Re: Verbose looking
Thu, 10 Aug 1995 12:09:58 -0400
jcompton@flood.xnet.com (Jason Compton) writes:
> As I rediscover interactive fiction, I find myself trying to fall back on
> old habits...
>
> One, as I quickly found, was that I like getting free looks at my
> surroundings through use of the verbose command. By that I mean
> "verbose" not only puts you in verbose mode, but gives you a free
> (no-move-penalty) "look" command.
>
> Later Infocom games do this, as do some TADS games I've found. However,
> no Inform offerings do. Is this an intentional omission from Inform? Or
> do Inform authors all feel that I'm a big cheater and should have
> remembered what the room looked like the first time?
The Inform standard library doesn't allow this because "look" might
alter the game state. I don't think there's much reason to do that,
but a program is *allowed* to do it, and therefore the library won't
invoke "look" from a meta-command such as "verbose".
As for sneaking free looks... I play in "verbose" all the time,
regardless. And my interpreter scrolls back.
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."