9.9. Televisions and Radios

| Chapter 9: Props: Food, Clothing, Money, Toys, Books, Electronics |

| 9.9. Televisions and Radios

IF authors often provide clues or background information to the player by means of radio broadcasts, TV shows or video tapes because they can talk to the player without needing to listen back, or to react to what the player does. The simplest radio set, like the one in Aftershock, really only has one thing to say: which is serendipitously being broadcast just at the moment the player tunes in (regardless of when that is). The next simplest approach is to spool a broadcast on an endless loop taking several turns to play through, as in Radio Daze.

Televisions come in all shapes and sizes, and Aspect allows their shape ("aspect ratio") to be described by the player.

In Channel 1, we can also refer to the television by what it is currently showing: thus WATCH CHANNEL 4 will work if the set is indeed tuned to 4. In Channel 2, numbered channel changing is taken further: we can now TUNE TV TO CHANNEL 3, as well. Channel 2 is a reasonable base implementation of a television for many purposes.

324
| Example Aftershock Modifying the rules for examining a device so that all devices have some specific behavior when switched on, which is described at various times. |
WI

66
| Example Radio Daze A radio that produces a cycle of output using varying text. |
WI

300
| Example Aspect Understanding aspect ratios (a unit) in the names of televisions. |
WI

304
| Example Channel 1 Understanding channels (a number) in the names of televisions. |
WI

305
| Example Channel 2 Understanding channels (a number) in the names of televisions, with more sophisticated parsing of the change channel action. |
WI

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