Terminator — 22 of 33

Section 10 - Parking Robots at the Tiptree

The Hold of the Tiptree is a room. [If we put it in the room where the player is, then all generic commands get redirected to the robot in that room. That's bad! So we need another room to put them in.]

A robot can be parkable or unparkable. A robot is usually parkable. [This prevents us from asking every turn whether we'd like to park the robot.]

Every turn (this is the park robots rule):

repeat with bot running through parkable robots in the Planet:

if bot is right next to the spaceship exterior:

say "Would you like [bot] to move into the cargo hold of the Tiptree?[first time](This will mean that it will stay at your spaceship, not moving away even when you issue commands to all robots. If you would like it to begin responding to movement commands again, you can give it a command to 'EXIT'; that will take no time.)[only]Please type yes or no. >[run paragraph on]";

if the player consents:

say "[Bot] rolls into the cargo hold of the Tiptree.";

now bot is in the Hold of the Tiptree;

otherwise:

now the bot is unparkable.

Carry out an unparkable robot going: now the person asked is parkable. [A bot becomes parkable when it moves away from the spaceship.]

After deciding the scope of the player: Place the Hold of the Tiptree in scope. [We do need these robots to be accessible to direct commands.]

Check a robot exiting when the person asked is not in the hold of the Tiptree (this is the robots can only exit the Tiptree rule): stop the action.

Unsuccessful attempt by a robot (called bot) exiting when the reason the action failed is the robots can only exit the Tiptree rule: say "[Bot] is not in the Tiptree."

The convert exit into go out rule does nothing when the person asked is in the hold of the Tiptree.

The can't exit when not inside anything rule does nothing when the person asked is in the hold of the Tiptree. [This zaps the checks that would convert it into a going out action, or say we aren't in anything, or like that.]

The standard exiting rule is not listed in any rulebook. [And this zaps the normal behavior of exiting.]

Carry out a robot (called bot) exiting: now bot is in the Planet.

After a robot (called bot) exiting: say "[Bot] rolls out onto the surface and is ready to move again."