[DGD] DGD & Simulations

[Christopher Darque]

Hail!

I am new to this list and have spent a bit of time reading the old
archives to start to get up to speed on this interesting new code. As
a long time game designer who has done a bit of work with LPC I was
instantly attracted to DGD when I saw 2 things: 'Persistance' and
'Disk-Based'.

I have always taken my own approach to Muds, much more of a dynamic
simulation concept than what some might be used to seeing. To me if I
can build a game world that lives and breathes on it's own I create a
rich setting for players to then influence. I create NPCs that have
needs, and the ability to fulfill those needs. They need to eat,
sleep, and interact with others to be happy and to live. They become
much more real to players when they watch one trapped in a dungeon
starving to death. A rescue of such an NPC has more meaning and drama
than it would normally.

In the same way I create landscapes that are heavy on the ASCII Art
and light on text. If you generate the ground, a sky, and a layer of
visible objects (buildings, trees, etc) via a code-based process on
the fly you can then alter it based on things that happen in the
area.
Fires can destroy the grass, trees can burn down, or a new house can
appear on what was once an empty lot.

I realize that these sorts of things are not what even an advanced
codebase like DGD was designed for, but I do this for fun and so
sticking with a form of LPC is what I have always enjoyed.

So I have some questions, and would love to discuss some of these
concepts with anyone here who is interested.

1) How does the disk-based design work with objects that are active
and have to do things now and then? If an NPC lets say has an
internal call-out driven loop will they ever get swapped? And if they
do how 'active' are they when in that state.

In my last LPC work I had to do silly things to keep rooms from
swapping out because when they did all the processes froze. To keep
my Master Control rooms (rooms with a number of important loops to
run various game systems) active I made a simple creature that steped
back and forth every couple of minutes. It worked, but should not
have been needed in the first place.

2) Since I use a lot of ASCII graphics the style and efficiency of
the code becomes very important. I am familiar with some of the
packages that have been suggested here but I was wondering if anyone
has done any specific work with ASCII that I might learn something
from looking at.


>From my reading of the archives I have found you to be an intelligent
and thoughtful bunch, always a welcome thing in the world of online
forums. I have been on, or run, enough of them to know that a good
place is worth sticking around, this seems to be one. That gives me
hope that the code that we are here to talk about will achieve great
things and enable a lot of people to create wonders.


Christopher 'Alexander Tau' Darque
(-)




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