Complete darkness?

There's something that bothers me about darkness. No, not the fact that I must wait a few minutes for whether the guts of me and my kank will be spilled or not, but...

I find it unrealistic that you cannot percieve your surroundings but feeling them or listening. "Total" darkness is, too, just not a concept that can excist deep underground, and even if human/elven/name-a-random-critter-eyes are not able to percieve the faint light outdoors, one should be able to feel their surrounding in the dark and have a possibility to find items, etc.
Yet, oddly, there seems to be no code for that. Or is there?

With love,
Your average n00b ranger gal

[Seeker]

First off, Welcome average n00b ranger gal!

The code -does- allow you to manipulate items IG even in situations where your character is unable to see.  It will take some experimentation on your part to find out which commands do work, which are diminished, and which are totally unavailable.  What the code allows is pretty realistic once you're familiar with it, but there is no specific "touch" command.

I usually use my own emotes to paint the scene more vividly for myself in situations like that.

:muttering under his breath, @ fumbles blindly at something.
open pack
:the sound of rattling and clacking gear fills the area about @.
get torch pack
get flintstrike pack
pem a few bones shifting underfoot are heard and then, next, @ efforts at striking stones together.  A moment later a few sparks appear, settling unto an oil-soaked torch.
hold torch

Hope that helps a little with your question.


Seeker

Thanks, Seeker.

Though I wasn't referring to character's own belongings/items in inventory as much as the surroundings. You can still find objects around you in the dark by feeling them, and I found no coded way to do this.

[Yokunama]

I have a problem with the light code: It claims that your beast is unhitched, when the room enters into total darkness, and when you finally have enough light, you are hitched to it.

[Ghost]

The code is not a perfect simulation of reality, or expected reality.  The primary purpose of darkness, I guess to make you aware of your limited vision and that you are taking risks if you are without a light source.  That is probably why, we have such a limiting darkness.

Personally, I like the darkness as it is.  Sure, I can walk through the darkness with being extremely careful, but as I guess it requires too much of coding (if it is possible to code it, that is) to give you that effect in the end.  And guiding yourself without a lightsource in the complete darkness should be one of the things that has the least priority.

[Cuusardo]

Always, ALWAYS make sure you have some kind of light source with you.  If it's getting late in the day, make sure you have it close at hand so you don't have to worry about digging around in your pack, or unpacking your pack from your kank to get it.

Word of warning: Strong enough winds can blow out torches, so you may want to find an alternative type of light source if you're going to be out in the wilderness.

Thanks for advice, Cuusardo. I've been insanely lucky for a few times now, so I was kinda figuring out I needed to get light eventually.. (While ICly trusting that my kank would alert me of critters. *sweatdrop* I know they don't.)

[Seeker]

You can still find objects around you in the dark by feeling them, and I found no coded way to do this.

Experiment some more.   :wink:

But you are right.  Some things would be apparent, even in a pitch-black room.  For example, you should be able to tell if you are standing in ankle-deep sand or on a polished tile floor.  As far as I am aware, there is no way to know this type of thing without having a light-source active permitting you to read the room description.

I can think of an alternative, but it would mean adding an alternate description to every room that might experience total darkness depicting all the things that can still be perceived with your -other- senses. That would be a huge pain.  There are several thousand (possibly several tens of thousands of) rooms that would have to have such descriptions written and linked in.


Seeker