| 17.31. Printing the player's obituary |
1. When it happens. The obituary is the text "*** You have died ***" or similar, usually followed by the final score.
2. The default behaviour. Printing the aforementioned text, then the final score, and reducing the status line to a largely blank state.
3. Examples. (a) For a work with no meaningful score, it would be odd to wind up with a final reckoning of 0, so:
Procedural rule: ignore the print final score rule.
(b) Or we could add to the verdict:
After printing the player's obituary: say "And you visited [number of visited rooms] place[s]."
| Example Battle of Ridgefield Completely replacing the endgame text and stopping the game without giving the player a chance to restart or restore. | |
Occasionally, a piece of IF is sufficiently serious that it feels bathetic to offer the player the usual restore-restart-undo-quit options at the end. The following would replace "*** You have died ***" with a centered epitaph, then quit the game when the player hits a key.
This example relies on a standard extension to avoid any fancy programming:
"Battle of Ridgefield"
Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.
Ridgefield is a room.
Instead of doing something when the turn count is greater than 1: say "Alas, you no longer have the strength."; end the game in death.
Rule for printing the player's obituary:
say paragraph break;
center "In defense of American Independence";
center "at the Battle of Ridgefield, April 27, 1777,";
center "died Eight Patriots who were laid in this ground,";
center "Companioned by Sixteen British Soldiers,";
center "Living, their enemies,";
center "Dying, their guests";
say paragraph break;
wait for any key;
stop game abruptly;
rule succeeds.
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