Lock and key property error messages

[gabemcceldry]

The basement is a room. The basement door is north of the hallway and south of the basement . The basement door is lockable and locked. The matching key of the basement door is the silver key.

This is the gist of what I’m trying to do. I’m getting these error messages and I don’t recall ever getting those error messages in previous lock and key iterations. What’s different now?

Problem. You wrote ‘The matching key of the basement door is the silver key’ : but the property matching key for the basement door is not allowed to exist, because you haven’t said it is. What properties something can have depends on what kind of thing it is: see the Index for details.

See the manual: 3.7 > 3.7. Properties depend on kind

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Problem. You wrote ‘The basement door is lockable and locked’ : but the property lockable for the basement door is not allowed to exist.

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Problem. You wrote ‘The basement door is lockable and locked’ : but the property locked for the basement door is not allowed to exist.

[matt_weiner (matt w)]

You need to explicitly say “The basement door is a door.” If you just say “The basement door is north of the hallway and south of the basement” then Inform will infer that the basement door is a room–it doesn’t realize that it’s supposed to be a door just because it has “door” in its name.

[gabemcceldry]

@matt w

You need to explicitly say “The basement door is a door.” If you just say “The basement door is north of the hallway and south of the basement” then Inform will infer that the basement door is a room–it doesn’t realize that it’s supposed to be a door just because it has “door” in its name.

I think the actual problem was that I was using the same word for the door and the room. I have to officially call the door something else and the room, the basement. I’ll probably make the printed name, the basement door instead.

EDIT: It also helps if your code isn’t messy.