Secret Doors by Andrew Owen

[wgm003]

I am now having a problem that does not appear to be directly related to the Extension Secret Doors, however that’s where I am:

Section 9 - Hidden Door from G5 to G4

The Indian Passage Door is a secret door.
The Indian Passage Door is north of G52875 and south of G42875.

The Lever is a kind of secret switch. The Lever can be switched on or switched off, it is switched off.

The Old Cavern walls are scenery. “Sharp cliffs surround you and stalactites drip from the ceiling, giving the cavern a surrealistic feeling.”; The cavern walls are in g52875…

Instead of searching or examining the Old Cavern Walls:
now the Lever is revealed;
say “In a gap between two rocks you discover a lever.”.

Instead of pulling the lever which is revealed for the first time:
now the passage door is revealed;
now the passage door is open;
say “As you pull the lever, a secret door opens, revealing a secret passage!”

This is what I7 is telling me:

In Part 5 - Underground Caverns, Chapter 5, Section 9 - Hidden Door from G5 to G4:

Problem. You wrote ‘now the Lever is revealed’ : but this is not explicit enough, and should set out definite relationships between specific things, like ‘now the cat is in the bag’, not something more elusive like ‘now the cat is carried by a woman.’ (Which woman? That’s the trouble.)

See the manual: 8.11 > Now…

As far as I can tell, by reading the documentation (and looking inside the Extension) I am not doing anything wrong – but apparently, I7 thinks I am!

[Skinny_Mike]

This is a common mistake and although the error message is pretty explicit about what you did wrong, it’s one of those things you can stare at and still miss. Your problem is here:

@wgm003

The Lever is a kind of secret switch.

You’ve created a kind of secret switch (called a lever), but not an actual lever object. If you only need one lever, change it to: The Lever is a secret switch in G52875. If you have a bunch of levers: A lever is a kind of secret switch. The brown lever is a lever in G52875. Either way, you need to actually place the lever in whatever room it’s supposed to be, which it looks like you also forgot to do.

[capmikee]

In other threads I’ve learned that “a lever is in G52875” is not sufficient to create an instance of the lever kind, but “one lever is in G52875” will work.

[wgm003]

The rumbling you hear in the background is me pulling in the last pit I just dug. I think I7 is out to get me. Every time I think I have a slim understanding of the language, another factor jumps up and bites me on the ass! At least now, I think I am beginning to dispel my feelings of paranoia and have started realizing that the language is so complex that it seems to be able to handle most any thought process and when an error does occur it is probably my sending it down the wrong synapse!

[Robert_Rothman]

As a rule, I find unnamed instances of a kind of thing to be one of the most confusing aspects of Inform 7. There are times when they are unavoidable, but I try to use uniquely identified things whenever possible (even if that unique identification is entirely behind the scenes).

Robert Rothman