Hello,
I’m just getting into Inform 7, and I ran into a few problems. Apologies if these are silly questions, but I’ve checked the manual to no avail.
#1 - I have the player locked in a room, with a normal locked door, and a boarded up window (that needs to be ‘unlocked’). Now, I’d like to try and include some new commands so that the player doesn’t have to use a crowbar to unlock a bunch of planks nailed to the window frame. So I thought:
Understand “break [a locked door] with [something]” or “use [something] on [a locked door]” as unlocking
would work, but the program says no. I even tried to simplify it to - Understand “break [something]” as unlocking - but no joy. The error I usually get is
Any help with my syntax or theory would be greatly appreciated. I just know I’m missing something simple.
#2 - I’d like to change the description of an object in the game so that it’s different after the player first looks at it. For example, roaches scuttling away when a drawer is open for the first time. I know for rooms I can use [if unvisited][end if], but something like [if not examined][end if] didn’t work.
#3 - Is there a way to give two objects the same use? Back to the crowbar example, I want the player to be able to use the crowbar to either pry off the planks over the window, or smash open the door. The problem is that there’s a key that also opens the door (and gives more points if used instead), but when I try to compile I get this:
Anyway around this?
#4 - Last one, I promise (today). It’s similar to #1 (I get the same error message). I have a closet (enterable container), and a closet door (a part of the closet, openable container, not enterable). Now when the starting room comes up, it lists the closet (closed), but not the closet door because it hasn’t been looked at yet. So I figure the first command a player might use would be ‘open closet’, which they can’t because I made it so that you have to open the door first. My question is, is there a way to have Inform understand that I want open/close the closet to be the same as open/close the closet door? I tried - Understand “open the closet” as opening the closet door - but that wasn’t correct.
Again, any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!