[MUD-Dev] Supporting RP+PG

[Matt Chatterley]

On Wed, 2 Jul 1997, Huibai wrote:

> [much snipping, pardon]
> 
> Matt C:>
> :> problem of the former being as you say, "How hurt is 20%? 
> 
> I figure on using the graphic bar because, as well as a player can
> read the bar (guessing 50%, for example), I imagine that's how 
> well he knows his own body. 

Hmm, I suppose thats fairly reasonable.. although if you diverge from the
norm (the points Adam W made on 100% being literally 1% and such), you'll
need to make a point of saying so, or trying to indicate it, otherwise you
could have a lot of very dead players. ;)
 
> Adam:
> : For all practical purposes, 100% health is identical to 1% health.
> 
> Yeah, I've always hated that in standard hack'n'slash.  So, we
> take care of the combat modifiers for health, just not so overtly.
> The player will surely notice a big slowdown in combat performance
> the lower his health bar goes.

Jolly good. I played on one mud which tried to do this by /increasing/ the
damage you took, the more hurt you were. It was a nice idea, but not
terribly well done - it was on a sort of semi-exponential scale, so you
got hit once and it barely hurt, again (the same hit) and it hurt a
little, again, and it hurt, again, and it REALLY hurt, and then it killed
you. :)
 
> Now, we use descriptive phrasing as far as "how's the other guy
> doing?" when the player looks at a living.  If there's room for any
> misinterpretation from that or no knowledge imparted on the level
> of his combat ability, well that's the limitation on not knowing his
> body as well as your own.

True - but as always, with descriptive phrases, be careful they aren't
ambiguous, or vague in any way, for instance "He seems pretty beat up.",
and "He's hurting quite a bit." are very unclear as to where they would be
relating to each other. You could actually use a %age bar for NPCs, but
throw in innacuracies based on the PCs perception, and such.
 
> In passing, a friend mentioned to me the idea that a Mud might
> be based on the axiom that players age as they progress.  The
> amusing twist is that 'newbies' start out stronger than the old
> pros, who have only experience to go by.  In other words, start
> the player in the prime of the hero's life, instead of making him
> build up to it.  The rest of his existence is trying not to slip too
> fast into obscurity when he might as well just suicide the char.
> Heh.

Heh. It'd be interesting to see what'd happen if you did that.

Regards,
	-Matt Chatterley
	http://user.itl.net/~neddy/index.html
"He can't stop us, we're on a mission from Glod!" - Soul Music (Pratchett)