[MUD-Dev] Introduction

[clawrenc at cup.hp.com]

In <199708140254.QAA09742 at mail.pixi.com>, on 08/13/97 
   at 07:58 PM, "John G." <ashen at pixi.com> said:

>(just a quick interjected note or two, rest snipped)

>>From C.Lawrence:

>: What do you do when Bubba dumps 50,000 individual pieces of gold,
>: pebbles etc all at the same location?  Have a lost 50,000 items long?

>coins do the aggregate-object thing.  melt together like a t-1000.

Okay, instead make it a very large number of very different objects, 
He has coins an pebbles and feathers, and leaves, and grass clippings
and boogers and emeraldes and diamonds and rubies and opals and pearls
and rings made of various metals and ...you get the idea.  

The idea is to create a worst-case/pessimal scenario which
deliberately stresses your model, and to then see how your model
copes.  In this case the question would be, how to define a set of
objects of very large number which *don't* glom/aggregate.

What happens if every single player online (say all 500 or so of them)
all decide to stand in the same spot (near enough) along with every
possession they can find or muster?

>Another easy-to-implement idea I found interesting was to present the
>text in different sizes by interest/obviousness.  Close objects or
>attention-demanding situations get presented at 1.2 times, 
>medium-range and attractive texts at normal size, and distant or
>barely-consequential info at 0.8 times normal text size. 

Err, uhh, blech.  Readability alone would get me running the other
way.  Compare to some of the similar experiments in Wired magazine for
details.

--
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...