How does undescribed affect a door? I assumed it would just not write the description in a room. I’m curious.
I did :
First Room is a room. The description of it is "Some text.".
The wooden door is north of First Room and south of Second Room. It is a door. It is open. It is undescribed.
Second Room is a room. The description of it is "Some text.".
I know I can replace ‘undescribed’ with ‘scenery’ to rectify it, but in the code above, I can examine the door, but not go north.
The documentation has this to say: “…but which has the ability to hide something from room descriptions. This not really hiding: the idea is that “undescribed” should be used only for cases where some other text already reveals the item, or where its presence is implicit…”
but it seems like there is something awry with an undescribed door.
Yes, undescribed for a door means you can’t go through it. This is an undocumented behavior for I7, but it was documented in I6 and remains part of the world model.
Every year or so I try to suggest that “undescribed” is a terrible mess and people should stop using it. Then someone says “how else do I make a door untraversable?” and I say, okay, the easiest way to do that (in the Standard Rules) is to make it undescribed. But it’s still a mess.
(Untraversable in the sense of generating a “You can’t go that way” response. Although this doesn’t really match the standard no-map-connection response – it’s a different response text. So you might as well write your own “Check going through” rule, really.)