Look self only ever returns "Looking good."

I know that I might be missing something obvious here, but I can't change the player's description.

I've tried scripts to modify the player.pov_look and the pov_look and didn't get anywhere.

I tried plain old changing what's in the text box for the player in the editor.

I've tried putting a swtich script in there, and at least that generated an error.

I tried this script:

if (GetBoolean(player, "Dead")) {
msg ("You look... well... your'e dead. You reallly shouldn't be up and about like this.")
}
else if (GetBoolean(player, "Bornagain")) {
if () {
}
}
else if (GetBoolean(player, "Pervert")) {
if () {
}
}
else if (GetBoolean(player, "Minor")) {
if () {
}
}
else if (GetBoolean(player, "Gender")) {
if () {
}
}
else if (not GetBoolean(player, "Dead")) {
perspectiveswitch (this)
}
else {
msg ("I have no idea how you were able to look at yourself under these conditions!")
}

With the exception of the poorly derived switch script throwing an error, all roads result in the game printing "Looking good." when I type "look self."

I know that others have modified the look self, because I've played games where it was done.

Does anyone have any insight? Why can't I modify the results from looking at myself mid-game?


Got to admit it is a long time since I did Quest 5 so...

I think the player object has two attributes for examine to facilitate changing the player point of view. The usual one is only used when the object is not the player. To get EXAMINE ME to work, you need to modify the other one, which I think is maybe on another tab? Is there a player tab?


This is an odd quirk of Quest but important to know as "looking good" may be inappropriate in some cases! Also, it can be useful to add more detail. For example, one simple change is to include details of anything worn by the player:

str = ListClothes()
if (str = "nothing") {
  str = ""
}
else {
  str = str + ", topped off with "
}
msg ("Looking good, wearing " + str + "a broad smile!")

There are two places to enter the description.
The one on the object's "Setup" tab is the look attribute.
The one on the object's "Player" tab is the pov_look attribute.

At the start of the game, or when the player object is changed, it changes the look attribute to be the same as pov_look. The look attribute is then used by the examine command.

This means that if you change pov_look for the current player object, it will be ignored. You would need to change look in this case. Changing pov_look in only appropriate before the player takes control of the object.


(for a little more detail, if you change the player object from oldplayer to newplayer, it will do:

oldplayer.pov_look = oldplayer.look
oldplayer.look = oldplayer.external_look

newplayer.external_look = newplayer.look
newplayer.look = newplayer.pov_look

and the equivalent for the alt, alias, gender, article, and possessive attributes.

This means that

  • look is what is shown when the player uses the look at/examine command
  • pov_look is what look will be changed to when the object becomes player-controlled
  • external_look is what the look will be changed to when the object stops being player-controlled

Thanks guys!

I really do appreciate each of you taking some time to weigh in.

I'm wondering if I broke my "look" code in Quest somehow?

Pixie is right, and Mrangel made it clearer that there are definitely two tabs. One modifies pov_look and one modifies look.

I currently have my above script in both Look and pov look attributes... but when I type "look self" I get "looking good."

It doesn't appear to be checking what I have on my player object at all, but must be getting "looking good" from the code somewhere else?

I've started looking at my added libraries to see if it's in there somewhere, but haven't yet found out what's happening. Does anyone have any suggestions?


Turns out I WAS missing something obvious. After posting my reply, I went back to review the code I had (pasted above) with fresh haven't-been-up-all-night eyes.

I'm ashamed to admit that I did leave "Looking good" as the default if no flags were on my player object in that "perspective switch" script.

After seeing that the phrase does indeed exist in my script, I went to review and found that my character generation scripts I'd made a while back all had lowercase flags. The Script is checking for flags that start with an uppercase!

Doh! SMH. Facepalm.

Thank you all very sincerely for being here to help and responding and sharing! I think, even though the error was a foolish one on my end, I wouldn't have figured it out without this conversation.

I'm also grateful, because you've all taught me so much in such a short time! This included. I have a clearer understanding of the tabs and attributes related to player and pov_look than before, even if my error was just in not matching case sensitivity.


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