[MUD-Dev] Re: Less numbers, more roleplaying.

[coder at ibm.net]

On 27/11/97 at 12:36 PM, Richard Woolcock <KaVir at dial.pipex.com> said:
>Marian Griffith wrote:
>> On Tue 25 Nov, Derrick Jones wrote:

>Well I coded something a while back (which I no longer use because I've
>since chosen a theme) along these lines.  I have a mob called 'a small
>furry creature' which used to sit in a room (its no longer loaded up), 
>asking random players in the room if they can spare any food (he has 
>about a dozen different ways of phrasing it/acting in a hungry way).   As
>soon as anyone gives him some food (or drops some) he picks it up and 
>eats it.  Every time he does this, there is a chance of him forming into
>a 'cocoon', which hatches out the next tick into a small gremlin.  The
>gremlin wanders around, eating food and laying eggs which hatch a few
>ticks later into medium gremlins.  These in turn repeat the process
>creating large gremlins, which then go around eating food and laying
>small green crystalized eggs (which don't hatch, but can be eaten to
>restore mana).  Each size of gremlin is more powerful than the last, and
>they wander around killing any non-gremlins which they think they can
>beat (including mobs), devouring corpses and severed body parts (each
>time they do this, they have a chance of laying an egg).  I originally 
>had problems with thousands of gremlins causing the mud to freeze up,  so
>I have set limitations - they only survive for a limited amount of  time,
>they are only able to lay a few eggs, and they will starve to  death if
>they do not find food within a certain time (although if they  reach this
>point and there is another gremlin around, they will say  "sorry brother,
>but I must eat or I will die" and then attack them). When the 'furry
>creature' was available, players used to lead it (it would sometimes
>follow people around) into an out-of-the-way location on the mud, then
>dump huge amounts of food around the place and leave, coming back later
>to 'collect the harvest' of crystalized eggs.  The only problem was that
>the gremlins move around the mud quickly, and don't double back on
>themselves unless they have to - thus if the  gremlins were not too far
>from town, they would occasionally wander in (and the large ones could
>take down most players).

>The code was entertaining, maybe I'll think of a way to incorporate it
>back into my current theme (with modifications, of course).

This sounds a lot like my Trash Collectors:

--<cut>--
At the moment I've been intending to make the TrashCollectors (cf earlier
discussion with ChrisG on removing waste objects) do this as a side effect
of their normal rounds.  The base purpose of the TC's are to accellerate
object decomposition, and provide an amusing (cheap) target and toy for
users.

Essentially the TC's would wander the land in slightly overwhelming
numbers, finding and collecting any loose odd objects that happen to be
laying about (eg torches, dropped EQ, weapons, newly programmed and
abandoned user objects etc).  How the TC's handle that junk comes in a
number of flavours:

-- If the object is small they pick it up and continue on.  

-- If a larger object they englobe the object and decay it and any carried
objects at an accellerated pace.  Once the object(s) have destructed, the
TC will move on, having grown slightly.  This process produces
considerable mana. 

-- If the object is too large to englobe, it will suck its own thumb and
grow until it is large enough to englobe the object(s).  Once the
object(s) have destructed, the TC will split into multiple new TC's . 
This process consumes considerable mana.  Should there be insufficient
local mana, the TC consumes the mana, dies, and scatters a spore for each
unborn TC.   

-- If the object is a TC corpse, the TC will eat it and grow by a factor
smaller than the size of the TC eaten.  There is no net mana change. 

-- If the object is another TC, a small percentage of the time one TC will
eat the other, and both will die, producing four TC spores in the process.


-- If the object is in some way special/wanted the TC picks up the object,
drops anything else it is carrying, and attempts to convey it back to a
(special characteristic specific) dumping group.  (This makes TC's
preferred hunting targets for players)  A carrying TC will produce
significant mana in each room it passes thru.  

-- The TC will spoof the object found, and disappear.  The action of the
spoof is to speed the delay of the object, and to drop a TC spore (that
will grown into a new TC) into a percentage of rooms it passes thru which
don't contain TC's or TC spores.  In the mean time the base object
continues to behave as normal until it destructs.  There is no net mana
effect. 

-- If the object is a TC spore, the TC will eat the spore and increment
the count of the number of spores it will release when it dies.

Once a TC has grown past a specified size, or if it successfully consumes
more than X objects, it will split into two otherwise identical TC's.  A
TC in normal operation (moving, whatever), continually and slowly produces
mana.  However, very high mana levels are quickly fatal to TC's _unless_
they find an object to englobe.

TC's have a set (short) lifespan.  They are born from spores, grow on
objects found, move quickly, and produce spores when they die.

As far as resets are concerned, should a TC find an object with a reset()
method, with a set RESET_ME flag, the TC will call the reset() method a
percentage of the time (percentage depending on age of requested reset,
plus object-specific fudge factor).

A TC spore will consume all mana in its area.  The rate of development of
a TC spore is porportional to the rate of mana consumption.  Should their
be no mana, the spore will lay dormant. 

--<cut>--

The notes on mana above are acutally pretty inaccurate now that I've moved
to a particle economy for all basic resources.  Interestingly enough this
had the side-effect of also tamping the population explosions of TC's,
which was a nice side benefit.  TC population explosions still happen
(which is Good), but they are far more localised, and the population
densities don't get quite as high as they would (which is also good).  The
result is that an area or two will swarm with hundreds or thousands of
TC's for an hour or two RL, before they all die, with such explosions
being RL weeks apart.  Just about perfect.

If you happen to get caught in such a swarm, you:

  -- get eaten and die

or:

  -- get spammed into unplayability

or:

  -- make out like Croeses "liberating" EQ from the TC's.

All in all, a fairly good time to be had.

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
----------(*)                              Internet: coder at ibm.net
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...