Gas light entities not extinguishable?

[Springheel]

I don't know who organized the light entities into the current categories, but I wonder if anyone can explain the logic in having atdm:lamp_wall_gaslight_03_lit not extinguishable? It has no visible flame and cannot be put out by water arrows. It is listed in the "switchable/gas" folder in DR.

 

It appears that none of the three lights listed under switchable/gas have visible flames nor can they be extinguished by water arrows. This is clearly an oversight...obviously gas lights need a flame to actually give off light.

 

I'd like to move these entities somewhere else (even though they'll still have "gaslight" in the name--can't change that), and make new gas entities that have an actual flame. Moving them in DR won't affect any maps. Just wanted to check and see if anyone knew of a good reason why they're set up the way they are.

 

 

 

[SteveL]

They should certainly be extinguishable. To be completely realistic, they'd be extinguishable and not relightable, but that might be going too far for existing maps. Gas lights like that have a cloth mantle that spreads the gas and provides the surface where the combustion takes place. After they've been lit, that cloth mantle becomes a delicate structure of ash that'll keep its shape for weeks as long as it's not touched. But if it's touched, even by a human breath let alone a drop of water, it crumbles to dust and needs to be replaced before you can relight the lamp.

 

My childhood holidays were spent in a succession of cottages in the middle of nowhere that had no electricity and so were lit by those things, fed from butane or propane canisters outside the premises. I couldn't resist experimenting at that age and often got blamed for broken mantles.

[grayman]

I don't know why they were set up as they are.

 

There's no AIUSE_LIGHTTYPE_GAS. Only TORCH and ELECTRIC. (Why? I don't know.)

 

Gas lights are somewhere between TORCH and ELECTRIC. They have a flame (TORCH) and they can be turned off/on with a wall switch (ELECTRIC). Our gas lights are treated as ELECTRIC for the purposes of relighting and dousing.

 

If you change things around, we might have to create AIUSE_LIGHTTYPE_GAS to expose the uniqueness of gas lights, and I would need to revisit the relighting code to see if changes are needed.

[Springheel]

I've had candles that could be pinched out and also turned on and off with a switch. The only hitch was that the on/off switch just changed the current state of the light. Pulling down on the lever turns the light on if it's already off, and off if it's already on.

[grayman]

I guess that's something for the relight code to consider. I'm not familiar with candles that can be toggled by a switch. Do you have one you can point me to?

[SteveL]

I guess that's something for the relight code to consider. I'm not familiar with candles that can be toggled by a switch. Do you have one you can point me to?

 

They all can nowadays. Obs added a stim response to the script that responds to activation and calls the Toggle function in the script.

[Springheel]

I set one up when I was testing the new smoke particle by just targeting a candle with a switch.

[grayman]

I'm afraid I don't understand a switch on a candle.

 

In real life, how would it work? A little mechanical cap comes out of a compartment and snuffs out the flame?

[Springheel]

It wasn't a real case, it was just for testing. I'm not sure what the practical application would be, except that it shows that gas lights (switchable AND extinguishable) are already possible.

[SteveL]

I'm afraid I don't understand a switch on a candle.

 

In real life, how would it work? A little mechanical cap comes out of a compartment and snuffs out the flame?

 

The aim was to give mappers the option of controlling flame based lights without having to use scripts. It doesn't have to be a literal switch that they use: it could be any kind of trigger.