[DGD] Object house-keeping and persistance

[Jas]

Stephen Schmidt wrote:

>Fair enough. But in a truly persistant mud, you may not even
>have coders anymore. It'll be very awkward to have new areas
>opening up in a persistant world. Where do the objects that
>fill those new areas come from? I think persistence tends to
>work better if the game world is already there, at least in
>outline form, and development happens within the context of
>the game - quite possibly being done by the players rather
>than by the development staff. That is, the job of the
>developer is to build an enormous set of rooms saying "You
>are in a forest", "You are in open plains", etc. If someone
>wants to build a town there, let the players build it
>themselves (and give them commands to do it, within
>resource limits that are defined within the game system).
>
>  
>

Personally, I would see the job of the developer(s) of player-alterable 
persistent worlds mostly the way you describe it, with one slight 
modification:  all of the physical resources (versus objects) that will 
EVER exist in the game should exist in the game from the beginning of 
time, in the form of natural resources to be harvested, refined or 
processed, or utilized in the creation of player-manufactured 
objects.... OR, and here's where things get fairly complicated, consumed 
as fuel to create energy.

"Matter and energy is neither created nor destroyed."

Keep chanting that mantra, and everything in the game should have a 
matter or energy value.  The formula for the combined matter and energy 
values should remain a constant throughout the duration of the game.

So, a player mines coal, harvesting a specific matter value.  The coal 
is used as fuel source in an engine which converts the specific matter 
value to a specific energy value during the buring process, but ALSO 
requires a specific energy value to combust the matter in the first 
place.  The burning coal then drives an engine that uses that energy to 
refine another raw material for player use.  No engine runs at 100% 
efficiency, so some energy is converted to heat loss from the engine, 
which enters the atmosphere and returns to the cycle eventually.

So, matter gets converted to energy, which is then used to convert 
matter.  All the while, the value of the formula of all existing matter 
and energy in the universe has not changed.

Yes, this gets painfully complicated in a hurry, but it can be done.  It 
helps if you understand physics and quantum mechanics, but this is where 
I see possibilities for (mostly) "hands off" management of a persistent 
world.

>You probably also want some way to prevent an object
>created outside the game world from entering the game
>world, too.
>
>  
>

This no longer becomes a problem, once you make sure that matter and 
energy is neither created nor destroyed.  As long as the value of the 
formula for all of the existing matter and energy in the universe 
remains constant, no matter and/or energy spent = nothing produced.

Of course, all of this looks great on paper, but engineering the game 
library to do this no trivial matter.

If you CAN do it right, basically if you can get the formula for all of 
the combined matter and energy in existence tuned well, you should never 
have to worry about managing the game's creation process again.

And, if you happen to not like a structure a player has built using the 
matter and energy they had in their possession, use some of your own 
matter and energy (bulldozer = matter, diesel fuel = converts to energy) 
to change the landscape to your liking.

There's nothing written anywhere I can find that says a game 
administrator can't stockpile some of the universe's matter and/or 
energy for their own purposes (to use to maintain the peace or rule with 
an iron fist, your choice of course ).  World leaders have been doing 
that for thousands of years, and it seems to work quite well!

>Steve
>
>  
>

Cheers,
Jason D. Bourgoin
aka Katmandu

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