So, what's the workaround? By flags, I presume you mean booleans in Adventuron parlance. One boolean per object to indicate open or closed? Another one to indicate locked or unlocked? What happens when I open a container? How do I indicate what's inside? How do I put things in a container? Not easy with two-word input. How do I hide objects in the vontainer when it's closed again?
If I start with an object in a container, I've noticed that an is_carried test on the hidden object returns true. That caused an action to pass when it should have failed because the object had never been revealed. Is there a test for immediate children of the player without testing for grand-children?
The container issue is the only thing that's preventing me completing the coding. I think.