Is there any way to have an initial appearance of a room? I’m trying everything I can but it doesn’t seem to understand what I’m telling it. I assume it’s simple but I can’t find anything in the documentation or online.
Thanks alot
[code]Darkroom is a room. “First description” .
After printing darkroom description for the first time:
change the darkroom description to “second description”.[/code]
Not working at all
Use conditional text:
Test room is a room. The description of test room is "[if item described is unvisited]This is your first visit![otherwise]Welcome back![end if] This will always be shown."The entire verbiage of your second post is off, try something more like:
after printing the locale description of darkroom:
now the description of the darkroom is "second description".Or:
The description of test room is “[first time]This is your first visit. [only]This will always be shown.”
Yet another way of wording:
The description of test room is “[if unvisited]This is your first visit. [otherwise]This will always be shown.”
Note I’ve removed “the item” because I’ve never ran into a situation where I had to include it.
Beware, your “This will always be shown” will only be shown after the first visit.
That’s fine. When you refer to a bare property inside a property string (“[if unvisited]…”), it assumes you are referring to “the item described”.
…I better add this: You can write a description containing “[if unvisited]”, or “[if the item described is unvisited]”.
But don’t write “[if the item is unvisited]”. That gets interpreted as some generic item, which is not at all what you want. Common mistake.
Yet another method: say “[one of]First time.[or]Later time.[stopping] Always printed.”
Question: Suppose:
- the player enters SUPERBRIEF mode (don’t show descriptions after moves, even on first entry)
- the player enters then leaves the room
- the player switches to VERBOSE mode (always show descriptions after moves, even after first entry)
- the player returns to the room
What do you want to happen? (That is, it isn’t the player’s first time in the room, but it is the first time displaying that text.)
(If you don’t want that “first time text” to be shown on the return, use “if unvisited”. If you do want it to be displayed, use “one of”, or “first time”.)
I just want to say, that’s an awesome technique. Thanks for pointing it out.
Note: none of your players will ever use “superbrief” mode.
If the game won’t work correctly under “superbrief” mode, then the verb should be disabled.
Yeah, I’ve been disabling brief/superbrief in my games for a couple of years now.
I actually went to great pains in Six to make sure brief and superbrief worked, so nyah to you superbrief haters!
More seriously, I only did that because I thought in a hide and seek game, people might legitimately never want to see room descriptions again if they’re constantly moving around after other moving characters.
That’s a good idea. I looked at the “Verbosity 2” example, though, and it seemed a bit too… verbose for me! Here’s my briefer version:
[code]Use full-length room descriptions.
Check preferring sometimes abbreviated room descriptions (this is the brief mode disabled rule):
say “Brief mode is disabled in this game.”;
stop the action.
The brief mode disabled rule is listed first in the check preferring abbreviated room descriptions rules.
Check preferring unabbreviated room descriptions:
say “This game is always in verbose mode.”;
stop the action.[/code]
Is there any reason doing it this way would make the game larger or slower than the example?
Nope, that’s equivalent.