look directions

[troglodyte111]

Just curious: When are the look directions useful? It seems the player can then only look in that direction, but where do I specify what the player then sees?

I could have an object aliased as "north" as a scenery to a better effect. Then at least I get to decide what the player sees.

[euclidaeun]

You have to go to the attributes tab of Look:north, find and edit the look attribute

For exits, you have manually add in the "look" attribute and type the description

I have never used look north south east west in my games, my idea is similar to yours, I would create a watchtower, then player would click "look at", which then it reads, "At the north is the witch tower hiding in the mists of forests, at the east is sun capital of lordor, at the north-east is a dampening sky riddled with lightning."

This way, you get multiple look directions with one script and one player click.

p.s. Since I have been practicing better english, changing the default "look at" to "look from" might be a better choice.

[troglodyte111]

Ah. I'm on the web editor and there is no attributes tab there. But thanks!

[KVonGit]

To add to that...

When we enter LOOK NORTH (or any other direction), it runs the lookdir command's script:

  <command name="lookdir" pattern="[lookdir]">
   <![CDATA[
    if (HasScript(exit, "look")) {
        do (exit, "look")
    }
    else {
      message = DynamicTemplate("YouLooking",exit.alias)
      if (HasString(exit, "look")){
        if (exit.look <> "") {
          message = exit.look
        }
      }
      if (exit.locked) {
        if (HasString(exit,"lockmessage")) {
          lockmessage = exit.lockmessage
        }
        else {
          lockmessage = Template("LockedExit")
        }
        msg (message+" "+lockmessage)
      } 
      else {
        msg (message)
      }
    }
   ]]>
  </command>

---

As euclidaeun says, we have to manually add a look attribute to an exit for this to do anything special.

By default, it uses the YouLooking dynamic template for the response, which (when creating an English game) simply prints: "You are looking north."

I'm not sure what the intention was, but this seems confusing to me, as if this causes the player object to actually turn towards the north. (;

Anyway... Using the Windows app (online creators can skip down a few screenshots to the "FOR ONLINE USERS" bit), things are relatively easy. Following euclidaeun's advice, we simply create our exit, then add a look attribute to that exit using the Attributes tab. Here, I have added a look string attribute to my north exit:

---

Alternatively, we could easily make that a script attribute:

---

Either of those will leave us with a working NORTH exit, which we can also look at:

You are in a room.
You can go north.

> look north
It looks like a safe path to take.

> n

You are in a room2.
You can go south.

---

FOR ONLINE USERS

We can't do it that way when creating games online, though. There is no Attributes tab.

Also noteworthy, Quest does not require a name when creating an exit, so the name field is left blank.

---

When the game loads, any unnamed exits will be named "exit1", "exit2", "exit2", all the way through.

This makes things a little more tedious when creating online, but the problem is not insurmountable.

First, we give our exit a name. I usually use [roomname]_[direction]_[target_room_name]. So, the exit north from room to room2 would be named room_north_room2. This is just the way I do it, to keep track of things easily.

---

Then, to create a string attribute, add this to the game object's start script:

room_north_room2.look = "It looks like a safe path to take."

---

To add a script attribute instead, it would be like:

room_north_room2.look => {
  msg ("It looks like a safe path to take.")
}

[KVonGit]

Note

If the exit has a lockmessage set and the exit is locked, things get more complicated. If the look attribute is a script, then that runs, and that's that. But... if the look attribute is a string and the exit is locked and the exit has a lockmessage string (to print a message when the exit is locked), then Quest will print the look string followed directly by the lockmessage string (separated by one space).

[euclidaeun]

Ahhhhh.... No wonder some questioners couldn't follow my instructions in the past.
I was and still is trying so hard to direct users to the attributes tab, but it turns out online quest don't even have attributes tab.

Who would have thought, lol.

[troglodyte111]

Thanks KV, always helpful! It is probably not worth it in my game, and having everything in the game start script makes for poor modularity.