[MUD-Dev] Combat messages

[Marian Griffith]

On Sat 12 Jul, Adam Wiggins wrote:
> [Marian:]
[above snipped for brevity]

> > Everything between { and } is what you eventually get on your screen?
> > everything between [ and ] is a command somebody has to give,though I
> > left the actual text of messages out, for clarity. Things between the
> > < and > are difficult as here the game must reformat the messages ge-
> > nerated by the commands  to string them together.  And in the case of

> Yup.  A few years ago this was a problem just because of processing time;
> now there's no reason you can't implement it.

You can tell better than I can. What I was trying to ask was. Will it
be possible to look reasonably like english,  and will it be pleasant
to read? To string together phrases you usually have to reformate one
or both phrases to make the resulting sentence flow.  I don't believe
you should be aiming at anything resembling literature,  but to get a
good flowing sentence might be difficult?

> > Krr*ganfth being hurt makes him scream as well.  Also it introduces a

> Uh, well of course.  Maybe I've been out of the mudding community for
> too long, but shouldn't someone getting hurt cause them to react as
> they actually would? *boggle*

I'm not saying that they shouldn't. Just that the system must do it, and
in the example did.  I have not yet seen any game that actually takes it
to that level of reality.

> > couple of scenic descriptions, like the charred meat.

> This is fairly easy, given a good message-propagation system.  Ie, you
> just send out a message about a smell of charred meat to the neighborhood;
> people with no smell won't get the message; a carniverous race might see
> 'You smell the sweet tang of charred meat'; a vegitarian might see 'The
> disgusting smell of charred meat...'; a silicoid race unfamiliar with
> the properties of flesh might see 'Olfactory sensors report an unknown
> material in the process of combustion nearby' and so forth.

again, not the fact that it can't be done, but that, to improve the im-
mersive quality of the combat descriptions it must be done. What nathan
wrote included this, and it's not something I've ever seen done.  I can
not tell if it is simple or difficult, that's what you guys are good at
but I wanted to point out that the example implied this type of message

> > I wonder if  it is possible to make a game understand so much of lan-
> > guage that it can do this? I hope so because without it the scene be-
> > comes something like this:
> > Johnny Angel walks by.
> > Johnny Angel grins at you.
> > Johnny Angel gestures you to follow.
> > Krr*ganfth growls
> > Krr*ganfth wears combat mech.
> > A combat mech hits Krr*ganfth.

I snipped the comments because this was an example of how things work
nowadays.  Not how I think they should.  The above is what you get if
each action produces its own message and sends it to each player yes?
To get from that to something like Nathan wrote is the real challenge

[more snipped for brevity]

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