[MUD-Dev] Combat messages

[Matt Chatterley]

On Mon, 4 Aug 1997, Martin Keegan wrote:

> On Sun, 13 Jul 1997, Marian Griffith wrote:
> 
> > > Yup.  A few years ago this was a problem just because of processing time;
> > > now there's no reason you can't implement it.
> > 
> > You can tell better than I can. What I was trying to ask was. Will it
> > be possible to look reasonably like english,  and will it be pleasant
> > to read? To string together phrases you usually have to reformate one
> > or both phrases to make the resulting sentence flow.  I don't believe
> > you should be aiming at anything resembling literature,  but to get a
> > good flowing sentence might be difficult?

[Snip explanation]

> If people realised how easy this was, we'd have fewer Dikus reporting "You
> buy an armour". The best thing about the system is that it allows random
> atmospheric messages to be generated easily and not be boring and
> monotonous.

Yup. I recently implemented this very nearly exactly as you describe it,
but its far too limited and on the 'rewrite' list. At the moment it has
been nicknamed 'CMML' (Combat Message Markup Language), but I want to
expand it to be a general markup language for other things - such as
shops, weather messages, and so on.

Regards,
	-Matt Chatterley
	http://user.itl.net/~neddy/index.html
"Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's
	mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them." -George Orwell