[MUD-Dev] Virtual rooms (was: RP thesis...)

[Shawn Halpenny]

clawrenc at cup.hp.com wrote:
> 
> In <Pine.LNX.3.96.970518090712.185C-100000 at mpc.dyn.ml.org>, on
> 05/18/97
>    at 09:07 AM, Matt Chatterley <root at mpc.dyn.ml.org> said:
> 
> >We have both normal rooms, and our own mappable virtual room areas,
> >you can create a map such as:
> 
> >XXXXXXXXXX     X = impassable terrain
> >**########     * = swamp
> >*######@##     # = grassland
> >XXXXXXXXXX     @ = a lake
> 
> >and set a scale for each room - this map would be converted into
> >normal rooms with randomly set sizes, descriptions, weather suited to
> >the area, and so forth.
> 
> The problem with virtual rooms, which can be handled is when players
> make a change to a virtual room which requires them to become
> permanent, or the notice something in a virtual room and refer to it
> later expecting it to be permanent.
> 
> eg:
> 
>   > l
>   You are in a forest...(desc of forest)
>   > cut blaze on tree
>   You cut your sigil on a nearby tree.
> 
> or:
> 
>   > l
>   You are in a forest...yada yada something about an oak tree.
>   ...much later...
>   > say "Just go east in the forest until you see the Oak tree,
>   and then head west..."

Is this something better handled by modifying the room description or
creating an object in the room that functions as a tree with a sigil cut
upon it?  I envision doing this with the object as a tree.  The room would
have a method to allow an occupant to "cut" something on a tree (or some
other synonymous variation).  The method then creates the tree-with-sigil
that people would see.  So far, I think this will be less
resource-intensive for me, since if I were to make the new room desc
permanent, I'd have to modify my set of actual rooms (in effect taking a
resource-cheap virtual room and make it into a comparatively
resource-expensive real room).  If I make the tree an object, the set of
virtual rooms can remain, and all I need to worry about is a new object ID
mapped to a particular location (regardless of whether it's a real or
virtual room).  As well, making the tree an object makes it cheap to have
other trees-with-sigils at any other place in the world, without creating
rooms left and right to accomodate a single change in each (i.e. it's fine
to modify the room desc if you cut the sigil into ten trees, but say you
cut it into a hundred thousand of them...).

OTOH, this isn't as much of a factor if there is a fixed number of actual
rooms making up the entire world (but this is not my case).

Thoughts?

--
Shawn Halpenny

"I spilled spot remover on my dog.  Now he's gone."
                                            - Steven Wright