Unthing : Decoration

[Previous] [Main] [Next]

An Unthing is a special kind of Decoration used to represent something that isn't present, but to which the player might try to refer; it then displays its notHereMsg to explain why it isn't there. The most common use for an Unthing is to represent the absence of something that has just disappeared. For example suppose we plant what appears to be treasure in mainCave, but have it disappear when the player attempts to take it. We might then move an Unthing into its place to describe its absence if the player continues to refer to it:

fakeTreasure : Thing 'huge great golden gold banana/treasure'
    'golden banana' @mainCave
  "It's a fantastic treasure, over two feet long, and by the look of it, solid
   gold. It must be worth an absolute fortune!"
   initSpecialDesc = "A huge treasure - a great golden banana - lies on the ground. "
   dobjFor(Take)
   {
     action()
     {
       "All that glisters is not gold, and as you try to take the great golden
        banana it crumbles into dust and vanishes away. ";
       noTreasure.moveInto(location);
       moveInto(nil);
     }
   }
   getFacets() { return [noTreasure]; }
;

noTreasure : Unthing  'huge great golden gold treasure/banana/dust' 'golden banana'
  'The illusory golden banana vanished into fine dust that is no
   longer visible. ' 
;

Note the use of getFacets on fakeTreasure, so that if a player types TAKE BANANA followed by, say, X IT, the parser will know that IT now refers to the noTreasure object that's just been substituted for the fakeTreasure. In this case there's no need to add a getFacets method to noTreasure, since the fakeTreasure will never reappear to be referred to as IT. Note also the range of vocabulary words we have given to both objects, and that we added' dust' to the list of words by which the noTreasure object can be referred to.

Note that the third property we have defined on Unthing is single-quoted string, not a double-quoted string. This is because there is a special Unthing template which puts the notHereMsg instead of desc in third place. We don't want to define desc on an Unthing, because it's not generally useful, we just want to define the notHereMsg which will be used for any command that tries to interact with the Unthing. The above definition of noTreasure is equivalent to:

noTreasure : Unthing  'huge great golden gold treasure/banana/dust' 'golden banana'
  notHereMsg = 'The illusory golden banana vanished into fine dust that is no
   longer visible. ' 
;

Or to:

noTreasure : Unthing  
  vocabWords = 'huge great golden gold treasure/banana/dust' 
  name = 'golden banana'
  notHereMsg = 'The illusory golden banana vanished into fine dust that is no
   longer visible. ' 
;