| Chapter 9: Time |

| 9.2. Awarding points

Traditionally-written games award points throughout play, as an indication of progress. If we want to be traditional, we can award points as follows:

> award 5 points;

substituting whatever number we feel is appropriate. We should be careful not to give out the same points over and over, that is, not to reward the same basic achievement many times over if the player simply repeats the same action. This, for instance, is open to abuse:

> After taking the trophy: award 5 points; say "Well done!"

The player may simply take the trophy, drop it again, take it again, ... and win five points every time around. We can prevent this by phrasing the rule more carefully:

> After taking the trophy for the first time: award 5 points; say "Well done!"

Rather than being an open-ended scoring system, IF normally has a maximum possible score, which can be specified with a sentence like so:

> The maximum score is 10.

Recall that if the source declares:

> Use no scoring.

then the SCORE, FULL SCORE, NOTIFY ON and NOTIFY OFF commands do not work; the final score is not shown at the end of a game; and the status line above the player's text area shows only the turn count, not (as is more usual) both the score and the turn count. The "award ... points" phrase has no visible effect, though it is not actually illegal.

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| Example No Place Like Home Recording a whole table of scores for specific treasures.

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