[MUD-Dev] Room-based vs. coordinate-based

[clawrenc at cup.hp.com]

In <199706160813.BAA01123 at pc4.zennet.com>, on 06/16/97 
   at 10:14 PM, "Brandon J. Rickman" <ashes at pc4.zennet.com> said:

>From: clawrenc at cup.hp.com

>I was working on a summary and/or a response to the last message
>(something about travelling salesmen) but the sudden dropoff in posts
>seems fishy. I'll wait for the recap, then re-recap whatever might be
>missing.

Thanks.

The drop off _is_ suspicious.  The mail is physically not arriving at
the list.  I have one confirmed report form a member that he has sent
his submissions multiple times only to have them not make it and not
bounce...  Quite simply I sdon't know what is wrong from his neck of
the woods -- all the accounts do work from other sites near him.  I
posted a request to the list for any others with similar observations
but have gotten nothing back.

>I think I did say something originally about how neighborhoods don't
>really deal with differently scaled objects.  

I see a simple question underlieing this:

  Must a neighborhood contain ALL the objects that lie within its
coordinate bounds, or should it be possible for a neighborhood to only
contain some of the objects within its coordinate bounds?

The corrolary of course is:

  Must two neighborhoods which occupy identical ranges have identical
contents?

Adding the concept of scale to a neighborhood requires that the answer
to #1 is the second case, and to #2 is "No".

>I suppose a flea-sized
>object might perceive a sofa as the size of a mountain, but resolving
>the problem for flea-sized (or giant sized) objects implies that the
>world will need an equal amount of flea/giant objects for the extra
>work to pay off.  Or to be truly unhelpful: "That's just a client
>problem."

I prefer to view it as a client problem where the client is defined as
the target object -- it is up to the receiving object to determine
that the event either has no relevance to it, or that it needs to be
reinterpreted by the object (Bubba gets up from the couch, the flea on
his arse merely notices that it is now light vs dark).

--
J C Lawrence                           Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                           Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------------(*)               Internet: clawrenc at cup.hp.com
...Honorary Member Clan McFUD -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...