| 6.9. Going, Pushing Things in Directions |
It is very common for players to make a mistake and type the wrong direction command, or even to misunderstand the room description and not recognize all the possible exits. Bumping into Walls helpfully adds a facility so that when the player tries to go in the wrong direction, the game lists the correct possibilities, as in
From here, the viable exits are to the south, the east and the west.
Another useful technique is to provide some sense of the journey between locations, especially if they are remote from one another or the player has to do something unusual to get from one to the other. Up and Up adds a short description of travel when we approach a new room, before the room description is printed; Veronica, conversely, adds a comment when the player leaves a region of the map. The Second Oldest Problem intervenes and kills a player who tries to travel from one dark room to another. Mattress King embellishes the description that automatically results from PUSH MATTRESS WEST, adding a line that describes the player pushing the object before describing the new room approached.
We may also want to add a brief comment when we arrive in a new room, after the room description is printed. One trivial way to do this is to append the line to the room's main description, conditionally, like this:
The Hammock Emporium is a room. "This is Cousin Ed's shop, the big dream he left accounting to pursue. You can't help gawking at the Luxury Leather Space Hammock, made of genuine red buffalo skins[if unvisited]. [paragraph break]So this is why Grampa makes all those 'lying down on the job' jokes every Thanksgiving[end if].".
But often we want our first-glance comment to come after some items in the room are described; and for this effect, we would use the "first look rule" defined in Saint Eligius.
Another category of examples treat how we handle the movement commands themselves. The eight compass directions, with UP and DOWN, IN and OUT, are used as standard in most interactive fiction, but they are not the only possible way of navigating, and strike many newcomers to the genre as counter-intuitive, since when strolling around in real life most of us rarely think about our travel in terms of compass orientation. Misadventure allows the player to GO TO a named room, instead, and calculates the best route to reach the destination; Safari Guide builds on this by letting the player make the whole trip in a single move, automatically opening any doors that stand in his way en route.
In the same spirit of interpreting the player's intentions sensibly, Provenance Unknown modifies the pushing command so that if the player pushes the top object in a stack of objects towards a direction, Inform attempts to move the bottom item instead. This is convenient if, for instance, we have a heavy television on a movable cart and want PUSH TELEVISION WEST to work just as well as PUSH CART WEST. Zorb demonstrates adjusting the restrictions on when the player is allowed to push things in directions in the first place.
We also sometimes want to respond sensibly to terse movement commands or ones that rely on some knowledge of where the player has already been. Polarity provides a GO BACK command, allowing the player to retreat in the direction from which he came, while Minimal Movement understands LEAVE, GO, and so on as OUT, in the absence of other information. Owen's Law takes this further, calculating from the best routes on a map how to make OUT mean "move towards the exit of this indoor room", and IN mean "proceed further into the interior". Wonderland assigns altitudes to all rooms and works out the local best meaning of UP and DOWN accordingly.
Indirection renames the compass directions to correspond to primary colors, as in Mayan thinking. The World of Charles S. Roberts substitutes new ones, instead, introducing a hex-grid map in place of the usual one.
See Varying What Is Read for further divisions of the standard compass, such as north-northwest
See Ships, Trains and Elevators for ship-board directions
See Bicycles, Cars and Boats for common vehicles in which to travel the map
|  Example Up and Up Adding a short message as the player approaches a room, before the room description itself appears. | |
| Example Veronica An effect that occurs only when the player leaves a region entirely. | |
| Example Saint Eligius Adding a first look rule that comments on locations when we visit them for the first time, inserting text after objects are listed but before any "every turn" rules might occur. | |
A not-infrequent desire in IF is to provide a few lines of comment when the player first enters a new room, after the objects are described but before anything else (such as an every turn rule) can fire. The cleanest, most systematic solution is to add a rule to the carry out looking rulebook, so:
"Saint Eligius"
The first look rule is listed after the room description paragraphs about objects rule in the carry out looking rules. A room can be commented or uncommented. A room is usually uncommented.
This is the first look rule:
if the location is uncommented, carry out the gawking at activity with the location.
Gawking at something is an activity.
Rule for gawking at the Diamond Market:
say "Your throat closes and your eyes begin to sting. You have long disdained pomp and luxury, and railed against the oppression that brings such wealth to some men at the cost of the lives of others; you were not prepared for the magnificence."
After gawking at a room (called the target): now the target is commented.
And now the scene itself:
The Cobbled Alley is a room. "The Alley has never been made into a proper street: the buildings on either side are simply too important to tear down. For all that, there isn't much sign of the magnificence nearby. The entrance you seek is set below street level, four grimy steps down to a half-basement."
After going to Diamond Market:
say "You descend the steps quickly and step into the small foyer, allowing yourself to be searched for weapons, before going on to...";
continue the action.
Diamond Market is down from Cobbled Alley. "The roof is vaulted and painted in allegorical images representing Plenty, the Riches of the Earth, and Saint Eligius, patron of goldsmiths and jewelers.
Under their watchful eye, dozens of men in sober black robes sit; and on the tables before them are rubies, emeralds, sapphires from oversea, but most of all diamonds, both raw and cut."
The burly guard is a man in Diamond Market. "A burly guard patrols quite close to you, but even he is more sumptuously dressed than the average burly guard, and his buttons shine."
Test me with "d / look".
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| Example Misadventure A going by name command which does respect movement rules, and accepts names of rooms as commands. | |
|  Example Safari Guide The same functionality, but making the player continue to move until he reaches his destination or a barrier, handling all openable doors on the way. | |
| Example Minimal Movement Supplying a default direction for "go", so that "leave", "go", etc., are always interpreted as "out". | |
|  Example Wonderland Hiking Mount Rainier, with attention to which locations are higher and which lower than the present location. | |
| Example Indirection Renaming the directions of the compass so that "white" corresponds to north, "red" to east, "yellow" to south, and "black" to west. | |