Question

I’ll eat my hat if I get a good answer to this…I suspect that although I’m a rank beginner in Inform 7, and I’m guessing this isn’t that hard, there are probably not many people here who are familiar with Inform 7. Still, nothing ventured…

I’m trying to create a custom response to a “pull” action. Unfortunately, I think the “pull” action doesn’t normally expect a second noun. So I’m trying something like this:

The nails are some things in the Foyer.  The nails are scenery.
Instead of pulling the nails:
    If the second noun is nothing:
        say "How?  Are you going to pull the nails with your teeth?";
    otherwise:
        say "I don't think that's going to do the job."

But while this compiles, and the first part works, the “I don’t think…” section is never called…the interpreter just responds “I only understood you as far as wanting to pull the nails.” Do I have to create my own custom action for this? Overwrite the standard pull action? Am I missing something simple that will allow me to get this to work?

Answer 1

Have you extended “pull” from the Standard Rules to accept a second noun? As I understand it(*), the standard “pull” doesn’t know about “with”. I guess something along the lines of:

Pulling it with is an action applying to two things.
Understand "pull [something] with [something preferably held]" as pulling it with.

Instead of pulling the nails:
    say "How?  Are you going to pull the nails with your teeth?";
Instead of pulling the nails with something:
    say "I don't think that's going to do the job."

*: Warning: I don’t understand it at all, and have no idea what I’ve talking about. 🙂 I’ve avoided version 7 of Inform as some kind of Chomskyian nightmare…