[I7] changing map time-travel related

Toying (or more honestly, fooling) around the basic concept of first things first (that is, same place, different timeframe) I stumbled in the lack of an elegant solution for maps & description.

The ideal one should be encapsulated every timeframe in a different scene, but I can’t figure how to handle in an elegant manner how the description of things, rooms &c. aside a bunch of [if] e.g. in a very generic manner:

the description is a [if future] dilapidated corridor

whose is, objectively, a rather unwieldly and hard-to-mantain coding.

Someone has better ideas/suggestions ?

(hope to have explained clearly the problem)

Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.

In Color the Truth, I had the same offices as viewed by 5 different people. I found it easiest to copy and past the entire piece of code for each person, creating new rooms, and altering the names and descriptions for each person. It was just too hard to keep track of everything in variable room descriptions.

Indeed is hard, but I balk a little about wasting objects having multiple logical objects for one “physical” object (in your case, five Lobby room objects. Because I’m only toying/fooling on the concept, I can happily have, say, LobbyPast and LobbyPresent. Thanks for the suggestion.

and, no, I’m not 100% convinced about the applicability of Aaron Reed’s Dynamic Rooms. My idea is using scenes and having the description/availability dependant on the scene. but I have difficulties in handling passing arbitrarily from a timeframe to another (as in First things first)

Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.

I would probably try something along these lines:

A period is a kind of value. The periods are past, present and future. The current period is initially present.

Every thing has a text called the future description. Every thing has a text called the present description. Every thing has a text called the past description.

To decide what text is the current description of (T - a thing):
	if the current period is:
		-- past: decide on the past description of T;
		-- present: decide on the present description of T;
		-- future: decide on the future description of T.
		
The description of a thing is usually "[The current description of the item described]"

If you really need a lot of flexibility, you could do replace the rule that shows the description with a rule calling an activity similar to the printing the name activity.

You could then write:

[code]A period is a kind of value. The periods are past, present and future. The current period is initially present.

The foo is a thing. The description is “This is a foo.”.

For printing the description of the foo when the current period is past:
say “This was a foo.”.

For printing the description of the foo when the current period is future:
say “This will be a foo.”.[/code](You could use some properties to automate it, like jrb did.)

The example “Ant-Sensitive Sunglasses” shows how to do that. You can also take a look at “Crusoe” and “Aftershock” for more example on how to modify descriptions with activities.

thanks for both of you ! a mix of both your solutions is what is needed.

Remain to be seen if a " if the current scene is... " can do the trick, but it’s my turn, after all.

(perhaps ch.10 of the WI ought to be clarified and expanded ? i’m not sure of having clear if the scene can handle non-linear-vector time, hence this toying/fooling around)

Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.