§3.7. Lighting
At any place (room, or inside a container) light is either fully present or fully absent. Inform does not usually try to track intermediate states of lighting, but see The Undertomb 2 for a single lantern with varying light levels and Zorn of Zorna for multiple candles that can be lit for cumulative changes to the light level.
Light can be added to, but not taken away: rooms and things can act as sources of light, by having the "lighted" and "lit" properties respectively, but they cannot be sinks which drain light away. The reason darkness is not a constant hazard in Inform-written games is that rooms always have the "lighted" property unless declared "dark". (We assume daylight or some always-on electric lighting.) A "dark" room may well still be illuminated if a light source happens to be present:
The Deep Crypt is a dark room. The candle lantern is a lit thing in the Deep Crypt.
Hymenaeus allows us to explicitly refer to torches as "lit" or "unlit", or (as synonyms) "flaming" or "extinguished".
For light produced electrically we might want a wall switch, as in Down Below, or a portable lamp, as in The Dark Ages Revisited.
The fierce, locally confined light thrown out by a carried lamp has a quality quite unlike weak but ambient daylight, and Reflections exploits this to make a lantern feel more realistic.
When the player experiences darkness in a location, Inform is usually very guarded in what it reveals. ("It is pitch dark, and you can't see a thing.") Hohmann Transfer gives darkness a quite different look, and Four Stars heightens the other senses so that a player in darkness can still detect her surroundings. The first of the two examples in Peeled allows exploration of a dark place by touch.
It is sometimes useful to check whether a room that is not the current location happens to contain a light source or be naturally lighted. This poses a few challenges. Unblinking demonstrates one way of doing this, so long as there are no backdrop light sources.
Cloak of Darkness is a short and sweet game based on a light puzzle.
See Room Descriptions for an item that can only be seen in bright light, when an extra lamp is switched on
See Looking Under and Hiding for a looking under action which is helped by the fiercer brightness of a light source
See Going, Pushing Things in Directions for making it hazardous to walk around in the dark
See Electricity and Magnetism for batteries to power a torch or flashlight
See Fire for a non-electrical way to produce light
| ExampleHymenaeus Understanding "flaming torch" and "extinguished torch" to refer to torches when lit and unlit.
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"Reflections"
Behind the Waterfall is a room. "Though one wall of the cave is open to the waterfall, the quantity of water is so great that barely any light comes through from the outside." Behind the Waterfall is dark.
Surface is a kind of value. The surfaces are shiny and dull. A thing has a surface. A thing is usually dull.
The player carries a reflecting ball, a canopic jar, an abacus, a plumbline, a piece of chalk, and a torch. The reflecting ball is shiny.
Aladdin's lamp is a shiny thing in Behind the Waterfall.
Brightness is a kind of value. The brightnesses are guttering, weak, radiant and blazing. The torch has a brightness. The torch is blazing. The torch is lit.
Understand "blow out [something]" or "blow [something]" or "extinguish [something]" as blowing out. Blowing out is an action applying to one thing.
Carry out blowing out: say "Futile."
Instead of blowing out the torch:
now brightness of torch is the brightness before the brightness of the torch;
say "The light of the torch dies to [brightness of torch]."
Instead of blowing out the guttering torch:
say "Fool! Do you want to put it out entirely?"
Rule for writing a paragraph about a shiny thing:
say "The [brightness of the torch] light of [the torch] reflects in the surface[if the number of shiny things in the location > 1]s[end if] of [the list of shiny things in the location]."
Before printing the name of the torch while writing a paragraph about something:
if the torch is in the location, say "fallen ".
Test me with "drop ball / look / blow torch / look / drop torch / look".
| ExampleReflections Emphasizing the reflective quality of shiny objects whenever they are described in the presence of the torch.
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"Reflections"
Behind the Waterfall is a room. "Though one wall of the cave is open to the waterfall, the quantity of water is so great that barely any light comes through from the outside." Behind the Waterfall is dark.
Surface is a kind of value. The surfaces are shiny and dull. A thing has a surface. A thing is usually dull.
The player carries a reflecting ball, a canopic jar, an abacus, a plumbline, a piece of chalk, and a torch. The reflecting ball is shiny.
Aladdin's lamp is a shiny thing in Behind the Waterfall.
Brightness is a kind of value. The brightnesses are guttering, weak, radiant and blazing. The torch has a brightness. The torch is blazing. The torch is lit.
Understand "blow out [something]" or "blow [something]" or "extinguish [something]" as blowing out. Blowing out is an action applying to one thing.
Carry out blowing out: say "Futile."
Instead of blowing out the torch:
now brightness of torch is the brightness before the brightness of the torch;
say "The light of the torch dies to [brightness of torch]."
Instead of blowing out the guttering torch:
say "Fool! Do you want to put it out entirely?"
Rule for writing a paragraph about a shiny thing:
say "The [brightness of the torch] light of [the torch] reflects in the surface[if the number of shiny things in the location > 1]s[end if] of [the list of shiny things in the location]."
Before printing the name of the torch while writing a paragraph about something:
if the torch is in the location, say "fallen ".
Test me with "drop ball / look / blow torch / look / drop torch / look".
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| ExamplePeeled Two different approaches to adjusting what the player can interact with, compared.
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