[MUD-Dev] Population container

[Nathan Yospe]

On Thu, 19 Jun 1997, Wout Mertens wrote:

:hey all!

:Here's an idea I had:

:Instead of having all that trouble of having to constantly update your
:objects, even when noone is around, I present:

:The Population Container

:What is it? Well, you take a kind of monster that you want to populate a
:zone with. Now make a population model, something like Fibonacci's row or
:so (rabbits!), and update the model every once in a while.
:Now, if a player is about, and he 'spots' one (or more) of the population,
:decrease you population by one (or more) and make the appropriate monster
:appear.

Even more, you can hold off on generating the actual instance until a
closer examination is performed. This is the biggest use I make of my
massing containers. While it is not exactly the same concept - my massed
containers don't model population growth and such, and are viable only
within a single locality - it does bear certain similarities.

:This way, you can have zillions of flies, musquito's, dwarfs, etc etc, you
:could even describe the critters from the container (some dwarfs are
:lurking about) (tho I think that's a bit farfetched), and all with
:virtually no memory or cpu overhead.

It is hardly farfetched at all. Observe:

The crowd class is derived from the containment class, and from the
physical class. Thus, it is an example of a "massing container", similar
to the body class, and others. Like all containers, it defaults to
carrying uninstantiated members first. Because of this, any glance at a
crowd will be described by the crowd, and not by an assemblage of members.
All containers are equipped to handle cases where some members are
instantiated, so if a known associate of a character was hiding in the
crowd, the character could pick that individual out. Examples:

There is a large crowd of peasants milling around the field.

There is a large crowd of peasants milling around the field, and an
armored knight standing among them.

(To a dragon)
There is a large crowd of filthy humans milling around your sleeping
grounds.

There is a large crowd of peasants milling around the field. Matilda
is among them, chatting with a tall, skinny man.

:That's it.

:Thoughts? Questions? Ideas? Stuff?

Just an additional comment: these things can get really fun.

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Nathan F. Yospe - University of Hawaii Dept of Physics - yospe at hawaii.edu