Just a bit of musing

[coder at ibm.net]

On 27/02/97 at 02:18 PM, "Carter T Shock" <ctso at umiacs.umd.edu> said:

>Not necessarily.. seems to me the real reason to preserve spatial
>integrity at low cost is two-fold: first ranged and area stuff works
>correctly and is easy to calculate, second, it allows you to define a
>world and only fill in the interesting bits. If the "You are in a forest"
>lines were too much spam (likely) one could simply include terrain type
>in the prompt. Undescribed rooms get the default "You see nothing
>special". As far as distant objects are concerned, you could report
>"there's a building to the west" only when the user does a scan or some
>such. No reason the level of detail can't be configurable. One could also
>include the clue about the building in the distance as descriptions in
>specific rooms. In this arrangement the simple presence of a description
>is a key to items/places of interest (rooms with road signs start to make
>sense... jolly implementors can lie on the signs etc.)

The problem again is relelvance.  Taking JoeBloe and his endless plain
with the moutains and nascent volcanoe to the east.  Most of the time all
he'll see is grass.  The mountains are not relevant past his first
entering the plain or unless he specifically looks there.  However once
the volcanoe erupts, the mountains are highly relevant -- at least for a
while.  Here it gets fun again.  If he's a LONG way away, the mountain
would command attention for a brief while, but were he close, or even on
the slopes, you betcha he'd always notice it.

>On the contrary, I would not hide the coordinate system from the user.

Sir Joe Bloe, one of the dumber knights of the oblong trestle table with
the wobbley leg, just happens to have a cranially mounted GPS system.

>It's one way to allow a user to remember places, and can lead one to
>alternative routes to the same place. You could make it a skill if you
>chose. You could also have great fun... if someone is "lost" or
>"confused" they get bad or no coordinate info. Store a second location
>field in the player struct that is an offset and all of a sudden magical
>doors get interesting (if they don't know they were teleported you can
>set the new location and offset their reported coordinates.. as far as
>they know they moved next door, not accross the world). 

Cute, but maintenance could get interesting:

  JoeBlow is transported acorss the world to the grassy plain.  

  He thinks he's a mile or so outside his home castle in the Running Horse 
  Plains.

  Mount TootenBlooie erupts.  

  JoeBloe relaises that he must be on the Plains of High Times, half 
  way across the world from his castle.

  To make it better, the information about Mt TootenBlooie that enabled 
  him to figure this out may not be game based, but could be from an OOC 
  tell, email, or smilar,

I like the idea tho -- just need to figure out how to maintain it.

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
----------(*)                              Internet: coder at ibm.net
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...