Copying the location of a thing to a variable when it's in something other than a room.

Question

I'm using this to get the place where each object start the game and save to a variable:

A thing have an object called initial position.

When play begins:
    repeat with x running through all things:
        now the initial position of x is the location of x.

Now, take a look at what this does then the thing is in a container, on a supporter, etc...

>showme ball
...
location: in the box in Room 101
...
initial position: Room 101

it only copies only the room, not the entire location. Is there a way to make this work?

Answer 1

You could use "holder" instead of "location":

now the initial position of x is the holder of x.

See §8.17. Looking at containment by hand.

But it will only include the object that is directly holding x, whether that is a container, supporter, or room. It'll be "box," for instance, not "the box in Room 101."

If you want to print the text of the holder and the location, and don't need the variable to be an object, you could do something like this:

When play begins:
    repeat with x running through all things:
        if the holder of x is a room:
            now the start position of x is "[the location of x]";
        otherwise:
            now the start position of x is "[the holder of x] in [the location of x]".

Comments

Thank you, this solved the problem for good.

I needed it to be an object to use it later to reset the positions of all things in the game, like I described in this question: http://ifanswers.com/1113/reset-most-of-the-things-in-the-game-their-initial-conditions but there is no need to store the location of the holder, because the holder is alreay keeping his own location stored.