Adding an object with a selectable verb but not show 'You can see...'

[WingsOfArcadia]

I want to add a Room object that a player can select an option from to trigger an event. It's not a scenery item and shouldn't be included in the room description as it comes up with "You can see Wait" which is not ideal, but if I unselect those options it doesn't appear in the list of items in the room in the pane.

I also do not want this to be on a timer, never liked them, and it prevents you from taking your time to read the text on the screen at your own pace.

Also I'm guessing turning off the "You can see" is not easy, but is editing it so it just says "You can" instead of "You can see" might be better as it would read "You can Wait".

So what can I do please?

[KVonGit]

Hello,

When we make an item scenery, that tells Quest to omit it from the room description that prints automatically and to omit it from the 'Places and Objects' pane ¹. The player can still interact with scenery, but it is not listed in the "You can see..." bit or displayed in the panes.

However, we can easily:

• create our item, but not actually inside of the room (it can be on the game object, which is the same as "out of play")
• add an "After entering" script on the room to move the item to the room, which will happen after the room description prints the "You can see..." bit but will still make the item appear in the 'Places and Objects' pane
• be sure to add an 'After leaving the room' script to move the item back out of the room so it all works every time the player enters the room

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Example game:

<!--Saved by Quest 5.9.9166.36226-->
<asl version="580">
  <include ref="English.aslx" />
  <include ref="Core.aslx" />
  <game name="Only a Test">
    <gameid>a21a0523-72d3-40c8-b249-9d28d7eeaa2f</gameid>
    <version>0.1 beta</version>
    <firstpublished>2025</firstpublished>
    <author>KV</author>
    <object name="frob">
      <inherit name="editor_object" />
    </object>
  </game>
  <object name="room">
    <inherit name="editor_room" />
    <enter type="script">
      MoveObjectHere (frob)
    </enter>
    <onexit type="script">
      frob.parent = null
    </onexit>
    <object name="player">
      <inherit name="editor_object" />
      <inherit name="editor_player" />
    </object>
  </object>
</asl>

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You can open the .aslx file from this zip archive in the Quest editor, if you'd like: example.zip

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Alternatively

We can also easily customize how the automatic room descriptions work, or turn them completely off if we wish. (Things get a bit tedious with no automatic room descriptions, but we have full control that way.)

Footnotes

1. Anything held will show up in the Inventory pane, whether or not it is set as scenery. ↩

[KVonGit]

Ah, I over-complicate things sometimes =)

No need to move it around. Just start it off as scenery, then change that in the room's scripts.

[WingsOfArcadia]

Yeah, that's so simple. Same could be done with the visibility attribute too.