[MUD-Dev] A flamewar startingpoint.

[Derrick Jones]

On Fri, 14 Nov 1997, Chris Gray wrote:

> [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.
> :
> 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.

One solution that would work for a few muds would be throw out the
assumption that the players are humans(or very human-like) and therefore
require sleep.  Perhaps borrowing quite literally from the player vs.
character argument and labeling characters as 'robots' would eliminate the
need for regular sleep patterns.  That or designing the characters
biologies in such a way as to not require sleep.  Either way, It would
become very transparent if a good deal of thought wasn't put into
designing a world created by non-sleepers (How would night-time and
daytime activities differ, and why(that is, if you happen to base your
system on a day/night world)? Would there evolve a concept of 'free time'
if inhabitants didn't _need_ to stop working?). I'd imagine the social,
economic, political, and ecological systems would differ quite
substanially from that of a sleeping world.

All life forms in my world, for example, are merely physical
manifestations of a type of universal life-energy pool.  (To some up a
long story, when this energy is separated from the pool it begins to lose
its cohesion with the rest, and begins to become self-aware.)  All life
forms need to constantly replenish/increase their level of life-energies
either directly (magic) or indirectly (eating another life-form), and most
of my mud-physics results from a few rules governing the link between life
and the different forms of these life-energies.

Sleep isn't needed in this world, but inactivity decreases the drain of
life energies (and since the absorption can be seen as fairly constant on
a most basic level such as digestion of foods, healing rates would tend to
increase through self-induced trances(a.k.a. sleeping))  This model also
allows for a smiplified point-based system, as physical attacks simply
drain from the image a character has of itself because either they are
either being physically separated from self (i.e. losing blood) or believe
they are being harmed.  Note that a character is only being killed because
they _believe_ they are being killed by a swordthrust.  'Death' is the
point in which the character realizes that they are merely a part of the
Universal Whole (and therefore return to the life-pool for further
adventures as part of the pool until they manage to separate themselves
from the life-pool once again).

Woah, I really rambled there...I apologize for that digression.
Anyways, I realize this system isn't entirely new, but I haven't seen it
IMPed in any active muds.  

Gunther
Any comments or questions can be directed to anyone who will listen.