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§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 full descriptions of rooms he enters more than once, but may type BRIEF in order to see shorter descriptions, and SUPERBRIEF tells the story never to print room descriptions at all. VERBOSE restores the default behavior.

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

Use brief room descriptions.

changes the default behavior so that rooms are not always described fully to the player. Verbosity demonstrates how this works.

The player always has 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


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*ExampleVerbosity 1
Making rooms give brief room descriptions when revisited.

*ExampleVerbosity 2
Making rooms give full descriptions each time we enter, even if we have visited before, and disallowing player use of BRIEF and SUPERBRIEF.