| Chapter 17: Activities |

| 17.30. Printing the player's obituary

1. When it happens. The obituary is the text "*** You have died ***" or similar, usually followed by the final score.

2. The default behaviour. Printing the aforementioned text, then the final score, and reducing the status line to a largely blank state.

3. Examples. (a) For a work with no meaningful score, it would be odd to wind up with a final reckoning of 0, so:

> Procedural rule: ignore the print final score rule.

(b) Or we could add to the verdict:

> After printing the player's obituary: say "And you visited [number of visited rooms] place[s]."

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| Example Battle of Ridgefield Completely replacing the endgame text and stopping the game without giving the player a chance to restart or restore.

Occasionally, a piece of IF is sufficiently serious that it feels bathetic to offer the player the usual restore-restart-undo-quit options at the end. The following would replace "*** You have died ***" with a centered epitaph, then quit the game when the player hits a key. This example relies on a standard extension to avoid any fancy programming: "Battle of Ridgefield" Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short. Ridgefield is a room. Instead of doing something when the turn count is greater than 1: say "Alas, you no longer have the strength."; end the game in death. Rule for printing the player's obituary: say paragraph break; center "In defense of American Independence"; center "at the Battle of Ridgefield, April 27, 1777,"; center "died Eight Patriots who were laid in this ground,"; center "Companioned by Sixteen British Soldiers,"; center "Living, their enemies,"; center "Dying, their guests"; say paragraph break; wait for any key; stop game abruptly; rule succeeds.

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