[MUD-Dev] Alright... IF your gonan do DESIESE...

[Huibai]

:From: Nathan Yospe <yospe at hawaii.edu>
::Alex Oren wrote:
::# 'I saw Humperdink kill two dragons and an elderly lady!
::You say it.
::Bubba says 'No kidding!?'
::Boffo says 'The murderous rogue!  I knew she was no good...'
::The shopkeeper looks aghast in your direction and scurries inside.

:This sounds murderously impossible.

That's not impossible - I used to bullseye womprats in my
 T-16 back home!  (sorry, couldn't resist ;)

If you're not too worried about shabbiness... class Rumormonger
is a class of monster who checks in a catch_tell (scanning what
is said in the room) for Keywords (set array, usually just "killed"
or "died" and "hits").  Rumormonger attempts to match a subject
and object (such as "Humperdink killed Dragon" as output by the
actual action or 'i heard "humperdink killed kuato" last night...').
If he's got nothing on Humperdink, he stores Subject-Verb-Object
in one of 7 rumor spots, bumping the oldest off. 

No good for a complete rumor system, but if you want to confine
your rumors to just Rumormongers collecting & formatting them,
then have anything else deal with their class, then catch_tell or
its equivalent in your language of choice isn't so expensive.

I don't want a complete rumor system, but consider this: class
Gossip is any town-living NPC who should report kills to the
sherriff.  Gossip is a Rumormonger looking for the game's tell
to the room ("X killed Y").  Once satisfied (Student catches:
'Humperdink killed Elderly lady'), he runs to the sherriff, reports
his Rumor (postpended with a room filename/coord) to the Law,
who dispatches an Investigation Team.  Clone the I-team into
the scene of the crime, slap a couple tells about yellow tape
and magnifying glasses.  If there's a corpse around, the rumor
is validated and a new Bounty goes up (for hunters or the town
police).  Of course, get rid of the body or the messenger, and
there is no crime. :}

-John