Blankness

Example 387

★

Emptying the status line during the first screen of the game.

Occasionally we want to print something as our first screen and then pause the game. By default, Inform will print a rather odd status line, with "You" on the left side and "0" on the right. This is because the left hand status line is set to display the location, but (because we're not done with the when-play-begins rules) the player has not yet even been moved to a room.

We can tidy this up in the "starting the virtual machine" activity, by temporarily changing the status line content. We will not provide game-pausing code here, because that is easily done by extension; so:

Play/modify in Borogove

Play in Quixe

"Blankness"

Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.

When play begins:

say "take me home";

wait for any key;

say " yeah";

wait for any key;

say " yeah";

pause the game;

now the left hand status line is "[location]";

now the right hand status line is "[turn count]".

Before starting the virtual machine:

now the left hand status line is "";

now the right hand status line is "".

Paradise City is a room. The description of Paradise City is "The grass is green and the girls are pretty."

Quite a modest effect, but occasionally useful.