[MUD-Dev] Git out the boar spear, Martha!

[Matt Chatterley]

[Adam W:]
> [Matt C:]
> > The thread(s) upon hunger/food/nutrition a short while ago were very
> > popular and quite highly contested - I'd like to raise another issue of
> > that - the gathering of food, and specifically, implementation of some way
> > to hunt.
> 
> Yeah, I find this really interesting, myself.  I've always really loved
> ranger and druid type characters, but as I've mentioned in the RP threads
> before, they are difficult to 'role-play' because there is so little
> player interaction involved.  These sorts of primal survival skills are
> easy to implement and add a whole lot to a mud, IMO.

Yup. "Alternative" thief type characters (rangers, woodsmen, call them
that you will) are a personal favourite (in concept at least) on most
games, but I rarely play them, because theres abysmally little for me to
do within the theme. The best mud I found to this end is Nanvaent, where
some of the skills available to the woodsmen actually have a use (making
fires for instance).
 
> > I intend to allow the eating of corpses (of courpse, most players will
> > have to cut them up into suitable food pieces and/or cook them first..
> > only trolls and orcs will be able to chow down on a freshly dead body
> > with no chance of being ill). But this isn't any good to capture the
> > spirit of hunting, aka actually tracking down the beast, and killing it -
> > it's just eating what you kill normally, which may not even be 'game'.
> 

[Snip very intricate system of resource management.. ie what happens to a
boar corpse]

This is almost exactly what I'm aiming for - leather goods will not be
made unless there is some leather (of course, raw materials will be
automatically inputted via NPC hunting and such), for instance. Of course,
what this really does is give a point to occupations such as "Fisherman",
and "Woodcutter".

> > How about having certain types of terrain where players can look for
> > animal tracks (if they're lucky enough to find some, they follow them for
> > a bit, and an animal they can hunt is generated), and then hunt any beast
> > they find. Hunting would involve following it until it stays still, and
> > then either being unbelievably quick to attack it by hand (aka superman),
> > or shooting it from afar with a spell or missile/thrown weapon.
> 
> Well, tracking is a pretty important thing IMO - just as important for
> being able to track down that thief who nabbed your purse as it is for
> getting your dinner.  We generate tracks whenever anyone walks anywhere
> depending on their race, size, type of footwear, ability to move
> without making tracks, and the terrain they are walking on.  Animals
> wander around out in our wilderness, so it's just a matter of wandering
> around until you discover some animal tracks and then following them.
> Since they are so fast and alert, stealth and some sort of ranged attack
> are highly useful.

Right, tracks in general are pretty nifty, as long as they don't just go
for the blunt-object-to-the-head approach:

> examine tracks
The freshest tracks here seem to be those made by Winglehopper the
onelegged deer.

rather we want:

> examine tracks
The freshest tracks that you can discern appear to have been made by a one
legged creature, weighing slightly more than you.

Or somesuch. :)

Regards,
	-Matt Chatterley
	http://user.itl.net/~neddy/index.html
"He can't stop us, we're on a mission from Glod!" - Soul Music (Pratchett)