[MUD-Dev] Virtual Chemistry

[Matt Chatterley]

On Sat, 12 Jul 1997, Jon A. Lambert wrote:

[Snip my original post]

> An excellent idea.  I think we may have peripherally touched on this
> concept in a thread on "assemblies" of objects.  It was my thought that
> these assemblies would have there own predefined attributes and methods
> that hide unassembled objects attributes and methods.  The assembly class
> might have an assemble method and a disassemble method.  The assemble
> method checking that all components are present and the disassemble 
> creates the aggregated objects upon disassembly.
> I think some rudimentary chemistry/alchemy could be implemented using 
> this technique.  

I think so. Perhaps basic checking on assemble, ie 'are they mixable?'
(ie, you can't really mix a liquid and a gas), and then a causitive result
(just what *will* happen if you mix ground up dragons tooth and wolves
blood?). A central information storage could record that 'elements' X Y
and Z have certain reactions with each other, and mixtures could report
the quantities of each the contain to get the appropriate return, even.
 
> Perhaps some attributes of an assembly class could be:
> 
> components list
> spells list
> energy/mana consumer
> energy/mana producer
> components list destroyed upon assembly
> components list released upon disassembly

Yup.

> For instance in an assembly for salt(NaCl) it makes sense to hide
> the component objects Sodium and Chlorine since the resulting assembly
> shares very little with the aggregate objects.  This is of course very 
> simplistic.

But it gives the general idea of what we want. Finally a way to make
mixing potions a little more interesting. ;)

Regards,
	-Matt Chatterley
	http://user.itl.net/~neddy/index.html
"Never enter an arsekicking contest with a porcupine."-Cohen The Barbarian