9.7. Telling the time

| Chapter 9: Time |

| 9.7. Telling the time

Now that we have the time of day, we can of course use this value in room descriptions and the like:

> The Clock Chamber is a room. "The dark chamber behind the clock face, a mill-room of gears which grind down the seconds. Through the glass you can see the reversed hands reading [the time of day]."

It seems odd, though, to read a precise numerical description of the time here: after all, it isn't a digital clock. A friendlier version would use:

say "[time in words]"

This text substitution produces the given time written out in English sentence form. For example: "Through the glass you can see the reversed hands reading [the time of day in words]." might produce Through the glass you can see the reversed hands reading twenty to nine.

To reiterate an example which came up earlier, we could even work the time of day into the command prompt, which would lend the proper sense of urgency to a game played out against the clock:

> When play begins: now the command prompt is "[time of day] >".

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| Example Situation Room Printing the time of day in 24-hour time, as in military situations. |
RB

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