Here’s this week’s thread for any Fallen London questions you don’t want to start a whole separate thread for!
So, apparently during this year’s Estival there is a storylet that awards you with a quality based on the state of your menaces after the same storylet changes them. Was that always possible in the engine? I always felt quite sure what the engine could and couldn’t do, but I was fairly stumped by this. Have we seen this behaviour before in another storylet but I didn’t remember?
Excellent question. I don’t know the answer, but they’ve expanded the engine so much in recent years that it didn’t even strike me as unusual!
I don’t think this is new for the Estival.
IIRC there are already some actions in the game where the result depends on the value of some quality measured after taking the action. I can’t remember a specific example OTOH right now.
An easy example would be any branch where some variable text in the result depends on the Airs value after it was randomized. It’s been that way forever.
I don’t know if mechanical effects like this are handled the same way in the code, of course.
When you think of it another way, the action gives you +x to Menaces, and then gives you a quality if you had at least 36-x CP before the action ; )
Definitely has precedent, e.g. opening a Khanate crate. The action rolls a (hidden) randomizer quality, and then further results depend on the outcome of that roll.
In general, the order of quality updates matter, and they are processed in order. Text depends on the final state.!
That’s where I ended up at after hwooshs comment, as well. There’s an activity in the Museum that works similarly.
And that’s what led me astray I guess. I have only seen it with randomizers up until today. But there is no reason it shouldn’t just work with other qualities of course.
On another note: is there lore reason that Mrs Chapman doesn’t care about estival? She comments on all (or most?) festivities in London, but when there’s a Tiger Tournament or Hell has gone missing, she doesn’t even blink an eye…