[Apologies: This is an Inform 7 question, and might need moving to the “Inform 6 and 7 Development” forum]
I’m experimenting with Inform 7 and as an example of something I wish to do, let’s assume I want to have 2 rooms, with ten posters in each room and allow the user to read every poster.
First hurdle: I don’t want the posters to be listed in full when they enter the room (“There is also a first poster, a second poster, …”) so I’ve described them as scenery for now and just incorporated a description in the room’s description. Is this the best way to do this? What if I wanted them to be ten chests that can be opened, with a piece of paper in each one? How do I make it so that the user can open every chest (say, OPEN FIRST CHEST, OPEN SECOND CHEST) etc but still prevent the complete descriptions from appearing in the room description?
Second hurdle: I’d like to have one collection (of posters, or chests say) in the first room and another collection in the second room, but still allow the user to type “READ FIRST POSTER” or “OPEN FIRST CHEST” in each room independently. How do I get around the Inform contradiction of naming two objects the same name? What if there are pieces of paper in every chest and the user collects them all? How could they differentiate between all 20 pieces of paper in their inventory if they were to read them later?
Thanks in advance