Message-ID: <3D3F2A3B.3060002@csi.com>
Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2002 18:29:15 -0400
From: John Colagioia <JColagioia@csi.com>
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.0rc2) Gecko/20020618 Netscape/7.0b1
X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
MIME-Version: 1.0
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Looking in Directions
References: <Xns92391CC2FFBF6joaomendesnetcabopt@194.65.14.150> <3d19524a.35013531@news.east.cox.net> <Xns9239513907B2joaomendesnetcabopt@194.65.14.150> <3d1a00cb.1411552@news.east.cox.net> <Xns9253593747A79robertibookscom@127.0.0.1> <a69830de.0207221420.39beb839@posting.google.com> <Xns92544EDBA7F52joaomendesnetcabopt@194.65.14.158> <emshort-2407020110200001@1cust184.tnt7.redmond.wa.da.uu.net> <Xns92558B004F7A5joaomendesnetcabopt@194.65.14.158>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
NNTP-Posting-Host: ool-182f30fa.dyn.optonline.net
X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: ool-182f30fa.dyn.optonline.net
X-Trace: excalibur.gbmtech.net 1027549322 ool-182f30fa.dyn.optonline.net (24 Jul 2002 18:22:02 -0400)
Organization: ProNet USA Inc.
Lines: 27
X-Authenticated-User: jnc
Path: news.duke.edu!newsgate.duke.edu!solaris.cc.vt.edu!news.vt.edu!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!nntp.abs.net!uunet!dca.uu.net!excalibur.gbmtech.net
Xref: news.duke.edu rec.arts.int-fiction:106566

Joao Mendes wrote:
> I'll settle for a very simple alternative:
>
>>LOOK NORTH
> To the north, yo usee the kitchen.
>
>>LOOK SOUTH
> There is no exit in that direction.
>
> And then, of course, in some particular instances, the author might
> override this with more interesting behaviour.
>
> Or not... :)

That's relatively easy to do (in Inform, at least; I haven't bothered
learning enough TADS to say if the same is the case, there).  You
could probably even account for doors with some near-trivial code.

Basically, take the aforementioned article by Mr. Cornelson, and add
a default that actually checks the n_to (or whatever) property,
and either (maybe) converts the result to lowercase (not easy, but
done before), declares it to be an opaque passageway, or says that
there's nothing there.

I may add this to my current project, just to see whether or not it
looks useable.

