Dynamic Descriptions — Syntax

Strings — { }

Values to be displayed are wrapped in curly brackets. For example, to embed the current in-game hour in a room description:

It is {time.hour} o'clock.

Numbers and calculations — [ ]

Arithmetic expressions are wrapped in square brackets. The result of a calculation is not printed automatically; it is stored in {result} and must be included in the text explicitly:

[{gold}/1000]{result}Kgp

This prints the observer’s gold expressed as thousands of gold pieces.

Conditionals

When a comparison operator appears inside [ ], the expression becomes a conditional. The text that immediately follows is shown only when the condition is true, and each conditional block must be closed with a pipe character |.

Example — a skylight that shows sunlight by day and moonlight at night:

#DYou are in Someone's office where
[(({time.hour}>5)&&({time.hour}<20))] sunlight |
[{time.hour}<6] moonlight |
[{time.hour}>19] moonlight |
streams through a skylight.

The same logic using the named day/night variables:

#DYou are in Someone's office where
[{time.day}] sunlight |
[{time.day} == {false}] moonlight |
streams through a skylight.

Because the parser has no implicit operator precedence, parentheses must be used explicitly to group subexpressions:

[ ( ( {time.hour} > 5 ) && ( {time.hour} < 20 ) ) ] sunlight |

Escaping special characters

Prefix any character with a backslash \ to print it literally. This allows [ ], { }, and ( ) to appear in output without being interpreted as DD syntax.

Worked example

Using the skylight conditional above, the MCF room long-description section would be:

#DYou are in Someone's office where
[(({time.hour}>5)&&({time.hour}<20))] sunlight |
[{time.hour}<6] moonlight |
[{time.hour}>19] moonlight |
streams through a skylight.

During the day (hours 6–19), looking at the room shows:

Someone's Office
[Exits: north ]
You are in Someone's office where sunlight streams through a skylight.

At night:

Someone's Office
[Exits: north ]
You are in Someone's office where moonlight streams through a skylight.

See the Example Descriptions page for nine annotated examples drawn from actual Continents areas.