:
say "You painstakingly unpack your limbs from the tiny car."
Replacing the message the player receives when attempting to push something that isn't pushable, and also to remove the restriction that objects cannot be pushed up or down.
Especially when people need to react to events going on around them, it is helpful to be able to categorise actions into whole areas of behaviour. For instance:
Kissing Mr Carr is unmaidenly behaviour.
Doing something to the painting is unmaidenly behaviour.
Instead of unmaidenly behaviour in the Inn, say "How unmaidenly!"
Here a new kind of action called "unmaidenly behaviour" has been created and then used in the description of an instead rule. The convenience of this approach is that when further actions suddenly occur to us as also being unmaidenly - say, attacking Mr Carr - we only need to add a single line:
Attacking Mr Carr is unmaidenly behaviour.
And this will automatically be reflected in any rules which concern the consequences of failing to be ladylike.
(Note that we were only allowed to say that "Kissing Mr Carr is unmaidenly behaviour." because Inform already knew from earlier sentences - see the example below - that Mr Carr was a person, and therefore that "kissing Mr Carr" made sense as a description of an action.)
We come at last to the final thing which can be specified about an action, and appropriately enough it must be specified with the final words of the description. This is the way to talk about repeated activity:
Instead of examining the tapestry for the third time, say "All right, so it's a masterpiece, but is this really the time to make a detailed study?"
Instead of examining the urn at least twice, say "It's an urn. What do you want from me?"
Instead of going nowhere for the 20th time, say "Do stop walking into walls, there's a good fellow."
Note that we are allowed to spell out numbers up to twelve in English words, but beyond that must use digits (thus "twelfth" is allowed but not "thirteenth": "13th" should be used instead). The following example is instructive:
Instead of taking something for the fourth time, say "No. I'm capricious."
This means that it is the fourth time a "taking…" action has been tried, and does not mean that the same item was taken each time. Also, note that we are counting the number of times the action has been tried, not the number of times it succeeded.
A complete story by Emily Short, called "A Day for Fresh Sushi", rewritten using Inform 7. Noteworthy is the snarky commenter who remarks on everything the player does, but only the first time each action is performed.
We can also reckon the number of consecutive turns on which an action has been repeated, by talking about "turns" instead of "times", as demonstrated in the following example story. Note also that we are allowed to use the phrase "doing it" to mean "the same description as the previous one except for the part about turns or times", like so:
"Waiting Room"
The Antechamber is a room. The tattered copy of Women's Wear Daily is in the Antechamber. Instead of taking the Daily, say "It is stamped NOT TO BE TAKEN AWAY."
Instead of examining the Daily for the first time, say "The best article seems to be about how your star sign affects your best swimsuit colour. Really: that's the best article."
Instead of doing it for the second time, say "You now know a generous amount about a typical week in the life of a weather forecaster."
Instead of doing it for the third time, say "You would now know how to cook herb bread, except that you have already forgotten the names of both of the herbs."
Instead of doing it more than three times, say "Nope, you've drained it of all conceivable sustenance, even the small ads about French farmhouses to let (sleeps 7) and breast reduction surgery (with alarming photographs in sallow light)."
After waiting for four to six turns, say "This is getting mighty dull." After waiting for seven to eight turns, say "Really, exceptionally dull." After waiting for nine turns, end the story saying "You have died of boredom, something previously thought medically impossible".
Note once again that numbers above twelve must not be written out, so "more than twelve times" would be acceptable, but we would write "more than 13 times".
In this chapter, all actions have been carried out by the player, all have been drawn from the standard stock of built-in actions ("unlocking", "taking", "going" and so forth), and all of those built-in actions have been allowed to work in the standard way - we have seen how to prevent the taking of something, and how to give this unexpected consequences, but not how to make taking work in an entirely different way.
All three of those restrictions will later be lifted in the chapter on "Advanced Actions", but otherwise we have covered the ground thoroughly, and it is time to move on to the techniques enabling us to do more than make tart replies to the player: it is time to change the world.