§3.6. Windows
Calvin Coolidge once described windows as "rectangles of glass." For us, they have two purposes: first, they offer a view of landscape beyond. In the simplest case the view is of an area which will not be interacted with in play, and therefore does not need to adapt to whatever may have changed there:
The window is scenery in the Turret. "Through the window you see miles and miles of unbroken forest, turning from green to flame in the hard early autumn."
More interesting is to adapt the view a little to provide a changing picture: a forest may not change much, but a street scene will. Port Royal 4 allows us to glimpse random passers-by.
The trickiest kind of window allows the player to see another room which can also be encountered in play, and to interact with what is there. Dinner is Served presents a shop window, allowing people to see inside from the street, and even to reach through.
Vitrine handles the complication of a window misting up to become opaque, and thus temporarily hiding its view.
Second, windows provide openings in walls and can act as conduits. Escape shows how a "door" in the Inform sense can become a window. A Haughty Spirit provides a general kind of window for jumping down out of: ideal for escapers from Colditz-like castles.
See Doors, Staircases, and Bridges for a door which can be partially seen through
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Our protagonist is imprisoned in Port Royal, waiting out his years, and sometimes through the window of his cell he is able to see someone. We are, however, obsessive about historical accuracy, so we provide a table of people who really lived in the city, together with the year in which their existence is attested. We want these people to appear in the description only in the year when they are known to have been present. (After all, mortality was high in Port Royal and new people were constantly arriving, so someone's presence one year is no guarantee of their continued existence the next.)
It is possible to look up a row corresponding to, say, a specific year value using "listed in", but repeat through is convenient here because we know that we will never wind up trying to print entries when no row can be successfully selected.
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Our protagonist is imprisoned in Port Royal, waiting out his years, and sometimes through the window of his cell he is able to see someone. We are, however, obsessive about historical accuracy, so we provide a table of people who really lived in the city, together with the year in which their existence is attested. We want these people to appear in the description only in the year when they are known to have been present. (After all, mortality was high in Port Royal and new people were constantly arriving, so someone's presence one year is no guarantee of their continued existence the next.)
It is possible to look up a row corresponding to, say, a specific year value using "listed in", but repeat through is convenient here because we know that we will never wind up trying to print entries when no row can be successfully selected.
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