Terminator — 4 of 33

Chapter 2 - The Player and the Spaceship

[the player is in a room that doesn't matter at all; this should prevent the robots from interacting with the PC]

This is the print the pre-banner rule:

say "You're in your bunk when a buzz comes from the rest of the crew of the Tiptree. 'Why is the Russ landing so close to the terminator?'[paragraph break]'They're reversing thrust--they're gonna land hard!'[paragraph break]Then pandemonium, until the Tiptree has settled down somewhere to the west of the Russ's wreckage. It's a mess--the six astronauts from the Russ are scattered around, incapacitated. The terminator, the line between light and dark, is approaching from the east, and on this planet anything but a fully-shielded spaceship that gets caught in the sun will fry. The only thing that can rescue them is the Russ's robots. And you're the robot whisperer."

Cabin of the Tiptree is a room. "[one of][run paragraph on][or]You barely notice the furious tumult of the crew in the cabin around you. You have to command the robots on the surface.[stopping]".

The room description heading rule is not listed in any rulebook. [No need to print the room name, which is completely irrelevant. Could probably do without the room description.]

Printing the banner for the first time is initially true.

After printing the banner text when printing the banner for the first time is true:

say "[line break]This is an emergency hack job. Robots like this are designed to be commanded from a central station that can synthesize their reports and coordinate their locations. That got smashed with the Russ. You've patched on to their frequency, but all you'll get from them is simple visual reports--they can't even recognize each other, let alone tell you where they are.[paragraph break]You trained for this, though. Your mind flashes back to that drill.[paragraph break][bracket]You can stop the tutorial by typing 'WAKE', but if you have never played Terminator you should play the tutorial. Even if you're used to interactive fiction, Terminator's method of interaction is non-standard. For more information on the game, type 'ABOUT.'[close bracket][conditional paragraph break]";

now printing the banner for the first time is false;

now acting out of world is false; [so the silent try of waiting still triggers the every turn rules]

try silently waiting. [This should get us an initial report from the robots--I hope.]

Looking is acting fast. [It shouldn't take time. This doesn't seem to be working, though. Well, players shouldn't look.]

Before doing anything other than looking or waiting or waking up or launching: say "You aren't down there on the surface yourself. You have to issue commands to the robots." instead.

[We have to include waiting because Multiple Actors issues a silent "wait" to make time pass. Also, I guess the player can wait if that floats their boat. Waking up stops the tutorial.]

Planet is a room.

The spaceship exterior is a thing in the Planet. The printed name of the spaceship exterior is "spaceship". The indefinite article of the spaceship exterior is "your". The sight radius of the spaceship exterior is 3.

After deciding the scope of the player: place the planet in scope.