[DGD] Rooms implementation

[Joshua P. Dady]

Colin Coghill wrote:
> A feature I'm trying to implement at the moment is "go to x,y,z 
> coordinate", with it's companion "give rough distance and direction
 > to object o"

I've thought about these sort of things in the past as well, and it 
shouldn't take much time to find more research on data structures than 
you'd care to read on the subject of trees optimized towards searches 
for nearby objects, in which case you should be able to have each 
destination pin itself on the map relative to whatever it finds 
convenient, and have the map object normalize coordinates from there.

I think the question in these matters becomes one of interface, rather 
than mechanics; maps are an inherently visual medium.  If you're trying 
to build (what Skotos calls) text-dominant interactive fiction, how do 
you fit in moving about on an x-y plane and make it a compelling part of 
your mudlib, rather than being distraction or a hinderance?  (I'm 
assuming that anyone trying to build lousy games has moved onto lousy 
graphical games by now; hopefully that's not too much of a stretch)

But then, that might be off-topic (although I've been called quite a bit 
worse things in my time).

--
Joshua P. Dady <jpd at indecisive.com>

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