Resets and repops

[Adam Wiggins]

> :> > > > Oh yeah, I hate that.  We have several levels of command
> :> > > > verification, so you can specify that you need two functioning hands
> :> > > > to do this certain command, or two functioning arms, or a be able to
> :> > > > walk and have sight, or be able to talk...etc etc.  This is great,
> :> > > > from many standpoints, and quite easy to implement.  Thus when your
> :> > > > hands are both severed, you can hug someone, but you can't pick
> :> > > > anything up or open doors.
> :> > >
> :> > > Possible problem: All of the above more or less fails when the mody 
> :> > > is an amorphous amoeboid blob.
> :>
> :> Actually, not at all.  I'd be quite confused if the blob shook my
> :> hand.
> :
> :Why?
> :
> :  The blob extrudes a pseudopod!
> :  The blob's pseudopod globs on to your hand!  Ewwww!  Blech!
> :  The blob shakes your hand!
> :  The blob farts in your general direction.
> :  You smell of elderberries.
> 
> I remember this. If you recall, I have a shapeshifting species available
> for play. The limiting factor is the difficulty inherent in reconstructing
> a skeletal system for this species. Thus, you could quite easilly have a
> Slipt (the aforementioned species) form an extra pair of arms... of
> course, coordination might become a problem. A Slipt can manage four limbs
> optimally. After that, each limb being actively used incurs a coordination
> penalty.

Yeah, when I wrote the above (via the ohenry at ucsd.edu account), I was thinking
of a blob in the most mundane sense - a pile of amorphis goo that either
just sits there, or possibly is able to move about through some sort of
strange rolling technique, ie maybe rippling of muscle in the section
touching the ground.  I have difficulty envisioning the kind of anatomical
structure that would allow a creature with no skeleton at all to form a
'limb' that was distinct enough to be extruded and then manipulate other nearby
objects, all in the kind of gravity that we're used to (underwater or
otherwise becomes a different situation).
Thus, I would be confused if a blob shook my hand.
If you want to define this blob further as some sort of magical or
otherworldly-anatomical critter, that's fine, but none of that was ever
mentioned.  Our limb lists are dynamic (built independantly for each
creature from a prototype), so you could easily have a 'mutate' spell which
forces you to grow an exrta arm out of your stomach.  (Limbs each have a
basic type and a 'connection' list, to indicate where in the list it
resides.)  Thus I imagine a blob critter with psuedopod-extension capabilities
would simply have one nod in its list, "body", and then a routine to
dynamically fool around with the list as desired.  (Hmmm, this could get
interesting if you had radical regeneratives ala Orson Scott Card's
'Treason'.)

> :The thing to me is that the blob can mold parts of its body into any
> :form (forgery, impersonation, localised creation of limbs and other
> :features, etc), and that it can more or less squeeze thru a hole of
> :any size.  Standard attacks with edged weapons fail as, while they do
> :physically cut the body, the severed portions then reunite with the
> :main body, more or less undamaged.  Want the blob to look like a man? 
> :With great effort it can mold its body into a humanoid shape, walk on
> :two legs, and even forge vocal cords to attempt human-style speech. 
> :Want better?  Have the blob pour its body into a suit of plate armour
> :(or a really well fitting Italian suit) and animate that.
> 
> *grin* Right. Of course, a blob might not be as strong as a human in that
> suit of armor.

This also seems to imply that a blob would be smarter than your average
amobea, if it could actually make an acurate model of the human body.
Maybe it would make slip-ups, like not doing the ears quite right?

I guess armor would be a tad easier to slip in and out of.  And on
the beach, it gets to hear things like, "Wow, that guy is positively
_poured_ into that swimsuit!"  (Okay, I'll stop now.)

> :> > > Also, "fitted" equipment works in nicely with the limbs list.
> :
> :Arrrrghhh!  This could get very ugly, quickly with the above.
> 
> I'm currently tangling with this problem.

Hehe...yeah, I found this the trickiest part.  Mostly I rely on the
limb 'types', as I mentioned above.  Makes it more hard-coded than
I usually like to do things, but in this case I find it better to
actually specify hand, arm, leg, torso, and so on - if someone, for
some reason, makes a limbs list with three hands attached to each other,
you'll never by able to wear anything on the second two hands, because
gloevs just don't work like that - they can't "slide over" anything, the
way that shirts etc can.
If you wanted to take it a step further, you could actually define the
physical proportions for each limb.  This a hand is just a box and five
flexible cylinders.  This allows for long-fingered elves to require
different gloves, or a dwarf to wear a giant's pinky ring as a bracelet,
since armor is also only described by its physical capabilities.  (There
was a short thread on this topic a while back in r.g.m.a.)
We decided to simplify and not bother with the above, mostly because we
are a fantasy-based world with mostly humanoid races (all the PC races
are humanoid, at least) as well as a limited number of sizes (not many
creatures much larger than an elephant, and no pint-sizers, ie faeries).
Also, I just find it hard to visualize, which is IMO a real problem
with overly ambitious muds...I'm constantly confused why my elf, who is
roughly the same size as a human, can't wear human gloves.  Then again,
that's probably because the messages are usually too ambiguous, namely,
"It won't fit."
The other interesting thing about eq-fitting to limbs is that you have
to remove your chainmail leggings before removing your padded leggings, and
you have to remove both of these before taking off your boxer shorts.
Since I found this too tiring to do manually if you wear a lot of armor,
I made the do_remove routine recursive.  Thus someone outfitted in a full
suit of plate (usually plate on top of chainmail on top of padding) can
take off everything they are wearing by typing "remove longjohns", although
it takes rather a while.

