Following on from my last post I thought Id checkout this problem to see it you guys have tried it.......

Basically player enters room. I flagged the room "! dark" but I tried in both script 1 and 2 to make the room have half light so that ......... I just wanted the code to be triggered by the flag 51=0 (a gas lamp not lit or turned on) and allow the player to get some room info

LOC 6 - discribing dim room
[start]room=6#flag51=0#[acts]cmess In the dim light from the street you can bearly make out a large room.[end]

I would then still want the message that "a gas lamp is here " but I think i'll add that bit into the CMESS which will be better as its either lamp turned off - no light Or lamp turned on - room full of gas - no light at this stage. I then hoped that by turning the gas on and lighting, Id swop the gaslamp for a LIT gaslamp - This I can do and Ive coded that without an issue its just the initial access to the room that tripped my up

Ive tried it a few differing ways but I guess Im to close to the error I'm making

Any advice ?

Gareth

Hi Gareth,

It seems you've found an anomaly in TAB that I was not aware of! Nobody had reported or tried before.
When TAB describes a location which is flagged as DARK in the Location Editor eg: !DARK ROOM - any exits, objects or characters present are not listed which is correct. However before deciding that they are not to be printed TAB is not checking the SCRIPT1 entries as is normal for any other normal location describe...

Sorry for confusion - but thanks for bringing it to light. I can easily rectify this to make it do so.

When I've done it you could easily amend the System Message 78 to read something like:
"It's quite dark in here. You can't see very well."

And then from Script 1 do what you wanted with the dim room thing-

[start]room=6#flag51=0[acts]cmessIn the dim light you can make out an old, unlit gas lamp.[end]

rem: above entry only gets done when room 6 is dark and flag 51 is equal to 0 (signifying the gas lamp in this room is not lit)

A response entry to deal with lighting the lamp should be made and contain a "flag51=1" action to stop the 'dim light and unlit gas lamp' cmess appearing any more and the "lit gaslamp" lightsource object should be made to appear in that room eg. "createX" action or similar object move action - thus now allowing location 6 normal location description to be revealed due to lightsource being present...

Therefore you would only need ONE "lit gas lamp" OBJECT - but would need to ensure it is placed in all rooms where the relevant flag was set to 1 (gas lamp lit by player in dark room)

I think this will be of help to you - what u think?

UPDATE: I tried it out and worked ok.

It's quite dark in here. You can't see very well.
In the dim light you can just make out an old, unlit gas lamp.

catventure.

Hi Gareth,

I have posted a TAB revision update (Alpha 51.1) to the TAB site with the bugfix.

http://tab.thinbasic.com/

Cheers,
Phil.

PS. Don't forget to save your work data somewhere safe before deleting old TAB folder

Gareth, the following exist but I have discovered they are omitted from the "language.txt" file relating to lightsource objects conditions.

objn1lit - is object noun 1 a lightsource?
objn2lit
objn1notlit - is object noun 1 not a lightsource?
objn2notlit
litX - is object X a lightsource?
notlitX - is object X not a lightsource?

Might be of use to you.
They will be added to the file for the next release.

catventure.

PS. The following conditions may also be useful:

dark - true if player in any dark location
notdark - true if player is not in a dark location

That was EXCELLENT!

The concept of lit and not lit obs is great - and speeds the programming as well.

Im trying out the the dim room scenario tonight - any issues and I'll feedback - I have downloaded 5.2.

Oh by the way............................ I'm back 2 days and causing trouble already sorry! :-)

Thanks again for the help

Gareth

Hi Gareth,

No. It is no trouble. You helped solve an important anomaly which had been undiscovered for some time in TAB so that is a good thing.
Good luck with your light/dark scenario.

Regards,
Phil.