But is there a reason to do this whole third eye business when you can just illuminate the player themself?
PC comfort? Does being lit burn or sting in any way?
My actual reasoning is that the PC âyourselfâ is an unusual object and I wouldnât want to break anything by making attributes that affect the physical world. If I had a lot of spells in a game, Iâd probably opt to create some kind of magical unknown organ as part of the player and do any spell effects to that.
>EXAMINE ORGAN
[This is not that kind of game.]
Though, historically in ENCHANTER you could FROTZ [anything] including yourself, so my worries are probably unfounded. In my brain I thought of the implementation as âI want it to be like the player is carrying a light source without knowing theyâre carrying a light source.â
>FROTZ MYSELF
[This is not that kind of game.]
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PC comfort? Does being lit burn or sting in any way?
âIf illuminated Stiffy persists for more than three hours, consult your doctor.â
Giving the player object light was a very common trick in the I6 era; it worked fine. I suspect it still works without side effects in I7, but I havenât tested.
Another way to approach this whole situation is now all rooms are lighted. The problem there is taking the spell off â you need to distinguish between rooms that are permanently lighted and those that are lighted only by the spell. You could define properties such that now all non-permalit rooms are dark works, but this might be more confusing than you want to get into.
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Yeah, I can say Iâve never had any issues with making the player be lit. Itâs the easiest way to make darkness just cease to be an issue in I7.
(I thought Iâd avoided Inform-default-darkness completely in Enigma by just not making any rooms âdarkââand then beta-testers realized they could create Inform-default-darkness by shutting themselves in wardrobes, bypassing my whole fake-custom-darkness system. I fixed that by just making the player be lit, which dispels Inform-default-darkness for good.)
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Hey, I think that was me!
This conversation is getting outside my area of expertise, but just wanted to flag that beyond the implementation questions, there are potential game design implications of lighting the player (temporarily) vs. lighting a particular room (temporarily) â so probably worth thinking that question through first!
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Only at the playerâs discretion, but FROTZ ME is the easiest way to deal with all darkness puzzles forever!
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Spoilers for Infocom games: doesnât that lock you out of winning in Sorcerer or maybe Spellbreaker?
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Enchanter actually, thanks to an odd oversight that lets you un-frotz anything except yourself.
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Maintaining undescribed means that the object will never be scored equal to or higher than a described object (which includes the compass directions) during adjudication of ambiguous situations where the name of an object is not specified in the command (usually when âallâ has been specified or the object name omitted entirely, as in âTakeâ).**
However, when the parser is searching for a single unnamed object and there is no alternative to the undescribed object, it can still be selected- for example in response to âDropâ when the undescribed object is the only item carried.*
Carried things are the biggest problem to keep from the player, since by default they canât be concealed, canât be kept out of scope, are stripped of their undescribed status and are always listed in inventory (and, obviously, by definition canât be moved off-stage). This is all by design- the player is considered to be intimately acquainted with anything theyâre directly carrying.
The best strategy if you canât see a good alternative to a carried-but-completely-hidden object (and there probably is a good alternative) is to:
(i) include the Scopability extension by Brady Garvin and use that to set said item as âunscopableâ i.e. definitively removed from scope
(ii) replace the standard âcarry out taking inventoryâ rule to exclude said item from inventory (or to exclude scenery items from inventory and then also make said item portable scenery)
*N.B. âFor deciding whether all includesâ doesnât help here, since âDropâ just searches for a single object anyway and even when âDrop allâ fails for the dropping action, it falls through to the âthrowing it atâ action, which again searches for just a single thing to throw and doesnât invoke âFor deciding whether all includesâ- usually leading to daft responses like â(the third eye at the third eye) Futileâ or âWhat do you want to drop the third eye at?â That grammar could be changed, but the âDropâ issue would still persist.
** N.B.2 Actually, thatâs not strictly true. A lower âDoes the player meanâŚâ ranking will trump the effect of an object being undescribed during adjudication. As will whether or not the object logically corresponds to the grammar token itâs being matched to (something the parser refers to as the object being âgoodâ) e.g. itâs held by the actor for a [something preferably held] token, or itâs a person for a [somebody] token, or in the case of the common [things] token itâs in scope, not undescribed or scenery and not the actor
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I remain convinced that the best solution remain I6âs âradiant adventurerâ, together with starting (or igniting, depend on what side of the Atlantic one is⌠
) an appropriate âexpiring spellâ fuse.
the idea of a timed frotz gives to me the murky idea of a prequel named Apprentice⌠(that is, one whose donât have fully mastered the spellsâŚ), a fascinating premise whose allow low cunning based not on spellâs effect, but on the reversing when spells expireâŚ
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
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I canât believe this hasnât been done yet!
I imagine a farce about powerful spells the player canât quite control completely that get out of hand.
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Hereâs my attempt trying to bring together all of the different suggestions (and some of my own design suggestions):
"Illuminate"
Laboratory is a room. North of the laboratory is the Cave of Darkness.
The Cave of Darkness is dark.
A light orb is a kind of thing. It is always lit. The description of a light orb is "A glowing ball of magical energy.". A light orb has a number called disipation.
In the laboratory are 10 light orbs.
When play begins:
now every light orb is off-stage.
Casting illuminate is an action applying to nothing.
Understand "Cast illuminate" as casting illuminate.
Carry out an actor casting illuminate:
now a random off-stage light orb is in the location of the actor.
Instead of doing something except examining to a light orb:
say "You can't interact with the magical essence.";
This is the light orb rule:
repeat with orb running through on-stage light orbs:
if the disipation of the orb is 5:
now the orb is off-stage;
now the disipation of the orb is 0;
otherwise:
increase the disipation of the orb by 1.
The light orb rule is listed in the every turn rules.
This gets around the possible problems of a lighting a room itself, or the player by creating (or really bringing in an object from ânowhere/off-stageâ) an object, which can only be interacted with through examination. An every turn rule then has each orb (this also allows for multiple orbs to be lighting different rooms) track when it needs to no longer lights up the room and moves it off-stage.
Iâm unsure if it would be better to make a separate thread for this but one thing I did notice while making this is that trying to assert:
In the off-stage/nowhere are 10 light orbs. causes problems, I assume this has to do with some unique way nowhere/off-stage is handled but I would be interested in learning more about why this is if anyone has any insights. But because of that, that is why the orbs are first placed in the lab and then moved off-stage at the beginning of play.
You can just say âthere are ten light orbsâ and that will put them off-stage by default.
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