How can I implement a money system, and a variable that can affect rates of survival in Harlowe?

Question

I'm currently making a game that will require that some actions will add or reduce money, and cannot go below 0. It also has a "Popularity Counter" which will determine the rate of survival for certain events.

Answer 1

To prevent a variable from going below 0 in harlowe you kinda have to do it manually, like so:

(link: "Insult him")[\
"Yore're stoopid!" you shout.

He responds, "No u!"(set: $popularity to it - 10)(if: $popularity < 0)[(set: $popularity to 0)]
\]

So if $popularity was 5, now it's 0 and not -5.

If you're going to do this a lot, it's a little less cumbersome to put the (if:) code you'd normally copy-paste everywhere into it's own passage and use the (display:) macro, like so:

<!-- This is in a passage titled "Clamp Popularity" (make sure to collapse whitespace!)-->

{
(if: $popularity < 0)[(set: $popularity to 0)]
}

<!-- This is in the main passage -->

(link: "Insult him")[\
"Yore're stoopid!" you shout.

He responds, "No u!"(set: $popularity to it - 10)(display: "Clamp Popularity")
\]

Maybe a bit unnecessary here, but this sort of thing really shines when you want to make sure a variable that stays between both a minimum and maximum value. For example: forcing $health to be between 0 and $maxHealth.

Money is a bit more complicated though, since you need to check if you're going to go under 0 before the player can even buy something.

There are many different ways to do this depending entirely on stylistic preference, but here's an easy one:

(link: "Buy Sandwich ($3.50)")[\
(if: $money < 3.50)[You rummage around in your pockets. "Dang, a little short on cash."]\
(else:)[You buy the sandwich. Hot Italian, your favorite.(set: $money to it - 3.50)]
\]

Again, there are all sorts of ways to do this, but I hope this helps.

Comments

To prevent a variable from going below 0 in harlowe you kinda have to do it manually...

You can also use the JavaScript Math.max() function to stop numbers going below zero (or any particular value for that matter), and the Math.min() function to stop a number from going above a particular value.

(set: $money to 5)\
money before: $money
(set: $money to Math.max(0, it - 10))\
money after: $money

(set: $health to 80)\
health before: $health
(set: $health to Math.min(100, it + 50))\
health after: $health