Chapter 3: Things
3.17. Men, women and animals

Rounding out the standard kinds provided by Inform are four for living things: "person", which is a kind of thing, and "man", "woman" and "animal", all kinds of person. For instance:

In the Ballroom is a man called Mr Darcy.

For the time being, men and women will be little more than waxworks: they will come to life only when we go beyond the present stage of creating an initial state of the world.

People are either male or female: in fact, this is an either/or property for the "person" kind, and it affects play at run-time a little, because the player can use "him" and "her" to refer to male or female people encountered. Since "animal" is a kind of person, it follows that animals are also either male or female, which might seem odd for some low-level forms of life, but generally makes sense for anything mobile which one could interact with. Animals are male unless we say otherwise:

The mare is a female animal in the Stables.


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* Example  Disenchantment Bay 9
Disenchantment Bay: enter the charter boat's Captain.

RB


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