Run Paragraph On

Any idea why “run paragraph on” doesn’t work with room descriptions? Like so:

[code]The hamster cage is a room. “You are in a small glass terrarium. The floor is strewn with clean pine shavings. [run paragraph on]”

A water bottle is in the hamster cage. “A water bottle hangs from one side of the cage. [run paragraph on]”

A wheel is in the hamster cage. “There is also a squeaky plastic exercise wheel. [run paragraph on]”

A tube is in the hamster cage. “There is a discarded toilet paper tube in one corner.”[/code]

Why doesn’t this print all four lines as a single paragraph? Is there a way to make this work?

There are many ways to get all that in a single paragraph. The most common one, for items such as the water bottle and wheel which (Presumably) are fixed in place, is to define them as scenery instead of things, and incorporate them to the room description:

Hamster Cage is a room. "You are in a small glass terrarium. The floor is strewn with clean pine shavings. A water bottle and a squeaky hamster wheel hang from one side of the cage; a discarded tube of toilet paper sits in the corner, likely feeling sorry for itself."

The water bottle, the hamster wheel, and the toilet paper tube are scenery in the hamster cage.

This produces:

However, this is not a general solution. It won’t work for items that the player can take or move around, for example. The best way to implement this as a general feature of the game is to use the Room Description Control extension by Emily Short, which allows you to completely rewrite the Inform room description rules.