5.2. Traits Determined By the Player

| Chapter 5: The Viewpoint Character |

| 5.2. Traits Determined By the Player

Some IF tries to make the viewpoint character more congenial to the player by allowing some customization.

Identity Theft demonstrates asking the player to supply the viewpoint character's name.

Pink or Blue demonstrates a way to let the player choose a gender at the start of play: this will mostly be interesting if the rest of the game makes some use of the player's choice. Since that example is written expressly to demonstrate included Inform 6 code, however, we may find it more congenial to generalize from the more flexible Baritone, Bass.

This is not the only way to go - as we'll see in the next section, there's also something to be said for making the viewpoint character a strongly distinct creature with well-defined preferences and attitudes.

405
| Example Identity Theft Allowing the player to enter a name to be used for the player character during the game. |
WI

441
| Example Pink or Blue Asking the player to select a gender to begin play. |
WI

Suppose we would like to allow the player to choose a gender for the main character. We'd also like this to happen at the beginning of the game and outside the main parsing sequence. "When play begins" seems like a good place to put this. "Pink or Blue" When play begins: say "Should your character be male or female? >"; if men win, now the player is male; otherwise now the player is female; say paragraph break. Now a piece of Inform 6 code handles the unusual input. It's not necessary to understand this to use it, and the code should work for any question you'd like to ask the player. The first three words in quotation marks ('male', 'M', 'man'...) correspond to positive feedback; the later three words correspond to negative feedback. So "to decide whether men win" will be true if the player types one of the first three, and false if he types one of the last three. To decide whether men win: (- Question('male','M//','man','female','F//','woman') -) Include (- [ Question pos1 pos2 pos3 neg1 neg2 neg3 first_word_typed; while (true) { VM_ReadKeyboard(buffer, parse); wn = 1; first_word_typed = NextWordStopped(); if (first_word_typed == pos1 or pos2 or pos3) rtrue; if (first_word_typed == neg1 or neg2 or neg3) rfalse; print "Please choose ", (address) pos1, " or ", (address) neg1, ". > "; } ]; -) Instead of examining the player when the player is female: say "Congratulations, you are a girl!" Instead of examining the player when the player is male: say "Congratulations, you are a boy!" The Room of Self-Knowledge is a room. "Mirrors cover every available wall-surface of this hexagonal chamber, allowing you to examine yourself from all angles."

298
| Example Baritone, Bass Letting the player pick a gender (or perhaps other characteristics) before starting play. |
WI

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