Object name returned as "nothing"

[ElliotM]

I was experimenting with a way to change the name of a location during play and ran into a bug where an object's name is returned as "nothing" if it is at the end of a dot operator sequence.

Nothing Bug.taf

(14.71 KiB) Downloaded 82 times

I gave locations an object property named Primary Feature which had the key Primfeat, and then in group Everywhere I checked the Short Location Description box and added the line of code below to the Short Location Description to override the normal short name.

adrift Code: Select all

%PCase[%Player%.Location.Primfeat.Name]%

When you run the test file, you will see that the name of the location has become "Nothing", showing that while the Everywhere group is overriding the short name like I wanted it to do, I'm not getting the object name as the new location name. In the Custom Statusbar I have some bug testing code that shows that while you can get the key, adding .Name after the key won't get you the object name.

adrift Code: Select all

Primary Feature Key is "%Player%.Location.Primfeat" and the Name is "%Player%.Location.Primfeat.Name"

[ElliotM]

Curious if anyone else has run into situation where the dot operator falls short of replacing itself to the correct reference like how .Name failed in this case. A work around would be to just use the object key with "%Player%.Location.Primfeat" and a Text Override to replace the object key but that isn't the solution that I had hoped would work.

[saabie]

Yes, that's definitely a bug with the item functions.
Even if we use the key of the location (Test) directly, and print the function in a general task to simplify everything:
Test.Primfeat returns the key "Lab"
Lab.Name returns the name of the object "the testing lab"
but Test.Primfeat.Name does not work.
Also Test.Primfeat.Noun does not work at all, it just prints itself as if it's not recognised as a valid function.

[ElliotM]

Thanks for having a look, Saabie. Has this one already been submitted to the bug tracker? I want to say that this sounds like something that has already been reported on but can't seem to find one that is similar.

[saabie]

I can't find it either, go ahead and add a new one.

[ElliotM]

Here is the bug link: http://www.adrift.co/bug/19076

[saabie]

WORKAROUND
Create a user function called ObjName that has an Object reference called "object" and which contains "%object%.Name".
Use this functio whenever you want to get the name of an object returned by an object property:
%ObjName[%Player%.Location.Primfeat]%

[ElliotM]

Thanks! That is pretty useful and way easier than doing one Text Override per object.

[Campbell]

This will be fixed in the next release.

[ElliotM]

Awesome, thanks Campbell.