Is there a simple means to change from telling a third person story, to telling a first person story? In particular, I want to change "You can see" to "I can see" in the authogenerated room descriptions.

I am very new to quest, but not new to programming, so I'll probably have a lot of questions.

Doug Egan

I've created a library file which can be included, overriding part of the default English.aslx file.

http://mrangel.info/English_mods.aslx

This replaces "You" in all of the interface templates with uses of the WriteVerb function. I haven't been able to test this yet (due to not having a Windows PC), but I believe that once the library is added to a game, changing the player's gender (on the 'player' tab) from "you" to "I" will correctly update all of the built in messages.

On the room tab...
There is a box, (the first line even) where you can change this...
But, like mrangel implied, you would need to do this to every room you create.
Unless, you set up your first room, then just make copies of that for your new rooms.
You can change this for each room to say something different...
Otherwise, it will sound too robotic...
Or, you can drop the "You can see" prefix, and just describe the objects in the room description...

Yep. The "You can see", "You are in", and "You can go" strings are editable on the 'room' tab of each room in the editor.

You can change them for each room separately.

In full code view (or in a library) you could add the lines:

  <template name="YouAreIn">I am in</template>
  <template name="SeeListHeader">I can see</template>
  <template name="GoListHeader">I can go</template>

which control the default values for new rooms. So if you add those templates, all new rooms you create after that point will have those values filled in by default. (If I understand the editor correctly)

My library instead sets the lines to things like "{=CapFirst(WriteVerb(game.pov, "be"))} in" - which will be dynamically changed to "You are in", "I am in" or "He is in" when the message is displayed to the player. This means that you can change all the messages that use this method, just by changing the player object's "gender" attribute to "I", "you", "he", or "she". (Great if you want to change part way through a story; for example switching to third person if you're telling another character what to do over the radio.

Oh, and sorry to be pedantic, but...

Is there a simple means to change from telling a third person story, to telling a first person story?

You mean change from second person ("you") to first person ("I"). Third person would be "John can see" and similar.

Not pedantic at all. I realized my mistake (third person vs second person) soon after I posted. Thanks for your help.