Index: Incorporating changeable objects into the body of the room description
Description: A simple way to allow objects in certain places to be described in the room description body text rather than in paragraphs following the room description.
There are times when, for greater elegance of prose, we'd like to mention an object in the main body text of a room. For instance:
Here is a lovely, secluded fold in the mountains, far from civilization: as though to prove it, Rip Van Winkle is sleeping under a tree.
As we've already seen, that's no problem if Rip is scenery. He'll stay there motionless.
But what if something in the game allows Rip to wake up? Or what if we want to use the same technique on a portable object that the player should be allowed to take? Clearly in that case it's not appropriate to make the mentioned thing be scenery, and at the same time, we need to keep Inform from adding a superfluous
The Catskills is a room. "Here is a lovely, secluded fold in the mountains, far from civilization[if Rip Van Winkle is asleep]: as though to prove it, Rip Van Winkle is sleeping under a tree[end if]."