11.4. Scoring

| Chapter 11: Out Of World Actions and Effects |

| 11.4. Scoring

Not every work of IF allots a numerical score to the player: for some authors, this emphasises the idea of a game rather than a narrative. The simple sentence

> Use no scoring.

abolishes the concept. Otherwise, Inform will provide built-in support for a single number measuring progress ("score"), and will expect to measure this against a maximum possible ("maximum score", which can either be set by hand or worked out automatically from a table of ranks).

In a game in which scoring exists, the player may choose to turn score notifications (such as "[Your score has just gone up by one point.]") on or off. The commands to do this are NOTIFY ON and NOTIFY OFF; the actions are called switching score notification on and switching score notification off. In the event that we need to amend the behavior of notification, we could do so by adding, removing, or modifying the elements of the check and carry out rulebooks for these commands; as in

> Check switching score notification off:
> if the turn count is less than 10:
> say "You are still a novice, grasshopper. Allow your teacher to give you advice until such time as you are ready to go on alone."

If we wish to change the wording of the default message ("[Your score has..."), we may want to resort to extensions available from the Inform website which allow access to all the default messages in a game.

An especially insidious style of bug allows the player to type the same sequence of commands over and over, earning score endlessly for the same insight, and to avoid this it is usually safest to write source like:

> After taking the Picasso miniature when the Picasso miniature is not handled:
> award 10 points; say "As they say in Montmartre: dude!"

We might also write our condition with "for the first time", like so:

> After jumping for the first time:
> award 5 points;
> say "Boing! That was certainly entertaining."

But we should be careful not to use "for the first time" in scoring situations where it's possible for the player to try the action but fail. Inform counts even unsuccessful attempts towards the number of times an action is understood to have occurred, so if the player tries to jump and fails, his "for the first time" will be used up and he will never receive the score points.

If there are many "treasure" items like the Picasso miniature, it is best to be systematic, as in No Place Like Home. Bosch takes another approach to the same idea, by creating a table of point-earning actions that the player will be rewarded for doing; the FULL SCORE command will then play these back.

Mutt's Adventure demonstrates how we might add a scored room feature, such that the player earns a point when he first arrives at a special room.

A single number does not really sum up a life, or even an afternoon, and Goat-Cheese and Sage Chicken and Panache offer more detailed citations. Works that are more story than game may prefer to offer a plot summary of the player's experience to date in lieu of more conventional scoring.

Finally, Rubies provides a scoreboard that keeps track of the ten highest-scoring players from one playthrough to the next.

137
| Example No Place Like Home Recording a whole table of scores for specific treasures. |
WI

219
| Example Bosch Creating a list of actions that will earn the player points, and using this both to change the score and to give FULL SCORE reports. |
WI

> We could, if we wanted, make a table of stored actions all of which represent things that will earn points for the player. For instance: "Bosch" The Garden of Excess is a room. The gilded lily is an edible thing in the Garden of Excess. The Pathway to Desire is west of the Garden of Excess. The emerald leaf is in the Pathway. Table of Valuable Actions
> relevant action | point value | turn stamp
> taking the emerald leaf | 15 | -1
> eating the gilded lily | 5 | -1
(And our list would presumably continue from there, in the full game.) The maximum score is 25. After doing something: repeat through Table of Valuable Actions: if the current action is the relevant action entry and turn stamp entry is less than 0: now the turn stamp entry is the turn count; increase the score by the point value entry; continue the action. Understand "full score" or "full" as requesting the complete score. Requesting the complete score is an action out of world. Check requesting the complete score: if the score is 0, say "You have not yet achieved anything of note." instead. Carry out requesting the complete score: say "So far you have received points for the following: [line break]"; sort the Table of Valuable Actions in turn stamp order; repeat through the Table of Valuable Actions: if the turn stamp entry is greater than 0: say "[line break] [relevant action entry]: [point value entry] points"; say line break. Test me with "eat lily / w / full score / get leaf / full". This system is tidy, but limited: we cannot give actions interesting names in the score list, like "seducing the pirate's daughter" or "collecting a valuable artifact". So it will not be ideal in all situations, but it has the virtue of being easy to extend, and of listing all of the player's successes in the order in which they occurred in his play-through.

136
| Example Mutt's Adventure Awarding points for visiting a room for the first time. |
WI

269
| Example Goat-Cheese and Sage Chicken Implementing a FULL SCORE command which lists more information than the regular SCORE command, adding times and rankings, as an extension of the example given in this chapter. |
WI

166
| Example Panache Replacing the score with a plot summary that records the events of the plot, scene by scene. |
WI

431
| Example Rubies A scoreboard that keeps track of the ten highest-scoring players from one playthrough to the next, adding the player's name if he has done well enough. |
WI

Previous | Contents | Next