Adventure game in a forest

I've started writing a game and I need help, because I know there are many ways to improve what I am doing. I am doing it the basic way I know I can but I know there is more complex ways of doing it.

```
import time
print"Created on 3/12/2013"
print"ver 1.2"
print"Created by: Daniel Vargas"
print'At any point type "help" for commands'
print"===== Hello ====="
print"Welcome to ZOTD3000!"
time.sleep(2)
print("To find your fate")
### This is the first Fate ###
while True:
fate = raw_input('Write A, B, or C:\n')
if fate == 'A':
print"You have selected choice A"
time.sleep(2)
break
elif fate == 'help':
print"You can only type A, B, or C."
else:
print"You can only type A, B, or C."
time.sleep(2)
### Here is the first decision ###
### From Fate A ###
def Forest(Health,Hunger,Inventory):
print'You wake up in the middle of the forest'
Inventory = 'Inventory: '
Squirrel = 'Squirrel'
while True:
Choice1 = raw_input('You...\n')
if Choice1 in ('Life', 'life'):
print('Health: '+str(Health))
print('Hunger: '+str(Hunger))
elif Choice1 in ('Look', 'look'):
print 'You see many trees, and what looks like an edible dead Squirrel, \na waterfall to the north and a village to the south.'
elif Choice1 in ('Pickup', 'pickup'):
p1 = raw_input('Pickup what?\n')
if p1 == Squirrel:
if Inventory == 'Inventory: ':
print'You picked up a Squirrel!'
Inventory = Inventory + Squirrel + ', '
elif Inventory == 'Inventory: Squirrel, ':
print'You already picked that up!'
else:
print"You can't find a "+str(p1)+"."
elif Choice1 in ('Inventory', 'inventory'):
print Inventory
elif Choice1 in ('Eat', 'eat'):
print Inventory

The existing code is not easy to maintain. If you want to add new places or new actions you will have to write a lot of very specific and deeply nested code.

I've never written a game like this, but it's a good case for modelling with classes. You have a Place, which has a set of neighbours which are also Places. You have a Player who has an inventory which contains Items. The Player has a level of health and hunger which can be modified by Items in his inventory. An Item can be a medicine, a source of food, a physical object, etc.

To illustrate one aspect of this, I would consider something like:

class Place(object):
    def __init__(self, name):
        self.name = name
        self.neighbours = {"North": None,
                           "South" : None
                           "East" : None
                           "West" : None}

    def add_neighbour(self, direction, neighbour):
        self.neighbours[direction] = neighbour

    def leave(self):
        # this is maybe one way to handle movement
        # if the player stores a reference to their location
        # but by no means the only way or the best way

        # get direction from user
        return self.neighbours[direction]

Which will allow you to set up your world separately like:

Waterfall = Place("Waterfall")
Forest = Place("Forest")
Waterfall.add_neighbour("South", Forest)

Your character could look something like (as a starting point)

class Character(object):
    def __init__(self, name, initial_location=None):
        self.name = name
        self.inventory = []
        self.location = initial_location
        self.health = 100
        self.hunger = 0

There are ways to make the direction choices robust, for example making sure that a's southern neighbour is b's northern neighbour and so on, but hopefully this gives you a general sense of what I am talking about. Eventually you will get a feel for what the entities in your code are and what they do and how they interact.

StackExchange Code Review Q#23808, answer score: 4