I have tried using Emily Short’s single paragraph room description extension but I would also like to have the game use BRIEF room descriptions.
Regardless of whether the player types “brief” or I include the statement “use brief room descriptions.” in the code, the extension seems to circumvent this and causes a description to be printed every time the player enters a room even if it’s one they’ve been in before.
Is there a fix for this, or a better way to have a description of the room, and all of the objects in the room, all in one paragraph?
Single Paragraph Description unlists “the room description body text rule” (one of the carry out looking rules), which is responsible for checking the long, brief and superbrief modes.
The relevant part of the code of that rule is this:
if set to abbreviated room descriptions, continue the action;
if set to sometimes abbreviated room descriptions
and abbreviated form allowed is true
and the location is visited, continue the action;
You can put that at the top of “the new reporting descriptions rule” in the Single Paragraph Description extension, thus:
This is the new reporting descriptions rule:
if set to abbreviated room descriptions, continue the action;
if set to sometimes abbreviated room descriptions
and abbreviated form allowed is true
and the location is visited, continue the action;
[rest of the rule goes here ...]
And I think the game will respect the brief and superbrief modes.
(However, it also means that the player has to type LOOK to see not only the room description but also any objects in the room.)
If this is the best way to do it, I really can’t tell, though …
nice thank you 
although, now whenever the player gets into his car (and presumably anything else the player might be able to get into) I get the error “Variable unavailable for this action, activity or rulebook: internal ID number 20011/1”
it looks like adding:
if the current action is entering something, continue the action;
helps, as the act of getting into the car doesn’t change the location so there’s no need to re-display the room description.
Had a look at this and discovered a horrifying number of ants crawling about under the unturned rock.
I’ve now fixed Single Paragraph Description so
– it shouldn’t run the room entry text at all when getting into a vehicle or enterable thing
– it will accept brief/superbrief as an instruction to leave out the room description text. It will still mention the items in the room, which is different behavior than you’re probably currently getting – but that’s closer to Inform’s default behavior for BRIEF and SUPERBRIEF, so I don’t want to go too far from that. If you don’t want any description here at all, you can just continue to use the rule modification you are using
– (most importantly) a bug to do with detecting initial appearance has been removed, which should fix a problem whereby some items might not be listed in the room if they have no initial appearance defined. This bug is almost certainly affecting your output.
That brings SPD to version 4. I’m emailing it in for the extensions page, but if you need it more immediately, let me know and I can email you a copy.