| Chapter 8: Change |

| 8.17. Random choices of things

As well as choosing random values, we often want to make a random choice of things or rooms. Perhaps a character is to wander about at random; perhaps a falling block of masonry will crush some random item. The value

> random D
> a random D

(the article "a" is optional) produces a random choice of the things in the world which fit the description D. For instance,

> say "You can see [number of adjacent rooms] way[s] from here; how about [random adjacent room]?"

Unexpected results may follow if there is nothing in the game which fits the description, as then the random choice will be nothing. For instance, the above would then say:

> You can see 0 ways from here; how about nothing?

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| Example Zork II A "Carousel Room", as in Zork II, where moving in any direction from the room leads (at random) to one of the eight rooms nearby.

All we need to do is select the player's destination for him at random: "Zork II" The Carousel Room is a room. Instead of going from the Carousel Room: move the player to a random adjacent room. To avoid infringing the original game too much, let's try a somewhat different setting: The Games of Chance is north of the Carousel Room. The Haunted Funhouse is northwest of the Carousel Room. The Ferris Wheel is east of the Carousel Room. The Topsy-Turvy is northeast of the Carousel Room. The Reproduction Henge is south of the Carousel Room. The Women's Toilet is southwest of the Carousel Room. The Men's Toilet is southeast of the Carousel Room. The Cotton Candy Shop is west of the Carousel Room. Test me with "s". And the following means that the test runs consistently even though the numbers are theoretically random. To make them truly random, remove this line. When play begins, seed the random-number generator with 1234. Or if we want to add the refinement that the Carousel Room can be switched off: "Zork II" The Carousel Room is a room. The spinning machine is a switched on device in the Carousel Room. And then Instead of going from the Carousel Room when the spinning machine is switched on: move the player to a random adjacent room. The Games of Chance is north of the Carousel Room. The Haunted Funhouse is northwest of the Carousel Room. The Ferris Wheel is east of the Carousel Room. The Topsy-Turvy is northeast of the Carousel Room. The Reproduction Henge is south of the Carousel Room. The Women's Toilet is southwest of the Carousel Room. The Men's Toilet is southeast of the Carousel Room. The Cotton Candy Shop is west of the Carousel Room. Test me with "turn off machine / s / n / turn on machine / s". When play begins, seed the random-number generator with 1234.

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