[MUD-Dev] Re: generic objects, behaviors

[Chris Gray]

[Jeff K:]
:I see a rather different approach, but i coem from the traditional
:adventure game backaground as well as game design/implementation.
:A question-- how many of us doubted the reality of the Colossal cCave and
:the Flood Control dam?

I don't really remember. I remember spending a lot of time trying to get
into the bank vault! (This was on the unified original Zork, rather than
on the 3-part Infocom version.)

:Game design is about experience and illusion, not reality and all
:successful games I knwo of have as much if nto more smoke and mirrors then
:they have actual simulations.
:
:Guess Im sayign I fidn the whoel approach here of questionable practical
:value.

In some ways I agree with you. The problem is that I tend to be somewhat
of a perfectionist. Doing a really seamless "smoke and mirrors" is quite
hard - you have to think of darn near everything beforehand, and explicitly
handle it. If you build a more general system, more interactions just
fall out by themselves.

Personally, I wanted to be able to do full on-line building and programming.
The LP-way of deleting and reloading things seemed quite clumsy, so
fully dynamic was the way I went. I glanced at the way things like Diku's
worked (hard coded C), and decided right away that that wouldn't do what
I wanted. Besides, as a programming language weenie, any excuse to
invent a new language and make parser/interpreter/pretty-printer was good
for me!

--
Chris Gray   cg at ami-cg.GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA