8.2. Changing the command prompt

| Chapter 8: Change |

| 8.2. Changing the command prompt

The command prompt is the text printed by Inform to ask the player for another command. Ordinarily this is simply a greater-than-sign, ">", so we tend not to notice it as text at all. Internally, though, it is a variable value called "command prompt", which means we can change it.

For example, this will be a more conversational sort of prompt:

> When play begins: now the command prompt is "What now? ".

Whereas this will be more up-to-the-minute and demanding:

> When play begins: now the command prompt is "[time of day] >".

("Time of day" is another variable value, which is fairly self-explanatory, but will be covered in detail later on.) The prompt can be changed at any point, so can be used to indicate the current situation, or even as a sly way to introduce a sort of conversation between computer and player.

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| Example Don Pedro's Revenge Combat scenario in which the player's footing and position changes from move to move, and the command prompt also changes to reflect that. |
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