3.9. Passers-By, Weather and Astronomical Events

| Chapter 3: Place |

| 3.9. Passers-By, Weather and Astronomical Events

Out of doors, nature is seldom still. Clouds scull by at random, as in Weathering, and provide some variety in what would otherwise be lifelessly static room descriptions. In much the same way, passers-by and other diversions make a city street a constant bustle: see Uptown Girls for this human breeze. A more nagging sense of atmosphere can be experienced in Full Moon.

Orange Cones offers traffic that is present on every road in the game unless a room is marked off with orange cones -- and this is allowed to change during play.

Night and Day and Totality each schedule celestial events to provide a changing display in the sky above, and this time running like clockwork rather than at random.

See Scene Changes for meteors and a moon-rise

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| Example Weathering The automatic weather station atop Mt. Pisgah shows randomly fluctuating temperature, pressure and cloud cover. |
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"Weathering" A cloud pattern is a kind of value. The cloud patterns are cumulus, altocumulus, cumulonimbus, stratus, cirrus, nimbus, nimbostratus. The Mount Pisgah Station is a room. "The rocky peak of Mt. Pisgah (altitude 872m) is graced only by an automatic weather station. The clouds, close enough almost to touch, are [a random cloud pattern]. Temperature: [a random number from 7 to 17] degrees, barometric pressure: [950 + a random number from 0 to 15] millibars." Test me with "look / look / look".

132
| Example Uptown Girls A stream of random pedestrians who go by the player. |
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157
| Example Full Moon Random atmospheric events which last the duration of a scene. |
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120
| Example Orange Cones Creating a traffic backdrop that appears in all road rooms except the one in which the player has laid down orange cones. |
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164
| Example Night and Day Cycling through a sequence of scenes to represent day and night following one another during a game. |
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144
| Example Totality To schedule an eclipse of the sun, which involves a number of related events. |
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