Hover

Example 29

★★★

Letting the player see a modified room description when he's viewing the place from inside a vehicle.

Suppose we want the player to see a modified room description when he's viewing the place from inside a vehicle. There are several conceivable ways of doing this; the example here shows a rather advanced way, but is very flexible and will let us write all sorts of special cases.

Play/modify in Borogove

Play in Quixe

"Hover"

Use full-length room descriptions.

Emerald City is a room. "All the buildings are spires and none of them have doors." The Vast Desert is west of Emerald City. "[if the player is in a vehicle]Outside, a[otherwise]A[end if] trackless waste stretches as far as the eye can see in every direction."

The hover-bubble is a vehicle in the Emerald City. "Your hover-bubble awaits." The description is "The hover-bubble is a clear globe-shaped vehicle capable of transporting you anywhere you could walk, but faster." Understand "bubble" as the hover-bubble. The hover-bubble contains a chocolate wrapper and a parking ticket.

Here's the tricky part, which relies on material from the chapters on Activities and Rulebooks:

The container interior rule is listed before the room description body text rule in the carry out looking rules.
 
This is the container interior rule:
   if the actor is the player and the player is in an enterable thing (called current cage), carry out the describing the interior activity with the current cage.
 
Describing the interior of something is an activity.

Now we've done that, we can write a "rule for describing the interior" of something, which will print whatever we like:

Rule for describing the interior of the hover-bubble:
   say "The hover-bubble is transparent, but tints everything outside very faintly lavender."

In fact, as a special refinement, we could even say:

Rule for describing the interior of the hover-bubble when the hover-bubble contains more than one thing:
   say "The hover-bubble is transparent, but tints everything outside very faintly lavender. Beside you you can see [a list of other things in the hover-bubble]."
 
Definition: a thing is other if it is not the player.
 
Rule for listing nondescript items of the hover-bubble when the player is in the hover-bubble: do nothing.
 
Test me with "get in bubble / look / west / take all / look / get out / east".

Test me with "get in bubble / look / west / take all / look / get out / east".

Emerald City
All the buildings are spires and none of them have doors.

Your hover-bubble awaits.

>(Testing.)

>[1] get in bubble
You get into the hover-bubble.

>[2] look
Emerald City (in the hover-bubble)
The hover-bubble is transparent, but tints everything outside very faintly lavender. Beside you you can see a chocolate wrapper and a parking ticket.

All the buildings are spires and none of them have doors.

>[3] west

Vast Desert (in the hover-bubble)
The hover-bubble is transparent, but tints everything outside very faintly lavender. Beside you you can see a chocolate wrapper and a parking ticket.

Outside, a trackless waste stretches as far as the eye can see in every direction.

>[4] take all
chocolate wrapper: Taken.
parking ticket: Taken.

>[5] look
Vast Desert (in the hover-bubble)
The hover-bubble is transparent, but tints everything outside very faintly lavender.

Outside, a trackless waste stretches as far as the eye can see in every direction.

>[6] get out
You get out of the hover-bubble.

Vast Desert
A trackless waste stretches as far as the eye can see in every direction.

Your hover-bubble awaits.

>[7] east

Emerald City
All the buildings are spires and none of them have doors.

And now anything that's beside us in the vehicle will be described during that first paragraph, rather than later on.