I7 - two room description questions

Authoring Inform 7
1

I’m experimenting with what effect leaving out the room description will have on the game. But I ran into two obstacles:

  1. If I Use brief room descriptions, is there a way to make some text (namely, the exits) always appear?

  2. Is there a way to detect wether a room description is triggered by the player entering the room, or triggered by him typing LOOK?

2
  1. Putting it in an “after going” rule would probably be the best way.
  2. “If the player was enclosed by the location” is a good way to test for movement. (See the implementation of the Antechamber in Scroll Thief for an example of this.)
3

After going rules happen before printing the room description of the room you arrive in. So this:

After going to the Kitchen, say "There are exits to the north and east."

Will produce something like this:

I would use the printing the locale descritption activity instead:

After printing the locale description of the Kitchen, say "There are exits to the north and east."

For question #2, the Looking action has a variable called “room-describing action”. So:

Carry out looking in the Kitchen: if the room-describing action is going, say "You have just arrived in the kitchen."; otherwise say "You are still in the kitchen."

4

Inform was slightly pedantic, so this one didn’t work:

Carry out looking in the Kitchen: 
     if the room-describing action is going, say "You have just arrived in the kitchen.";
     otherwise say "You are still in the kitchen."

But this one did:

Carry out looking in the Kitchen: 
	if the room-describing action is the going action, say "You have just arrived in the kitchen.";
	otherwise say "You are still in the kitchen."

Thanks for all the solutions! :slight_smile:

5

Tiny problem:

[code]Use brief room descriptions.

A room has some text called exit-dsc. The exit-dsc of a room is usually “describe some of them exits here!”.
After printing the locale description of a room (called cur-room), say “[exit-dsc of cur-room][line break]”.

The Wilkie Memorial Research Wing is a room. “It looks cool.”
The exit-dsc of Wilkie Memorial Research Wing is “There are exits to the north and east.”
The doll is a thing in Wilkie Memorial Research Wing.[/code]

This writtes the room description after mentioning of objects:

Wilkie Memorial Research Wing
It looks cool.

You can see a doll here.

There are exits to the north and east.

6

Ah, then try “Before printing a locale description”. (The printing a locale description activity is in fact the activity that mentions all the objects after a room description).

7

Oh, of course!

By the way, any opinion on full-length versus brief room description?

I got this idea that requirering the player to type LOOK if he want to see the room description might make it seem more interesting than repeating the description each time the player enters the room.

8

My own preference is to make full descriptions the default, but then to keep room descriptions relatively brief (no more than 2-3 sentence tops). I think for most people the eyes tend to glaze over a room description the second, third time etc., so it really doesn’t suck up much time or attention even when it repeats.

If a room description starts to get longer than a couple of sentences, I start looking for details that can be broken out into individual object descriptions, or as a “first impression” that displays the first time you enter the room and then goes away.