Room Window
Keep where you are on screen — name, description, what’s on the ground, who’s here, and which way out — so you never lose it to a wall of combat text.
What it’s for
The room scrolls past in your main window and then it’s gone. Three creatures later you can’t
remember whether that was the clearing with the north exit, and you’re typing look again
mid-roundtime to find out.
The room window pins that information in place. It rewrites itself when you move and holds still while you fight, so re-reading the room costs you a glance instead of a command. Every noun in it stays clickable — the boulder, the exits, the person who just walked in.
Set it up
A room window is in your layout already — it’s one of the six windows the default layout ships. If you closed it, click Windows in the top toolbar and tick Room in the catalog.
To choose what it shows, right-click the room window. The widget section holds Sections with four checkboxes: Description, Objects, Players, Exits. Untick one and it disappears from the window as you click — settings apply live, and there is no Save button.
→ Expected result: the room window shows the name in bold, then the sections you left ticked, reflowing as one paragraph. Unticking Description drops the prose and leaves the name, the objects, and your exits.
Common setups
A compact “where am I” strip
You want the exits and who’s here, but the prose is long and you’ve read it. Right-click the room window, and under Sections untick Description. Then drag the window’s bottom edge up until it’s three or four lines tall, and park it above your main text.
You’ll see: the room name, the loose items, the other players, and Obvious exits: in a
block short enough to read without moving your eyes off the fight.
A full room panel you can actually read
Keep all four sections ticked, then right-click ▸ Appearance ▸ Text and raise the text size. Under Appearance ▸ Frame, turn the border off. Widen the window until the description stops wrapping mid-sentence.
You’ll see: a borderless block of room prose at a comfortable reading size, with every noun in it still clickable.
Tips & gotchas
⚠️
show_nameis not the border title, and the GUI ignores it. In the terminal, turning it on adds the room name as a bold line inside the window — useful when you’ve hidden the border and lost the title with it. In the GUI the room name is always drawn as the first line of the content, so the setting has nothing left to do.
⚠️ Objects continue the description’s paragraph in the GUI, by design. “You also see…” runs on from the end of the description rather than starting its own line, matching the Wrayth layout. If you untick Description, the objects become the first line instead.
Clicking a noun does what the server said it should. A link that carries a command sends it. A link that is a plain noun asks the server for its verb menu and shows that menu where you clicked. A URL opens your browser. You get the same three behaviors in the room window as in your main text.
Empty sections take no space. A room with nobody in it doesn’t reserve a blank line for Players, so a window sized to a busy room will look under-filled in an empty one. Size it for the rooms you hunt in.
Room pictures are a VellumFE feature, not a game feed. GemStone declares a sprite slot
on every room change and has never filled it. If you want art in this window, you map images
to room ids yourself — see Inline Images.
See also
- Compass — the exits from this window, as a clickable rose
- Players — a dedicated who’s-here list, if the room window’s line isn’t enough
- Text Windows — the main feed the room would otherwise scroll away in
- Map — where those exits lead
- Build a hunting layout — where the room window sits in a combat screen
Config reference (TOML)
widget_type = "room". Set these through the right-click menu (GUI) or .editwindow (TUI);
this table is for reading a layout file or troubleshooting one.
| Field | Type | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
show_desc | bool | true | Show the room description prose |
show_objs | bool | true | Show loose items and creatures (“You also see…”) |
show_players | bool | true | Show other players (“Also here:”) |
show_exits | bool | true | Show the Obvious exits: line |
show_name | bool | false | TUI only — add the room name as a bold line inside the content. The GUI always renders the name as the first content line and does not read this field. |
buffer_size | integer | 10000 | Lines retained for scrollback |
show_name does not control the border title. That comes from the window’s own title, which
the built-in template sets to "Room".
[[windows]]
name = "room"
widget_type = "room"
title = "Room"
row = 0
col = 0
rows = 10
cols = 80
show_desc = true
show_objs = true
show_players = true
show_exits = true