My world template has day/night cycles based on a timer. Upon crossing over from night into day or vice versa, the room description is repeated, and if it's night time, you get the added message that it's dark and that you might not be able to see as well.

There is also a property I've added to my world template space object type (wt_spc) to indicate whether a given room is inside or outside.
The room's environment (an attribute in wt_spc pointing to an environment room) can do many things, but right now, whether inside or outside, you get the message that it's now morning or evening.

If you're inside a deep dark castle, you're not really going to know suddenly when it's 6am and it's light outside. Currently, no test is performed whether the player is inside or outside when informed of the day/night crossover.

Question: As a player, would you rather NOT be informed that it's now day or night when inside, and only have it run for outside? Either way, there's always a 24-hour clock, but players might not make the connection that 03:00 means it's dark outside and can't see squat and where are my exits, etc.

The complication is having windows in a room. If it's 3:00am, and you have no source of light in a room, the room is dark. If there is a window letting in outside light, I want the room to gain at least a little bit of light (provided there's no curtains, boards, or shutters blocking the window panes).
I therefore, upon crossing into night or day, want the room description to update to something like "The room brightens as morning breaks." or something like that.

If I merely test if Room = Inside then don't update room description, then I'm not taking windows (or outside light of any kind, like holes in the roof, etc.).
Thoughts?

If it's relevant to game play, then, yes, inform them of change of time of day. If it's just cosmetic, I'd say no. I had a run around that Jay was VERY helpful with. I know there is a LOT here to sift through, but it seems significant.

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=5881

I can post specific bits of code from X3 if you want.

Code's in place, it's done, I was just wondering if it would break immersion to be told in the middle of the deep, dark, dungeon Hello, you can't see it where you are, but it's morning now. Just thought some people might think it was a bit weird. Thanks for your reply.

if you want to do it, you could do it more tactfully, for example:

you can't tell for sure, but you estimate it is about...

I don't know the time period and/or setting/genre of your game, but you could have grandfather clocks or bells ring, or even a rooster crowing or birds singing/chirping or an owl hooting, or the player has a watch on his/her wrist, etc etc etc

It would certainly be cooler if it did not say "It is day" whilst in the dungeon, but did say "As you emerge from the dungeon, you realise day has broken". Obviously harder to implement.

As a general rule, I try to think what would make sense if you were reading a book.

If you consider that it's the "player character" that is telling you things (the little whatever you're ordering around and who is taking the brunt of your decisions), then I'd say it doesn't make sense to have it suddenly report time-of-day changes, if the time-of-day changes are based on anything visual (which the PC would not be able to see in a dark, interior place).

If the PC uses a watch or some sort of sixth sense, then fair game. But it would be odd to me to have time-of-day changes reported in general otherwise.

My take.

Thanks for the replies. The clock is always showing. If the player's in an outside space I'l lhave it, but for an inside space I'll skip it.

if interested, Pixie has a clock library that you can use and/or study:

viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2580
(I think Pixie has a newer time/date version, but am too lazy to see if I can find it, if this link above is still the old version of it, lol)

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haha... I was just looking over the link... ya this is still the old clock version... and I noticed that you got posts in it... laughs. whoopsy.

anyways, I'm pretty sure Pixie got a new time/date version somewhere, if you don't already know of it.