Vague: Containers

[Ling]

After very little thought, my mud has been named Vague for lots of
reasons (the alternative being Kitty Kat Klub).  There, I can stop calling
it 'my mud'.

Um, I'm gonna answer the last question first coz it's easier.

On Sun, 30 Nov 1997, Adam Wiggins wrote:

> I guess the real question is, what kinds of things to you want to *do*
> with this data?

The plan at the moment is to use omnipotent containers (rooms) to help
generate descriptions.  An example container would be store:

All the usual physical location, size and internal details.
Container name, brief description and a list of anything that stands out.

Eg:  Forest, at x,y.  Map of what it contains.  Elevations.
Brief description:  Playground (yes, they will be this brief!)
List of things: Swings and Magic Roundabouts
		seesaw
		5 guys with rifles crawling near the seesaw
Complete list of things:  Everything above +
			  goggles underneath the swings

Whenever a character looks from another location outside of the
playground, it'll see the list of things (if they are visible, which will
usually be yes coz a playground doesn't have trees).  If the character is
one of the five crawling along, a different description is generated which
says where abouts the swings and roundabouts are (and the seesaw).  A
check is made to see if the goggles are visible as well.

Yep, this is very rough!

> Sounds like RLE to me, one of those too-simple-to-be-true techniques I've
> always loved.  By simply having end-of-line codes in the data you can
> easily have the second example you gave; the data looks like so:
> 
> 1-3, 7-11;
> 1-10;
> 
> Where the semicolon is the end-of-line.

Hmm...  Cool, super, smashing, great!

> The kind of amorphis object-shapes Nathan, JC, myself, and some others
> had been chatting about recently is more like a collection of points,
> likely other objects.  This means slightly more amorphis (not fixed
> to any particular grid other than normal metrics) shapes which may
> mutate into completely new forms as the points (objects?) move about,
> or as new points are added or deleted.  Also, this handles n-dimensional
> situations pretty easily; RLE extended into the third dimension means
> something which looks like a voxel shape, which is neither very easy to
> deal with nor represent.

As you can see above, I'm trying to get away with the least amount of work
possible.  I do appreciate your point about n-dimensions.  Airborne
objects will be 'special cases' (hacks).  People can go airborne, but
it'll either because they're falling, jet-packing (easy target, noisy, not
tactically sound) or in a chopper (special case... for the meanwhile).

I just realised I need bridges, gonna need some thought on it... 

The other point I _have_ thought about is shooting from inside a building
a few stories up to the outside world.  I think the system should be able
to cope with it.  I'm hoping to store elevation for the entire container
if there is no change or for each terrain blob for something like a hill.
Means rocky gameworlds is gonna be messie.


Re:  Chris Gray's comments:

> But then you have to design it all by hand - far too much work. Stick to
> the pseudo-random terrain generation we've talked about before. See my
> previous post on mountain/forest terrain for lots of variations you can
> add.

I reckon the system will be able to cope with random terrain generation
(that is one of the aims).  It's going to be messie and only able to
generate outside landscapes, buildings will probably have to be hand
designed so they're of a sane design.  I also think the system will be
quite easy on the designers coz you'd just draw a blob and call it a
forest.  Individual trees can be added if really desired but I usually
assume that there are trees in the forest and no one cares for the
number.

All this leads me to bulk containers as the next task...
The limitations of the system is clear, it's almost room based.  This
means when I'm bulking things together, I'll prolly do it container by
container.  Five soldiers, 3 inside a forest, 2 in the clear are going to
appear as exactly that.  This is fine.  But the same soldiers, 3 at the
edge of a playground and 2 next to the playground but not inside will also
appear split...  I reckon I'll live with it though.

Mike Sellers:  Will pick that book up!

  |    Ling Lo, freshwater fish (cod variant)     Another 'Screemer!
_O_O_  EEE, Loughborough University, England      Hand in hand