[MUD-Dev] A flamewar startingpoint.

[Chris Gray]

[Gunther:]
:You then have problems keeping characters in the same time-frame.  Say,
:for example Party_A camps for the night with no problems, and Party_B must
:actively control the nights events.  Party_A sets out once again the next
:morning and passes the sight of Party_B's camp long before Party_B is
:finished with the prior nights activities.  You then have Party_A
:observing a scene that hasn't been defined.  With a 2.5 hour day, an
:8-hour night would take 50 minutes, during which time the characters are
:unconscious and therefore the players would be forced to sit and wait
:until they regained control of their characters.
:
:There might be a way to resolve this problem by create non-linear
:time-scales(such as allowing the night to pass more quickly if there is
:nothing within range to affect the area where camp is made), but
:implimenting such a thing would prove quite difficult.

The time-scale problems had occurred to me, as well. This kind of problem
is likely a reason why very few MUDs even implement that kind of time - it
likely gets in the way a lot. On a single-player adventure game, you can
play as many tricks with time as you want, but that doesn't work with
multiple players.

It occurs to me that an analog here are the various multiplayer "Empire"
games. There, passage of time is quite important - it brings production
and BTU's. However, it runs at a fixed rate, determined beforehand, for
everyone. Players typically must connect 2 or 3 times a day in order to
do their updates. There is also the concept of a "quick game", where time
runs a lot faster than normal, so that the entire game is over in a weekend,
rather than taking a couple of months.

I'm not real sure how this applies to MUDs, however. I think perhaps we
have to either ignore time, or we have to treat it universally consistent,
otherwise visible (to the players) problems can appear. If the concepts of
day and night (and seasons) are to be introduced, then they will have to
be done universally throughout the MUD. Personally, I suspect very few
MUDs would ever want to introduce them. Perhaps a vampire MUD could make
use of them by having drastically different activities at night versus
day, but that could be very constraining for some players. Perhaps it
would only work if the time-scale was carefully picked, so players would
know when (in real time) they had to play, in order to do what they wanted.
Many players would find that an imposition, however.

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