8.2. Ships, Trains and Elevators

| Chapter 8: Vehicles, Animals and Furniture |

| 8.2. Ships, Trains and Elevators

This section covers vehicles whose interior consists of at least one entire room. Moving into this room constitutes boarding: there is then some pause while it travels: moving out again disembarks at a different location. The only complication arising is how the player controls the journey (by talking to someone? by pressing buttons? by steering?).

The Unbuttoned Elevator Affair provides the simplest possible whole-room vehicle, which ferries between two fixed points. If you are at one of these, it must be the other one you want to get to, so there is no need for controls.

Dubai is a much more elaborate elevator, with many possible destinations, chosen using buttons inside the elevator.

Empire simulates a train journey. Here there are no controls as such, but the train passes through a sequence of stops spaced apart in time, so the player chooses an exit by getting out at the right moment.

On a very large, slowish craft such as a cruise liner, we are not so much travelling in a vehicle: it's more as if we are visiting a whole building, which becomes our world for the (probably long) duration of the journey. The liner steers around in long, slow curves, changing its orientation in the water, so that (if we think of "north" as a strictly magnetic matter, anyway) north is constantly rotating: something we don't notice on board because our own reference points, provided by the ship itself, stay fixed relative to ourselves. Because of this, some ships in IF are navigated using FORE, AFT, PORT and STARBOARD directions rather than NORTH, EAST, SOUTH and WEST: see Fore.

See Bicycles, Cars and Boats for smaller conveyances

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| Example The Unbuttoned Elevator Affair A simple elevator connecting two floors which is operated simply by walking in and out, and has no buttons or fancy doors. |
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| Example Dubai An elevator which connects any of 27 floors in a luxury hotel. |
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| Example Fore Understand "fore", "aft", "port", and "starboard", but only when the player is on a vessel. |
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Suppose we want to understand shipboard directions, but only when the player is aboard a vessel. "Fore" Section 1 - Procedure The starboard is a direction. The starboard has opposite port. Understand "s" as starboard when the location is nautical. The port is a direction. The port has opposite starboard. Understand "p" as port when the location is nautical. The fore is a direction. The fore has opposite aft. Understand "f" as fore when the location is nautical. The aft is a direction. The aft has opposite fore. Understand "a" as aft when the location is nautical. Does the player mean going a nautical direction when the location is nautical: it is very likely. Index map with fore mapped as north. Index map with aft mapped as south. Index map with port mapped as west. Index map with starboard mapped as east. And we can even add new ways to talk about the ways things are mapped, borrowing from the Relations chapter. The following will allow us to us "is abaft of" as well as "is aft of": [The verb to be abaft of implies the mapped-aft-of relation.] Now, to prevent the player from using NORTH onboard ship, or AFT on land: A room can be nautical or earthbound. A room is usually not nautical. A direction can be nautical or earthbound. A direction is usually not nautical. Starboard, port, fore, aft, up, down, the inside and the outside are nautical. Before going a nautical direction when the location is not nautical, say "Nautical directions can only be used on board ship." Before going an earthbound direction when the location is nautical, say "Compass directions make no sense on board ship, but you can use [list of nautical directions] instead." instead. Section 2 - Scenario The Fish Room is aft of the Spirit Room. Starboard of the Fish Room is the After Powder Magazine. The Bread Room is aft of the After Powder Magazine. The Fish Room, the Spirit Room, the Bread Room, and the After Powder Magazine are nautical. The description of the Fish Room is "Absurd quantities of salt fish are kept here, and periodically visited by the cook or someone serving him. It is otherwise an unexceptional little chamber, so far below the waterline that there are no portholes and no external light of any kind. [paragraph break]A narrow doorway leads forward into the Spirit Room, and the After Powder Magazine is starboard." The description of the Spirit Room is "Despite its ghostly name, this is little more than a closet down at the very navel of the ship, in which alcohol is kept: both for purifying wounds and for drinking. Under normal circumstances there is a guard posted here at every hour, lest anyone take to raiding the larder. The current absence of the guard marine strikes you as a very bad sign indeed. [paragraph break]The only way out is aft." The description of the Bread Room is "The Bread Room is not only tiny from side to side and front to back: it is also about half the height of a proper room, and the floor slopes up very steeply with the curve of the hull. [paragraph break]What is kept here would not, on land, be dignified by the name of bread: it's hard tack, punishing to the teeth, dry on the tongue, and usually a home to weevils before half the journey is done. [paragraph break]More headroom, and access to the rest of the ship, lies fore through the After Powder Magazine." The description of the After Powder Magazine is "Kept in near darkness because no one with any sense would bring a naked flame down here: when necessary, it can be lit with a single small lantern made of very thick glass and sealed to keep the sparks within. Sacks of powder are passed up into the higher levels of the ship by the scrubby little boys called 'powder monkeys' -- but none such are here now." Test me with "north / aft / fore".

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| Example Empire A train which follows a schedule, stopping at a number of different locations. |
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