hello,

i've an absolute beginner and i'm trying to create a zork like text based game to learn. I have 2 questions, the first is that when I add 2 items to the list "inventory" it displays them like this:

flask, knife

flask, knife

so it displays them twice and i'm not sure why, also, i'd like it to just display them each on a different line such as

flask

knife

secondly, i'm sure what I have done so far is a really bad an inefficient way of doing it, are there any tips or ideas I could use to write it better and re-use certain code for the commands etc before I go further? thanks a lot

import os, random, time

global name
name = "unknown"
inventory = []

def displayinventory():
    print("\nInventory:")
    for i in inventory:
        print(inventory)

def introduction():
    global name
    print("banner")
    print("do intro text")
    name = str(input("Your name:"))

def easternfields():
    here = 1
    knifetaken = 0
    print("\nEastern Fields")
    print("\nDescription")
    while here == 1:
        command = str(input("> "))
        command.lower()
        lowcommand = command.lower()
        if lowcommand == "inv":
            displayinventory()
        elif lowcommand == "look":
            print("\nYou look around the eastern fields")
        elif lowcommand == "take knife" and knifetaken != 1:
            print("\nknife taken.")
            knifetaken = 1
            inventory.append('knife')
            lowcommand = ""
        elif lowcommand == "take knife" and knifetaken == 1:
            print("knife already taken")
        elif lowcommand == "drop":
            whichitem = str(input("item: "))
            if whichitem in inventory:
                inventory.remove(whichitem)
        else:
            print("\nCommand not recognised")


def southernfields():
    here = 1
    flasktaken = 0
    print("\nSouthern Fields")
    print("\nDescription")
    while here == 1:
        command = str(input("> "))
        command.lower()
        lowcommand = command.lower()
        if lowcommand == "inv":
            displayinventory()
        elif lowcommand == "look":
            print("\nYou look around the southern fields")
        elif lowcommand == "take flask" and flasktaken != 1:
            print("\nflask taken.")
            flasktaken = 1
            inventory.append('flask')
            lowcommand = ""
        elif lowcommand == "take flask" and flasktaken == 1:
            print("flask already taken")
        elif lowcommand == "drop":
            whichitem = str(input("item: "))
            if whichitem in inventory:
                inventory.remove(whichitem)
        elif lowcommand == "go east":
            here = 0
            easternfields()
        else:
            print("\nCommand not recognised")


southernfields()

thanks alot for your help and suggestions guys,

I did indeed fix the inventory listing problem by printing i instead of inventory

for i in inventory:
        print(i)

I also took up the suggestion of adding an item list for each area, allowing the user to drop items and return to them with this code for example:

southernfieldsitems = ['flask', 'shoe']

elif lowcommand == "look":
            print("\nYou look around the southern fields")
            print("\navailable items: ")
            for i in southernfieldsitems:
                print(i)

elif lowcommand == "take":
            takewhat = str(input("item: "))
            takewhatlow = takewhat.lower()
            if takewhatlow in southernfieldsitems:
                inventory.append(takewhatlow)
                southernfieldsitems.remove(takewhatlow)
            else:
                print("There is no item of that sort here")
        elif lowcommand == "drop":
            whichitem = str(input("item: "))
            if whichitem in inventory:
                inventory.remove(whichitem)
                southernfieldsitems.append(whichitem)
        elif lowcommand == "go east":
            here = 0
            easternfields()

I thought about creating a function that waits for the commands but i'm not quite sure how i'd do it because some commands will depend on whats in the area, plus I intend to add things like NPCs etc later on and combat. I suppose I wouldn't know how to pass all the relevant information back and forth between a command function and the area function so it knows what's going on.

also you'll notice i've been using 2 variables for the "take" and "drop" command, after you type either it asks you to type which item, that is because I don't know how to check the second word in a string variable so that instead the user could simply type "take flask" all in one line, then I check the second word against the areas item list. Is there an easy way to do that?

thanks again :)

Something like this should help.

splitCommand = lowcommand.split()
if splitCommand[0] == 'take':
    takewhat = splitCommand[1]

The split method of strings returns a list of what was in the string separated by whitespace like spaces. So 'take flask' would return ['take', 'flask'].

Something like this should help.

splitCommand = lowcommand.split()
if splitCommand[0] == 'take':
    takewhat = splitCommand[1]

The split method of strings returns a list of what was in the string separated by whitespace like spaces. So 'take flask' would return ['take', 'flask'].

yep, works perfect thank you