On this topic we had another interesting development recently.  My partner
(Orion Henry, who is on this list but rarely posts) generalized the
damage routines to work better with our layers.  Lots of nice side effects
from this - for on thing, the same routine that damages flesh also damages
bone and steel and paper and stone, just using the different properties
of each material as inputs.  More interestingly to my mind is that it
automates total puncture - an arrow, if it pierces all the front layers
and all the back layers of a given object, will escape the back side
(though usually at vastly reduced velocity) and continue on its course,
hopefully (if you are the archer) to penetrate more targets, although usually
it just pins the poor guy to the wall unless someone set em up like bowling
pins for you.  Each 'layer' consists of sublayers...so a suit of platemail
is only one layer, a certain thickness of rigid metal of some sort,
but your torso is multiple layers (skin, muscle, bone, internal organs
of various types, more bone, more muscles, skin again).  Since this all
just comes from a list for each limb, you can easily make giant insects
(carapace followed by muscle followed by internal organs followed by
carapace) or other types of strange creatures.  We consider muscle to be
all the same material type, but a given race may have more or less muscle
in general, not to mention more or less in each position.  A human's
lower leg, for example, has skin, bone, muscle, skin - which makes it
a bit easier to crack bone when hit from the front.  He also told me
something about perforation, which is similar to our perforation on
exits (portcullises, jail cell doors) - a weapon with a smaller striking
area has a much better chance of slipping through that layer unhindered
than something with a larger striking area.  In practise that means that
an arrow has a much higher chance of flying through a closed portcullis
than a swung two-handed sword, and a dagger has a far better chance of
slipping between your ribs to pierce the organs within than a battle-axe.

> :Ahh, bulking container!  I hadn't thought of a name for my
> :folding/merging/splitting water objects.  Good one.  I was also
> :thinking of doing a very similar idea for swarm bodies (eg the body
> :consists of thousands of barely intelligent insects which en masse
> :have great intelligence and can manipulate objects via joint action
> :(thousands of bees descend on the boulder, and all buzzing mightily,
> :lift it away!).  In the swarm body case however the player would split
> :off sections off his main body and send them off on seperate paths.
> 
> Now this is seriously cool. And quite possible, too. I'll have to allow a
> player species based on the swarm concept at some point.

I always love mobs like "a swarm of bees" or worse yet, "a platoon of
cityguards."  For some reason I have visions of Groo standing amist
10,000 bees, taking out one at a time with his scimitars.

> :A point I'm not resolved on is how to handle component differences in
> :the group object.  Yes its a pack of wolves, but all of those wolves
> :are unique in various ways (some wear collars as escaped sled dogs,
> :some have scars, one is the leader, male/female, young/old etc).  It
> :gets more obvious when 20 players get their troll characters together. 
> :Even if they are manipulated as a unit, Does a watcher see a mob of
> :trolls, or does he see:
> :
> :  A troll with red hair.
> :  A troll with green hair.
> :  A troll with bulbous eyes and foot long boogers.
> :  A troll ...you get the idea...
> 
> Hmmm. If these trolls are all individuals based on the same basic troll,
> or if there are more than six of them, in my system, they get "bulked"
> together. See my earlier posts about fighting an army.

I actually kind of like the spam, at least for characters.  When you
walk into a crowded room you get that "woah,look at that" reaction instead
of the somewhat droll:

You see 4,673 trolls standing here.

Though certainly I can see the advantage of not seperately listing 5k trolls.
I'd like to think this might show up differently for different people,
based on your own perceptions of a given character.  Thus one
character might see..

A group of trolls are standing here.
Among them is Uglug the one-armed swap troll.

Another, who also knows Uglug, but doesn't have as good of a perception stat,
wouldn't get the second line.  On closer examination, ie "look trolls",
he'd get a "You notice Uglug among them" message.

I like this, but very tricky to implement.  We've done something basic
for polyobjects (piles of money, decks of cards) which allows for
the Rain Man syndrome (you see a pile of coins vs you see 465 coins),
but haven't taken it any further than this.

> Of course, lumping things by name is quite fun... it assumes that name
> (short desc, whatever) implies appearance, so that nature is not known,
> but appearance is.

Absolutely.  Makes it a tad easier for a single halfling to hide among
a bunch of halfings, versus a bunch of humans or a bunch of pixies.

> Ugh. No, I use a nervous system of sorts, with Impulses being passed along
> the limbs and into the body, to wherever the Character is stationed within
> the body. (In the head, for humans, etc..) Also, for example, shock can be
> passed as an Impulse, allowing a Character to be killed by pain, or some
> such. (but also creating a flinch reaction, etc, which is really nice.)

nod...good pain modeling makes combat (actually, taking damage in general)
sooooo much more interesting.  Nothing like that newbie who got an
arrow in his leg, but the healer can't get it out because he won't sit
still while he yanks it out (low pain tolerance).  "Here," says the healer,
"try some of this..." and whips out a bottle of Jack Daniels...
Although it was a little confusing doing drugs this way, because there's
a pretty stark line between pain-killing drugs and paralytic agents.
Although they are both nerver inhibitors, taking a whole bunch of Tylonol (sp?)
won't make your heart cease beating, at least not for that reason.  None
of the nurses/doctors I've talked to seem to be able to define exactly
why...I've been meaning to call up the research department at the local
university about this and a couple other drug related things, but for
right now I just have two seperate effects from drugs, "pain inhibition" and
"paralyzing agent", which often go together.