The Zork Library Forum

I think I'll download that myself...I've wanted to try writing one of those for a while.

One question, though:
At the beginning of the game, it usually starts with an introduction of some sort rather than taking you immediately to the first room. Same thing with the end of the game, and if, perhaps, you wanted to put such a scene in the middle (a cutscene of another character or a commercial for Frobozz Magic Boats just when the player is most anxious to see what happens when they put the final orb on the pedestal?).

How might one go about that?

It's very easy to put an introduction at the beginning of the game.  Near the bottom of the sample code is an "Initialize" routine which includes a print statement.  You can print as long an introduction as you want right there in the print statement.  Remember to keep everything within the quotes and use a '^' for line feeds.

After the print statement is completed the the game's banner will print and the game 'officially' begins.  

However, if you want to get a little fancier than that and have an interactive introduction,  include the line "return 2;" after the print statement.  That will supress the banner until you specifically call it.  When it's time, call the banner with
banner(); PlayerTo(room1); rtrue;

You can perform cut-scenes at any time.  You just write a routine that contains the scene and call it when the appropriate conditions are met.  But we haven't gotten into routines yet in our little tutorial.

Does this help?

Yep.
I think I'll test the things you showed us in a short game, which I just might try and figure out how to post here.