3.4. Continuous Spaces and The Outdoors

| Chapter 3: Place |

| 3.4. Continuous Spaces and The Outdoors

Inform's division of geography into "rooms" is a good compromise for most purposes. The rooms are cut off from each other by (imaginary or actual) walls, while all of the interior of a given room is regarded as the same place.

Suppose we want to blur the boundaries between rooms, in an environment where there are no walls: out of doors, for instance?

The simplest cases involve making something exceptional visible in more than one place. Carnivale features an exceptionally large landmark seen by day; Eddystone an exceptionally bright one by night. Waterworld allows a very distant object (the Sun) to be seen throughout many rooms, but never approached. View of Green Hills gives the player an explicit command for looking through into an adjacent room.

Three systematic examples then present outdoor landscapes with increasing sophistication. Tiny Garden gives the multiple rooms of an extended lawn descriptions which automatically adapt to say which directions lead into further lawn area. Rock Garden provides a relation, "connected with", between rooms, allowing items in one to be seen from the other: an attempt to interact with a visible item in a different area of the garden triggers an implicit going action first. Stately Gardens provides a much larger outdoor area, where larger landmarks are visible from further away, and room descriptions are highly adaptive.

In an outdoor environment, the distinction between a one-move journey and a multiple-move journey is also blurred. Hotel Stechelberg shows a signpost which treats these equally.

See Position Within Rooms for making the space within a room continuous

See Windows for another way to see between locations

See Doors, Staircases, and Bridges for still a third way to be told at least what lies adjacent

See Passers-By, Weather and Astronomical Events for more on describing the sky

212
| Example Carnivale An alternative to backdrops when we want something to be visible from a distance but only touchable from one room. |
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213
| Example Eddystone Creating new commands involving the standard compass directions. |
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215
| Example Waterworld A backdrop which the player can examine, but cannot interact with in any other way. |
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80
| Example A View of Green Hills A LOOK [direction] command which allows the player to see descriptions of the nearby landscape. |
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62
| Example Tiny Garden A lawn made up of several rooms, with part of the description written automatically. |
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352
| Example Rock Garden A simple open landscape where the player can see between rooms and will automatically move to touch things in distant rooms. |
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353
| Example Stately Gardens An open landscape where the player can see landmarks in nearby areas, with somewhat more complex room descriptions than the previous example, and in which we also account for size differences between things seen at a distance. |
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79
| Example Hotel Stechelberg Signposts such as those provided on hiking paths in the Swiss Alps, which show the correct direction and hiking time to all other locations. |
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The following rule appends a paragraph to every room description. We need not worry about doors (despite the pass in the Bernese Oberland known figuratively as the "Little Door"). "Hotel Stechelberg" After looking: say "Yellow arms on the signpost point:-[line break]"; repeat with destination running through interesting rooms: let the way be the best route from the location to the destination; if the way is a direction, say " [way] for [the destination]: [number of moves from the location to the destination] Std." Hotel Stechelberg is a room. "The wooden hiking inn at the end of the road, with flowerboxes, canton flags, outdoor tables and a triangular paddock for the cows contesting the annual Miss Stechelberg competition. Otto and Marianne do cheerful innkeeper things, while the sun blazes from a gentian-blue sky." A room can be dull or interesting. A room is usually dull. North of Hotel Stechelberg is Trummelbachfalle. North of Trummelbachfalle is Lauterbrunnen. Lauterbrunnen is interesting. Southeast of Hotel Stechelberg is Trachsellauenen. Trachsellauenen is interesting. Test me with "look". With a bit more work, the result might be: Hotel Stechelberg The wooden hiking inn at the end of the road, with flowerboxes, canton flags, outdoor tables and a triangular paddock for the cows contesting the annual Miss Stechelberg competition. Otto and Marianne do cheerful innkeeper things, while the sun blazes from a gentian-blue sky. Yellow arms on the signpost point:- north for Lauterbrunnen: 2 Std. west for Sefinental: 2 Std. west for Schilthorn: 6 Std. southeast for Trachsellauenen: 1 Std. southeast for Oberhornsee: 3 Std.

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