Resets and repops

[claw at null.net]

On 17/03/97 at 09:19 AM, Furball <K.L.Lo-94 at student.lut.ac.uk> said: >Hiya
folks,

>Hoped you had a gorgeous weekend!  Right, I was thinking about the
>concept of resets (LP) and repops (dikus)...  It's kind of tacky.  Won't
>it be much better to be able to explain why the 23rd platoon which some
>'ard Arnie character just vapourised came back?

My view:

  Resets are a Bad Thing, and should NEVER occur in any quality game.

This has a couple supporting reactions:

  Death is permanent.
  
  All objects decay over time/use (see prior discussion of mana, magic
points etc)
  and will self destruct/vanish.  **

  There is no concept of an area reset/pop.

  Individual objects (eg mobiles), upon destruction may individually
schedule 
  their ressurection.  However such resurection should create a new,
unique 
  object, not a warmed over corpse.

** This one in particular has some interesting effects on the game,
especially when rolled together with the idea of corrosive mana.  For one
object hoarding pretty well ceases.  

You can collect all you want, but you then spend all your time trying to
maintain it.  Sure you can get the
NiftyMagicalSwordOfSemiUltimateBeheading, but it requires LOTS of mana,
and if you carry any other magical objects, they and the sword will decay
at an increased pace.  Carry four or five super magical objects and the
half life start getting close to low single digit minutes.  Want to keep
them?  It will take all your time just collecting or making enough mana to
keep them up to par.

>This is what I made up for a CRPG some years back:  The HQ which the
>platoon should have reported to realises something has happened so sends
>a scout to figure what's up, if this immoral killing of hapless soldiers
>continue, the HQ would report back to it's regional HQ which will send in
>the cavalry.  Errr, and so on.  So everything has a limit, if the 23rd
>platoon just got vapourised, it shouldn't come back unless the regiment
>reformed it.  Maybe this doesn't really apply to muds too well coz it was
>originally planned for a computer game.

The OrcCaves:

  There is a set of underground caves and tunnels.  

  A certain (small) set of those caves have no entrances, and cannot be 
  teleported to. 

  Such caves contain "breeders".

  Breeders produce new baby Orcs at a rate proportional to the current Orc
  population.

  New Orcs "appear" in the accessable caverns.

  Baby Orcs produced fall into one of four types:  grunts, new breeders,
fighters, 
  and nobles.

  The ration of the types produced is based on the current general
mortality rate, 
  mortality rate in the caverns, total population (crowding) etc.

  An Orc of any type can and will mutate into an Orc of the next higher or
lower 
  type should the current environment request i.  (eg caverns under
attack, 
  breeders start turning into fighters to defend their spawn).

  Individuals of any type will tend to group with individuals of the same
type, 
  breeders with breeders, fighters with fighters, nobles with nobles.

  If nothing else is around, another type is better than nothing.

  A single noble will preferentially group with a sufficiently large group
of 
  fighters.  Should their already be a noble in residence, the nobles will
fight 
  for control (one dies).  (And thus there were clans)

  A noble/fighter group will generally ignore all other groups -- except
for 
  noble-less fighter groups, which will attempt to join it.

  Noble groups are unstable, and will tend to split up every so often.

  One noble per cavern will become a "King".  

  If the King dies, then noble groups will congregate and mutually
annihilate until 
  a surviving Orc is tagged as King.

Result:  Normally the Orcs breed like rabbits.  Once the population builds
up enough to get crowded they start producting more fighters.  Fighters
are wanderers, and tend to both group and attack a lot (slight preference
for grouping).  

Thusly, left alone the Orcs wil overrun their caverns and start boiling
out upon the outside land with hordes of nasty unpleasant types that chew
on the wrong ends of fair maidens.

Should such a doughty band find a new set of caverns, they may decay to
breeders, with their keys set to the new cavern system.  (ie a new colony
which _can_ be eradicated))

Should the caverns in any state be invaded by slaughtering players or
mobiles, the breeders will start producing more and more fighters to
repell the invasion.

Etc.

A simple enough system that provokes all sorts of interesting patterns.

Take the same base and extend it with a few twists and extra behaviours
and now you have mining dwarves, elves in the forest, the human King's
castle and outlieing farms etc.   Rool a bunch of theese all into a shared
land, and you start getting an active animated universe which runs itself.

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