Hi all. I’m increasingly getting to grips with Inform, however I’ve got a little situation I don’t know how to handle, which might exist in code or an extension, or may end up as a suggestion on UserVoice if it doesn’t exist anywhere.
I want to vary a room’s description when it is first described, compared to every other time, e.g. at game start:
[code]Grubby Cell
You wake up on the floor of a dirty prison cell.
look
Grubby Cell
You are standing in a dirty prison cell.[/code]
I’d imagine the code for this looks a little like:
Grubby Cell is a room. "You [first time]wake up on the floor of[else]are standing in[end] a dirty prison cell."
Is this already achievable? I’m having a hard time knowing what to type into the documentation’s search bar to get the answers I need, so sorry if this is an obvious question.
Prison Cell is a room. "[first time]You blearily wake up and drag yourself to your feet.[only] You are in a dank prison cell with a door to the north."
Zarf, I discounted the [one of] idea as I quite specifically want the ‘wake up’ text one time only, although other descriptive elements could be chosen randomly or cycle around. I could add the initial text to ‘when the game starts:’ instead, I suppose.
That’s what [one of]…[or]…[stopping] does. Specifically if you want the effect described in the initial post you can’t use [first time]…[only] because it doesn’t have a mechanism to print something else afterwards.
But I learned something new, and that’s valuable to an Inform novice. Thank you.