Character proper name

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The "Proper Name" is the name of a character, such as "Christine" or "Mr Smith" for a person, or "Polly" for a parrot.

This is a property of all Characters, but only needs to be set if the "Is this character known to the player" property is either initially selected or will be set during the game.

The proper name of the character is one five properties shown on the description page of charcters, where it is labeled "Proper name:".

Although this property is defined as type text, ADRIFT limits this particular property to a single line and does not allow alternate descriptions, graphics or sound to be used with it.

The contents of this text box is displayed whenever the player uses the Look command in a location that contains this character, they enter that location, or they examine an object that the character is inside of or on top of.

In the following example the Lounge Room contains two characters with the proper names "Marcia" and "Jan". They are listed after the description of the location and the list of dynamic objects at that location.

> look
Lounge Room
This is a very basic lounge room. A couple of well worn chairs face a very old television set.
Also here is a bouquet of flowers and a fountain pen. Marcia and Jan are here.

The %character%.Name function will return the contents of this property.

Parser

When the player enters a command that includes the name in a character's "Proper Name", then ADRIFT will assume that they are trying to do something with that character and will therefore use it as the %character% reference when trying to match the command with a general task.

BUT it will only do so for characters that have the "Is this character known to the player" property set

ImgTip.png If the proper name contains more than one word, such as "Jan Jamison" or "Mr Smith", then ADRIFT will require the player to enter this name in full whenever they refer to this character. To allow them to shorten the name to just "Jan" or "Smith" you will need to add every possible alternative to the Noun field. The Noun field allows you to enter multiple lines by pressing ENTER after each one. The down-arrow button at the right-hand end lets you see the full list. If the proper name of the character is "Mr John Smith" then you should enter every likely combination that the player may enter, such as "John", "Smith", "John Smith" and "Mr Smith" on separate lines of the Noun field.

Definition

This property is defined in the "Properties" folder of The Standard Library:

PropertyDialogProperName.jpg

  • Property of: Characters - It is only available on the property page of Characters.
  • Type: Text - This property will contain text.
  • Because this property is shown on the description page, not the properties page, the "Mandatory" tick-box and the "This property will only appear if the following are true" section, will have no effect.