Mixture

[Nathan Yospe]

On Tue, 25 Mar 1997, Furball wrote:

:On Sun, 23 Mar 1997, Adam Wiggins wrote:
:
:> > Regarding command parsing, in NathanY's example:
:> >  
:> > > Use spear on bob
:> 
:> I don't like this syntax at all.  I don't desire to use it as a player,
:> for the same reason that I don't desire to try to implement it.
:> This falls into the same category, I feel, as typing 'aquire money' and having
:> your character automatically decide what the best method for aquring money
:> is, and then going out and doing it.  Not only is it ambiguous, but I don't
:> see how it adds to the game at all.
:
:Me neither, I asked because I was curious.  As a player, I wouldn't
:type 'use' in a critical situation if I didn't know what the outcome was,
:I'd rather type 'smack bob over the head with the rifle butt'.  If I was
:quest solving though, I'd end up typing 'use' in every location with every
:object in hope of solving the quest by brute force.

Doesn't work like that with a natural language parser. You use something
with greater degrees of control depending on how specific your command
was. "north" is interpreted by the situation, making you possibly "run
north anyway" (ignore the closed glass door because that pack of wild
wolverines scares the bejeezus out of you, and at the threat of broken
glass doesn't really bother you at this point) or "skip north" (You just
got a whif of Dr. Chyurwatalsia's patented whoopie juice, and your head is
somewhere several miles above your shoulders) or some such. Of course,
sometimes influences control your actions anyway, but this is the way it
is when your rational self is trying to exert its control over your body's
instincts. If you don't really consider your actions carefully, if you do
them in an absent minded way (use a generic command) you often don't quite
do what you intended. Of course, the NLP does have a memory of your
"normal" way of doing things. This means that you build up habits. If you
often "pound nail with shoe", and then you type "use shoe" and there is a
nail present, in a position to be hammered, you might well hammer the nail
instead of putting the shoe on your foot. Without the nail there, you
would just wear the shoe. Unless there was a cockroach around. (I kinda
defaulted that as the proper use of a shoe. <sheepish grin>) I guess the
key here is that verbs are linked to the Character, not to objects...
The objects never do much, of course, unless the player knows what to do
with them, or has specified _what_ to do with them. An electician can
"use" a circuit spanner perfectly. A ditch digger gets a message like "You
puzzle over the doohicky confusedly for several minutes, trying to figure
out what it does." and a similar message to those around. (The electrician
sees _what_ the doohicky is, of course)

:[...stuff...]
:
:> Hmm, this also brings up the issue of number-hiding.  Good or bad, and if
:> so, how to implement it?  I realize most of the folks on this list come
:> from an LP background; my experience with LPs has been that they show you
:> all the numbers right up front, at least those that have stats and skills
:> as a major part of gameplay.  I cut my teeth on Diku, however, (please,
:
:That's generally the case.  There's only a few LPs that do hide the stats.
:DartMUD is the only one which I've been to which hides everything and it
:actually works.  Genesis hides everything as well but each and every
:number has an equivalent worded version.  Eg: Skill level 10 = seasoned
:novice, skill level 11 = vetern novice, skill level 30 = seasoned student,
:it's just two sets of words combined to form a level, which I think
:defeats the point.

Well, that's plain useless.

:Some LPs just hide the skills exact level with words and leave the stats
:alone, probably because the same LPs evolved from the original 2.4.5 lib
:and the players liked the way stats were in numerical form but didn't
:object to skills being vague. 

Hmmm. Strange. Then there are Dikus... everything is numerical but dealing
damage, where you have the numbers transformed by range into these stupid
>>EVISCERATES<< messages (yes, I actually did come up with gorier versions
myself when I first started coding a ROM way back when. Hey, I'm reformed.
I would never do anything like that on Physmud++... um. At least, not on
Physmud++ v.5. I did kinda have a set of damage messages for each type of
damage (burn, freeze, etc) on v.4...)

