Grilling

Example 84

A grill, from which the player is not allowed to take anything lest he burn himself.

Descriptions of objects can be used in "Instead" rules: we can not only say "Instead of taking the steak", but also "Instead of taking something" or "Instead of taking something which is on the grill".

That last rule is useful if, for example, we want to prevent the player from interacting with anything on a specific supporter:

"Grilling"
The Patio is a room. The Patio contains a grill and an ice chest. The ice chest contains a cold beer. On the grill are a steak and a hot dog.
Mom is a woman in the Patio.
Instead of taking something which is on the grill:
   say "'Hey, you'll burn yourself,' says Mom."
Test me with "get steak / get all from grill / get all".
Test me with "get steak / get all from grill / get all".
Patio
You can see a grill (on which are a steak and a hot dog), an ice chest (in which is a cold beer) and Mom here.

>(Testing.)

>[1] get steak
"Hey, you'll burn yourself," says Mom.

>[2] get all from grill
steak: "Hey, you'll burn yourself," says Mom.
hot dog: "Hey, you'll burn yourself," says Mom.

>[3] get all
ice chest: Taken.
steak: "Hey, you'll burn yourself," says Mom.
hot dog: "Hey, you'll burn yourself," says Mom.
cold beer: Taken.

We could just as easily adapt this rule to affect a container: "Instead of taking something which is in the ice chest," for example.

Note also that in older versions of Inform, the pattern "get all from…" was treated differently from "get steak", and had to be accounted for separately. This is no longer the case; this instead of taking… rule will handle all the phrasings which the player might use to try to acquire this object.