[MUD-Dev] Circumstances & Situations

[Marian Griffith]

On Wed 24 Dec, Travis Casey wrote:
> Richard Woolcock <KaVir at dial.pipex.com> wrote:

> >I was hoping to have my movement code work in a 'walkto <x> <y>' type
> >way (I suppose I could add aliases like 'baker' etc), which would move
> >the player automatically at a speed specific to various things until
> >they arrive or someone stops them.  This wouldn't really be quite like
> >you describe, it would be more like:

Please only use what you call aliases.  'walk to baker' is a perfectly
natural way of moving around, as is 'walk down mainstreet' if you have
no specific goal in mind.

> >]goto baker
> >You start walking north along the road.
> >[pause for a couple of seconds]
> >You turn to your left, and continue walking along the road.
> >Far ahead you see a pretty young girl.
> >[pause a moment]
> >Just ahead of you, you see a pretty young girl.
> >[pause a moment]
> >To your left you hear the sound of running feet coming towards you.
> >Just ahead of you, a pretty young girl turns to face your direction.
> >You walk past a pretty young girl.
> [rest of example cut]
> >Basically this will only show things in front of you (or you changing
> >directions), and wouldn't spam you with a load of text every time you
> >move.  I am hoping this will help get around the difficulties generally
> >associated with a world 5120x5120 rooms across.  I'm also going to be
> >making combat reach over rooms (at least one room away) - in fact this
> >will be how backstab will work (hit someone in front of you who is
> >facing away from you).

Why not do away with rooms entirely? It seems to me that it would work
much better with the kind of movement you describe.

> Personally, I always get the willies when someone talks about only
> showing what's in front of the character on a text-based mud.  This opens
> a large can of worms -- you have to have positions within rooms, an idea
> of how the character is facing, and an arc of vision for the character.

*shrug* that's for the coders to worry about. From the game's point of
view it makes things much more interesting (and challenging).

> This sort of thing has always seemed like too much work to me -- you 
> pretty much have to keep track of all the position and facing data that
> a graphical mud would need to draw what the character's seeing, and then
> you have to interpret that data and output it as text.

*shrug* (again ;) It's just a matter of limiting what objects have their
description or name added to the list of what you see.  Instead of every
item in the room you see only what is in front of you. I do not think it
is a very big problem but perhaps somebody who would have to code it can
enlighten us (me)?

>  IMHO, if you want
> this sort of detail, it's probably easier to make a graphical mud -- the
> methods for drawing the world so that only things that are in the player's
> line of sight already exist and are fairly simple for the graphical case.

Well no. The one big advantage of textual muds over graphical ones  is the
amount of detail possible in the text. It is much easier to capture an at-
mosphere in words than it is in drawings.  The few examples I have seen of
graphical muds are very cartoonesque  and kind of ruin the immersion  in a
world  full of swords and magic.  It is also easier to give the impression
of smooth movement in text muds than it is in graphical games. Of course I
can only compare to myst so this may be way off the mark.

> A simpler, but similar, idea would be this:  simply give players who are
> "walking through" a room on their way to somewhere else a briefer, less
> detailed description.  Those who are willing to move along one room at a 
> time the old way will get more description, but it will also take them
> longer to get where they're going.

The idea was not to speed up movement. Rather (at least that's my impres-
sion) the intention was to create a more natural 'feeling' of movement.

Marian
--
Yes - at last - You. I Choose you. Out of all the world,
out of all the seeking, I have found you, young sister of
my heart! You are mine and I am yours - and never again
will there be loneliness ...

Rolan Choosing Talia,
Arrows of the Queen, by Mercedes Lackey