:Is it good or bad?  Depends what kind of players do you want to attract.
:It's true the majority of players like numbers, they *know* that somewhere
:in the mud there's a number to represent how far they've got.  If you want
:a 150 odd players online in your mud, stick to numbers, guilds, parties
:and levels.  Personally, I prefer words and being completely blind as long
:as the mud isn't too stat orientated.  I went to one mud which said:
:Don't worry about levels or stats, they don't mean anything, just enjoy
:yourself and roleplay.  I found this false as to get anywhere required
:levels and roleplaying was greatly hindered by channels and the way the
:admin would say OOC stuff on the channels whilst telling us players off
:for following his example.

Loverly. Now, Singularity 2 will be a genuine "don't worry about levels or
stats" because there will be no levels, period, and stats won't save you
more than a single blow from most attacks. Preparation, quick thinking,
and finely honed skills are what matter.

:> Well, basically what we're talking about here is deciding what the player
:> should 'notice'.  There are only so many things you can keep track of;
:> I can't think of any way to code the above in any generalized way.
:> So the method I mentioned (keeping track of what one character's normal
:> perecption of what another should look like) is a pretty good way to fake it
:> and still keep things reasonable.  This also brings in the Silke effect
:> to a certain extent.  Two character, both know Silke (possibly by different
:> names).  At first:
:
:[nice example of Silke and his alter ego Amber of Koshu snipped]
:
:Ouch, that's really complex.  This could be extended to other senses as
:well, like over comms everyone would have a different voice and a player
:could recognise different voices instead of printing out:
:
:[100 Mhz] Ceilidh says: Um.
:
:It'll be:
:
:[100 Mhz] A baritone voice says: Um.
:
:Then there's the fact that people sound different over some comms device
:and if the player met Ceilidh, the two won't necessarily recognise each
:other.
:
Ach, this could get ugly. But fun.
:
:Oh, how do you view your mud as a whole?  Do you have plans for the next
:year on how it'll evolve?  For example, I was originally admin of a
:fantasy mud, the plan was to get the basic mudlib working then build very
:small areas like a village.  As more players enter start playing the game,
:we start putting more areas online and expand the village into a town,
:then into a city instead of entering the mud world with a full blown city
:(pain to design from scratch anyhow, asides, I was hoping to have the
:players inspire me for city extensions).

Hmmm. We have the framework for a two galaxy system, but need to add
another hundred or so well written 50 - 100 room "planets", which really
comes out to maybe 100 - 500 rooms each, plus programming, denizens,
items, landscaping, etc... to this galaxy alone. We've finished about 40
of these planets so far, though a lot of them need updating and touching
up.

:The current plan atm is to create this universe (all 3 solar systems),
:then keep working on it and making it more and more detailed, as
:intersystem travel is uncommon, maybe even have each solar system on a
:different server (then I could have really complex systems :).  Once the
:player population reaches something sizeable to abuse, I was
:hoping to stage lots of special one off creator run quests.  These little
:quests lead up to one great big finale involving some glorious plot
:endings.  And...then...I'd close the mud down and work on a sequel.

My universe is two galaxies, though the entire galaxy is not explorable,
no matter what (you need seeds for wormhole generation, something to
anchor onto... and you can only explore where you can get on a given
planet. Often, planets have extensive uncharted zones... these are
randomly generated as needed, so require little in the way of resources,
and can add a large element of the "beyond the range of civilization"
portion of a planet... planets swamped in tech can be extended in the same
manner, if a random city script is written.

:In case you're wondering why the mud should close down, it's coz the
:finale involves opening up a gateway to the rest of the galaxy and there's
:zero chance of me even considering making up an entire galaxy.
:
*grin* This is why I've written that split history model into my game. It
is a little sacrifice in realism, though with wormholes all over the
place, it is actually quite accurate in terms of physics, but it preserves
the world, making it reusable and dynamic at the same time.

:About inviting George Reese to this list, one word:  Eeek!
:Just my experience in dealing with him hasn't been something to write home
:about.

Agreed. I'm in the process of flaming him again on r.g.m.admin. I know,
rather immature, but it _is_ fun... but I'd rather keep it out of this
list.

   __    _   __  _   _   ,  ,  , ,  
  /_  / / ) /_  /_) / ) /| /| / /\            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