AGT Programming (2) - Death

When a player dies in an AGT adventure, it's easy to program in an
option for him to be resurrected. However, there are drawbacks to
this. The player is merely moved to a particular room, designated
as the 'resurrection room' by the programmer (the default is the
start location), still carrying/wearing all the objects he had
when he died, which may be inconvenient.  No flags, variables or
counters seem to be reset or zeroed so if the player had
previously moved through a one-way, flag-controlled exit, for
example, and died on the opposite side, he may not be able to get
back there.

When programming Oklib's Revenge, the resurrection option caused
me all sorts of problems. The idea of just killing the player and
chucking him out of the game is very unfriendly so I worked out a
'death room' option. When the player dies in Oklib, he is moved to
the 'death room' (I made it ROOM 100 so it was easy to remember).
The room has no exits and the only commands permitted in there are
RESTORE and QUIT. Add something similar to this to your .DAT file:

ROOM 100
Oh Dear!
END_ROOM

ROOM_DESCR 100
You appear to be dead. All you can do now is RESTORE a saved game
or QUIT.
END_ROOM_DESCR

Say you've written an SF adventure. In it, if the player moves
NORTH in a certain location, not wearing a disguise of some sort,
accompanied by his loyal robot and carrying a bomb which he is
intending to drop on the bridge of an alien vessel to destroy the
ship's computer, the lack of the disguise alerts the aliens that
he isn't one of them. Put the following in your .CMD file:-

COMMAND NORTH
AtLocation 97 (* by entrance to ship's bridge *)
NOT IsWearing 205 (* disguise *)
IsCarrying 210 (* bomb *)
CounterGT 3 1 (* bomb is ticking *)
PrintMessage 12 (* discovered! *)
BlankLine
PrintMessage 17 (* Greebles take over the world *)
BlankLine
RemoveEverything
DropEverything
Destroy 302 (* your faithful robot *)
TurnCounterOFF 3 (* bomb *)
GoToRoom 100 (* dead *)
DoneWithTurn
END_COMMAND

You'll have to destroy the robot and reset the bomb counter
otherwise any messages relating to these will still be printed
after entering the 'death room' eg 'Fred the robot trundles behind
you.' and 'The bomb continues its countdown.'. I also REMOVE and
DROP everything to be on the safe side but I'm sure it isn't
necessary!

Now add the relevant messages.

MESSAGE 12
The Greebles look up from their computers and control panels as
you enter.
     "An intruder!", one burbles.
The others cheer and slither towards you. You see their stalked
eyes light up at the thought of taking a prisoner - you!
END_MESSAGE

MESSAGE 17
You've failed. The Greebles take over Earth. The rest of the
Federation falls soon after.
END_MESSAGE

Remember to tell the player in the introduction or at the start of
the game to SAVE his position as soon as possible, otherwise if he
dies he won't be able to RESTORE.
                                                       Sue