[MUD-Dev] "short" Introductory Message (fwd)

[clawrenc at cup.hp.com]

In <Pine.GSO.3.96.970804100456.6816B-100000 at tay>, on 08/04/97 
   at 07:54 AM, Martin Keegan <martin at cam.sri.com> said:

>On Thu, 17 Jul 1997 clawrenc at cup.hp.com wrote:

>> In <Pine.GSO.3.96.970717005657.9947K-100000 at dryslwyn>, on 07/16/97 
>>    at 08:16 PM, Martin Keegan <martin at cam.sri.com> said:

>Living things pick up magical energy just by existing; not too
>interesting there. It's not equivalent to life force ... you can use
>it up, and have to wait for it to come back.

Are there methods of speeding the recovery, or of storing resources at
an artificially high level for later use?

>I've messed around with having energy of different "humours", but
>this idea turned out to be crap.

As you've read by now I'm going for mere sign differentiation.  The
whole game of humours, or MtG colours reeked too much of an alignment
mess.

>There are invisible "lode-stones" (dunno why I called them that)
>which are either positive or negative. Energy flows from positive
>ones toward negative ones, and occasionally the route changes. Some
>classes of monster follow the lines, which is how novices can tell
>where they are.

Do the particles repell, attract, or have no positional effect on
other like particles?  (ie encourage flow)  Multiple Do particles glom
into a single particle?  (would seem necessary for the sorts of burst
effect described below)  Do the particles flow like a liquid, flowing
away from points fo concentration and towards areas of lower density? 
(would help in formation of lines/streams)

>I toyed with the idea of having the polarity reverse during certain
>events, but the lines take too long to reestablish themselves.

Do you have a concept where the mere fact of a flow acts as an
attractive force to encourage further flow?  (cf a water stream
earning a "path").

>One interesting side effect of this is that magic energy doesn't flow
>into dead ends.

Especially if you tie your collectors and emitters black/white hole
style.

>A fun part of this is that certain locations and routes are randomly
>preferred from the millions of possible paths, leading to actual
>'lines'. I plan to make it that using magic degrades the ability of a
>location to conduct energy ... eventually players will work out how
>to divert the lines :)

I would suggest:

  Emitters -- spit particles at some rate.

  Collectors -- eat every particle that contacts them.

  Magnets -- attract particles.

  A sump -- virtual object that contains all particles which have been
collected and not emitted to date.  (interesting game toy to make this
non-virtual)

  Emitters draw from the sump.  

  The sump self-guarantees that its contents never fall below X value
by creating new particles (conservation violation, but what the heck,
it makes for fun below).

  Stationary particles repell other stationary particles.

  Particles in motion fairly strongly attract other particles
(stationary or not).

Result: particles pour out of emitters and tend to pour towards the
nearest collector.  Magnets create localised stores of particles and
divert/bend nearby passing particles streams.  Stationary particle
repulsion guarantees that magnets don't become infinite stores. 
Careful tuning of the constants will result in particle orbits around
magnets becoming self-fulfilling and immensely powerful (the bigger
they get, the BIGGER they'll get).  More mundane particle streams will
merely be self-fulfilling as they hurtle towards doom at their
targetting collector.

Problem:  Pretty well all the output from any given emitter will end
up going to its nearest largest collector with everything else being
starved.  You end up with the map of flows looking like a set of short
sticks thrown on a table.  A more curvaceous web-like pattern would
seem desirable.  

Possible address:

  The longer a particle spends travelling, the stronger it is, and the
greater its attractive/repulsive effects.  If you make the curve
exponential, This will tend to encourage magnet orbits, but also cause
magnet stores to "pulse".  They'll tend to accumulate for a while,
puke their contents, collect for a while, etc.
  
  Note: Given this, the system will need periodic seeding with high
value high velocity particles on random projectories to ensure that
the total system doesn't degrade to the lowest energy/simplest state. 


Possible model:  Every umptieth hundredth particle emitted by an
emitter will have a huge value and velocity in a random direction.

Possible model:  Of the poplation of particles in the sump, a
percentage will be "special" high value particles.  Upon an emitter
spitting such a particle, its repulsion from the sump gives it a very
high velocity in a random direction.  (I like this one better).

>>   Bubba fights the mighty wizard!
>> 
>>   Bubba is being slaughtered!
>> 
>>   Using the last of his strength Bubba maneuvers the fight so he's 
>>   standing on the Ley line.
>> 
>>   A magic surge hits the Ley Line!
>> 
>>   Bubba's magic fireball ***OBLITERATES*** the mighty wizard and 
>>   half the world along with it!  Millions of players die instantly.  
>> 
>>   Bubba has a really bad headache.

>Yeah, you've got the idea, but for the fact that asterisks and
>capitals in combat messages are anathematic to me.

Hey, is it getting so bad that I can't even poke the mickey at Diku on
this list?

--
J C Lawrence                           Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                           Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------------(*)               Internet: clawrenc at cup.hp.com
...Honorary Member Clan McFUD -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...