Resets and repops

[Nathan Yospe]

On Fri, 21 Mar 1997, Adam Wiggins wrote:

:> It calls into question all sorts of free will/action isues for a MUD,
:> much as my body stealing does, or just straight possession (you are
:> connected to the body, you can't leave it, but someone else is
:> controlling it).  The worst thing is that the God then ends up having
:> to micro-manage the charmed subject to keep him in line as vs the
:> player's line.
:
:Hmmm, could one influence the player more subtley?  Ie, instead of forcing
:the subject to attack their buddy, how about parsing the buddy's communications
:with the charmed person for their name, and replace it with something nasty?
:Ie, non-charmed guy types:
:
:> say hey fred, let's go back to town
:
:and the other guy sees:
:Bob says, 'Hey asshole, let's go back to town.'
:
:This is along the lines of our 'paranoia' stuff which causes the paranoid
:person to 'imagine things', ie
:
:Bob seems to be eyeing your sword greedily.
:
:Or,
:
:You hear a furtive step behind you.
:
:Naturally these messages _could_ have been generated by Bob typing "eval
:sword on fred" or by someone actually sneaking up on you...

I liiiike it. Genuine enforced roleplaying, by manipulating how a player
thinks... Hmmm. Consider a player who is portraying a member of an
agressive species... you have to, if you want to play the Character as a
pacifist, actually (as is reasonable) countermand your instinctive
response.

Craig throws the contents of his mug in your face. Centauran Ale drips
down your muzzle, matting your fur. You lift yourself out of your chair,
red spots flashing in front of your eyes. You feel the wood of the chair's
arms splintering under your claws. One arm flashes out, catching Craig by
his shirt. This honorless bald worm will pay...
>calm down
You get ahold of yourself, relaxing muscles and sheathing claws. Craig
drops to the floor and starts to crawl away. El'thae taps you on the
shoulder. "You OK, friend?", it asks.

Of course, having a seperate command window (three lines) and text flow
really helps for this sort of thing. I'm still trying to figure out how to
make the text flow an actual feed... right now, I've got a single block
for text, and it gets to the bottom and starts rewriting at the top,
wiping the two lines below it, similar to the standard unix talk utility.
Anyone know how to implement, in telnet, a system with a standard text
feed, but starting four lines above the bottom of the screen? (the bottom
three lines for commands, and the fourth line for a divider of dashes)

   __    _   __  _   _   ,  ,  , ,  
  /_  / / ) /_  /_) / ) /| /| / /\            First Light of a Nova Dawn
 /   / / \ /_  /_) / \ /-|/ |/ /_/            Final Night of a World Gone
Nathan F. Yospe - University of Hawaii Dept of Physics - yospe at hawaii.edu