[MUD-Dev] Re: Issues from the digests and Wout's list

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On Sat, 24 May 1997 11:38:24 PST8PDT, clawrenc at cup.hp.com wrote:

>You would have loved the stuff I did for ShadowHouse:  
>
>  The Blue Grass Path was a transdimensional path.  

I've done similar sorts of areas... it's tough to design it in such a
way that it's elegant. Really a sweet idea.
  
>  Fortress Fract involved retrieving the ever lost and ever wandering
>Princess Julia and returning here to her to King Mandel.  Simple on
>the face of it, but getting to Fortress Fract involved either solving
>a large portion of the Blue Grass Path, or re-constructing the Human
>Powered Catapult with the appropriate human skins (what it was tied
>together with) and climbing aboard to be shot towards the castle
>(weight dependant -- how much you carried determined where you landed,
>and whether you lived or died upon landing).

NICE. You are twisted, demented, and sick. I love that.

>  Once in the Fortress (which resided in the middle of an impassible
>lake (monsters and vortexes -- thus the catapult or the BGP))
>returning to shore was equally difficult.  

Not more? Gee. I'm disappointed. ;)

>  The fortress itself was another variation on a maze, but this time a
>maze where the player's actions mutated the maze at runtime.  

Oh, GOD. I have been wrestling with getting something like this to work
right in a game... I have all the proper working code in place, but it's
the actual design of the maze which drives me nuts. I don't want any
possibility of someone getting stuck someplace where they can't get out.

>  Oh yeah, and the entire floor at each level was also formed like one
>of those tile games 

Holy shit. I love it. 

>  At the bottom of all this all wandered the lost Princess Julia.  At
>the top in the Throne Room stood King Mandel.  Find Julia, persuade
>her to follow you, re-catch her every time she wanders off, and get
>her all the way back to Mandel, all while a dozen or so other players
>were attempting the same 

*LOL* I love this. This sounds great. I would have been screaming and
carrying on in less than ten minutes.

>The difference I think here, as compared to Miro's view, is that I'm
>conciously manipulating the language I chose and my character's
>actions to in turn manipulate the viewpoint other players have of that
>character.  Its less a question of playing a role in a play, than of
>artificing a scheme using the people about one.  There's a *lot* of
>scheming and exact plotting and placement required -- which is
>probably why I don't do it anymore.

But it's so much more rewarding when it works!

-+[caliban at darklock.com]+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
 I am here to grind your eyes harder into the miasmic bile of life; to 
 show you the truth and the beauty in the whisper of steel on silk and 
 the crimson scent of blood as it rises to meet the caress of a blade. 
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