if I examine an object and its in the room I get a message telling me about the object. however I want to examine the object only if the player is holding [carrying] it.
I’ve tried several attempts but errors every time, how is this done and why isn’t this a standard rule?
I’m a little late to this discussion, but it occurs to me that there’s a possible middle ground to this - you could make a distinction between examining something and examining something in the inventory. It might look like this:
[code]
A thing has some text called the closeup-description. Instead of examining something when the player encloses the noun: Say the closeup-description of the noun.
The Suspicious Notebook is a thing in Speakeasy. The description is “It’s just a notebook. Nothing suspicious about it… at least from this distance.”. The closeup-description is “Mon Dieu! The notebook contains every horse race result for the next ten years!”.
test me with x notebook/take notebook/x notebook[/code]
Another option is varying the text in the description:
The description of the grain of rice is "It seems to be a normal grain of rice.[if grain of rice is carried by the player][line break]As you bring the rice closer to your eyes, you notice it has the entire Encyclopaedia Frobozzica written on it in teeeeeeeny tiny lettering![end if]"
You could also make a distinction between items you want examinable and not.
[code]A thing can be unregardable.
Check examining an unregardable thing:
if the noun is not carried:
say “Without close scrutiny, it looks like every other [noun].” instead.
a book is in the room. It is unregardable. The description is “You open the book, since you’ve wisely chosen to pick it up, and learn a new spell!”[/code]