Composite room descriptions

[Jamieson Norrish]

What methods have people come up with to produce the effect of seeing
beyond the room in which the character is? The following method seems
to me to be quite a good way, although certainly with a few
difficulties involved.

First, the description for each room is written so that it describes
only that particular location, and nothing outside it. Then, each room
description is assigned a radius, producing an area around the room
which overlaps other rooms. Every room which falls within this area is
automatically given the description of the rooms under whose "area of
effect" it falls. In this way, descriptions could be put together by
the computer, with appropriate comments as to the direction of each
description. The result would be an environment in which seeing
distant rooms is possible, and more flexible than simply writing the
view into each separate room description. As the character moves,
certain locations will "drop off the end", while other locations are
added, giving an effect of continuous movement.

For example, if the light becomes dim, it would be easy enough to
change all the radii to a smaller value, thus limiting how much of
other areas could be seen.

One problem is walls, given that they will quite often be straight. In
this case, it should be possible to limit the spread of descriptions
to a single direction.

Any thoughts?

Jamie