Room Description - Not Repeating

Authoring Inform 7
1

Hey, folks. I am new to authoring interactive fiction games. I am currently working on a story for my college class on literature and pedagogy – how to teach literature via interactive fiction.

The game I’m developing is based on a short story by an American author, and I am using significant portions of the short story in certain rooms. I don’t want the information to repeat every single time you re-enter a room. That can get burdensome and overwhelming. I’d rather them return to the room and only have a condensed version of it, or something completely different.

What is the code to have the room description not repeat when returning to a room you’ve already visited? Is there a code?

Thanks!
DH

2

You could add to the beginning of your source:

Use sometimes abbreviated room descriptions.

This reduces the description to title and nothing else after the first visit. Typing LOOK still shows the full description if the player wants it.

If you just want to show something different, you could use a [first time]…[only] or [one of]…[stopping] construction.

3

Another option: use stopping text in your room description.

Scenic Beach is a room. "[one of]Here's the full long description, including stuff that will not repeat later.[or]Here's the shorter version without as much detail that will be shown the next time the player looks.[or]Beware that anything you omit in iterations of a stopping text will never repeat, so make sure there's no important information the player could miss.[or]This fourth will be the last one, the next is blank and won't even print anything.[or][stopping]"

(on edit - what Draconis said, I missed that he showed that at the bottom.)

4

Stopping text is a good solution, however, keep in mind punctuation. The following will likely generate weird line breaks:

“[one of]This is a description.[or]This is a new description.[stopping]”

But this will be fine:

“[one of]This is a description[or]This is a new description[stopping].”