Big windows is backdrop

Authoring Inform 7
1

hi
i have a backdrop and its not mentioned in any room. this is code…

big windows is backdrop. Description of big windows is "Glassy thing you can see through". big windows is in east wing and big windows is in west wing and big windows is in Reception.

its in 3 locations i tried also with “it is in and and” also not working i tried without description also not working …i want player to be able to examine backdroop not take… but cant get it listed… anyway in other post i mentioned i want to replace you can see text with my own logic and i was reading that backdrop kinda moves with the player…my main wory is if i will be able to create link from it in vorple.

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Things labeled “backdrop” and “scenery” are never listed by the game itself. This is so that you can write about it yourself in the room description.

So in each room you’d add “This room has big windows” or something in the text.

Basically write now the items are really there, just invisible to the player, which is how backdrops are designed to work.

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hi thank you for explanation… now i tried to examine my big windows as a player but inform tells me theres no such thing… how can i interact with backdrop?

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This syntax doesn’t work as intended; when you look in the Index, specifically the World Index and the Gazetteer, you’ll see that Inform creates the big windows backdrop, and then additionally a thing called “big windows is in Reception” and a thing called “big windows is in west wing”.

You can:

  • either use fully separated sentences: “Big windows is in east wing. Big windows is in west wing. Big windows is in Reception.”,

  • or string them together without the second and third “big windows is ...”: “Big windows is in east wing and west wing and reception.” or “Big windows is in east wing and in west wing and in reception.”, both work;

  • or create a region with those rooms and assign the backdrop to the region: “Building is a region. Reception and East Wing and West Wing are in Building. Big windows is in Building.” (Or, of course, “Big windows is a backdrop in Building.” if it hasn’t been defined yet.)

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This should work:

Yes, a backdrop is tricky like that. It makes sense if you think about it: Imagine distant mountains you can see from your yard, your school, and your church parking lot. Those are the same mountains and the view is “moving with you.”

It gets tricky when you want to use a backdrop for a non-scenic and quasi-interactable item. You can make “wall to wall carpet” a backdrop in several rooms of a location, and you can make it a supporter so you can drop a spoon on the carpet. Well and good. But since you’ve got one backdrop now in several rooms supporting a thing, the spoon will also show up everywhere the backdrop does as if it too is “following you”.

One thing you might do is make a kind of thing and place it everywhere. That way if it occurs in the story that one window gets broken, the rest of them won’t be.

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But if you want to have a backdrop that is automatically mentioned in the room descriptions, you can write:

The big windows are a not scenery backdrop.
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thank you all

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