§8.3. Animals
Animals exhibit a wide range of behaviour: much of the chapter on Other Characters applies just as well to animals as to human beings, with the exception of the material on conversation. But two examples here, both fairly simple, show how a fairly convincing domestic pet can be achieved simply by reacting to certain events going on nearby: Feline Behavior (a cat) and Today Tomorrow (a dog).
Fido provides a dog which the player can re-name at will.
For animals that we can sit on and ride - a camel or a horse, say - we may want to use the Rideable Vehicles extension by Graham Nelson, which also provides a rideable animal kind.
See Liveliness for pets that change what they're doing every time the player looks
See Bags, Bottles, Boxes and Safes for a cat that eats food put in its container
![]() | Start of Chapter 8: Vehicles, Animals and Furniture |
![]() | Back to §8.2. Ships, Trains and Elevators |
![]() | Onward to §8.4. Furniture |
Suppose we have a cat which is supposed to react to (and destroy) the most interesting thing in its environment. There are several ways we could approach this problem, but for the sake of demonstration, let's have it follow a rulebook to figure out which thing it most wants to interact with. We will then return the chosen object as "the object produced by the cat behavior rules".
We include the if rule succeeded... condition here because nothing will be returned if the cat's search failed (as for instance in the result of the final rule). Naturally, if we wanted we could equally well ask "if rule failed...". |
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Suppose we have a cat which is supposed to react to (and destroy) the most interesting thing in its environment. There are several ways we could approach this problem, but for the sake of demonstration, let's have it follow a rulebook to figure out which thing it most wants to interact with. We will then return the chosen object as "the object produced by the cat behavior rules".
We include the if rule succeeded... condition here because nothing will be returned if the cat's search failed (as for instance in the result of the final rule). Naturally, if we wanted we could equally well ask "if rule failed...". |
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