6.4. Looking

| Chapter 6: Commands |

| 6.4. Looking

Looking is quite a complicated command, since the production of a room description takes many steps. A detailed description of this process may be found in the Room Descriptions section.

By convention, a player sees only short descriptions of rooms he enters more than once, but may type VERBOSE in order to see full descriptions every time. BRIEF restores the normal behavior, and SUPERBRIEF tells the game never to print room descriptions at all. (This is a holdover from the earliest days of interactive fiction, when game output might be via a printer rather than on-screen, so space was at a premium but it was never difficult to review what the game had already told the player.)

These conventions are not always appropriate, however, especially in works where experiencing a changing environment is essential. The use option

> Use full-length room descriptions.

changes the default behavior so that rooms are always described fully to the player. Verbosity demonstrates how this works.

Using full-length room descriptions still leaves the player with the option of turning room descriptions to BRIEF or SUPERBRIEF mode. Verbosity 2 demonstrates how we might remove the player's ability to change the default behavior.

See Room Descriptions for a detailed description of how Inform creates room descriptions and how to change the results

See Going, Pushing Things in Directions for ways to change just those room descriptions that are shown as the result of the player's movement

See Memory and Knowledge for ways to change the room description in response to the player character's knowledge at any given stage of play

2
| Example Verbosity 1 Making rooms give full descriptions each time we enter, even if we have visited before. |
WI

380
| Example Verbosity 2 Making rooms give full descriptions each time we enter, even if we have visited before, and disallowing player use of BRIEF and SUPERBRIEF. |
WI

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