Quest Gamebook: Return to a previous page with multiple links, and make link already chosen inactive

Question

I'm new to Quest and know next to nothing about programming. I'm trying my best, but sometimes it all sounds like gibberish to me. I tried to search the forums for an answer to my probably simple question, but I think I ended up confusing myself even more.

I'm trying to figure out the easiest way to basically backtrack and then block out a link from a list of options when you reach that page again. For example, the player can choose to sneak into the kitchen, talk to a barmaid, or talk to an adventurer. Say the player sneaks into the kitchen first, finds out what he/she needs to, but then has nowhere else to go. So they go back out to the tavern scene they started at, and from there, I want the other two options to be still available, while the first one no longer be a clickable link (or if you click it, it gives you a message that you've already done everything here or something and takes you back to the other options again).

I've tried the "If" script hoping that I can tag each link when a player first chooses that option. Then if the player has seen the page/has a counter, when they get back to the the page that has all the choices, the link they already have followed is just text. Or if they haven't seen that page/have that counter, the link is still viable. That didn't seem to work for multiple "the player has already seen page if" options. It seemed to only spit out the message for the page they did see and didn't show the link for the pages they player hadn't already seen.

I'm wondering if I could somehow use the "first time" script instead to get an active link to disappear after the player has already chosen it and then circled back?

Also, I was wondering if somebody could explain the "Add page link" script, because I think I'm confusing myself over that as well. Every time I try to use it, I get nothing when I try to play through the game. (Or maybe I'm just using it wrong. I was trying to use it above with the "if" script. For example, if have seen page, display message. But if not seen page, add active link for an option for the player to pick.)

Thanks for any help, and patience, you can offer this confused newbie!

Answer 1

It may not be the best solution, but this is what I would do to make the link disappear after it's been followed (I don't know how to make it go to just text):

Go to the page that the link points to (aka the sneaking into kitchen page) and change its type to script + text, then add new script and choose "set flag on". Pick a flag that you're only gonna use this once. beentokitchen, if you want (No spaces in flags).

Then, on your page with three choices, edit the link to the kitchen page, and in the text, do this:

{if not beentokitchen:Link Text Here.}

What this does is makes the text disappear if that flag is active. The link to the page is still technically there, but it can't be followed because there is nothing to click.

Someone else might have a better or simpler way to do it, but this is all I know of that works. Good luck writing!