How to trigger an event to occur x turns after another event?

Question

This is a noob question - sorry. I have these scenes triggered to begin when the NPC Sister has been in the Living room for seven turns.

Dinner is a scene. Dinner begins when Sister is in Living room for seven turns.

The compiler, however, refuses to compile this. Likewise, the compiler complains about this:

After entering room x for the first time:
say "Your mum calls out your name.";
move Sister to Living room in seven turns.

Could anyone point me to where I've gone wrong? Thank you!

Answer 1

In Inform 7 we can discuss future events only in a very restrained way. Your first problem is a minor wording issue; you need to say "Dinner begins when Sister is in Living Room for the seventh turn."

Your second problem requires a little bit more work. But only a little! From §9.11 in the documentation comes this example:

An egg-timer is in the Chamber. "A plastic egg timer in the shape of a chicken can be pressed to set it going."

Instead of pushing the egg-timer:
    say "It begins to mark time.";
    the egg-timer clucks in four turns from now.

At the time when the egg-timer clucks:
    say "Cluck! Cluck! Cluck! says the egg-timer."

So, we can say a specific rule will trigger after a certain number of turns. A little inconvenient, but all that we have to do is give the intended effect its own rule, with its own name:

After entering room x for the first time:
    say "Your mum calls out your name.";
    Sister shows up in seven turns from now.

At the time when Sister shows up:
    move Sister to Living Room.

Comments

Oh okay, thank you!