[MUD-Dev] Introductions and

[Derrick Jones]

On Wed, 19 Nov 1997, Adam Wiggins wrote:

> It's funny - we used to have longish object/NPC descs typical of muds,
> but as we started to create routines to actually create descriptions the
> ones we wrote ourselves dwindled to nothing.  Mainly I'd write a
> description like:
> 
> This towering figure is built of solid muscle and has an evil gleam in
> his eye.  He is garbed in dark, worn leathers and carries a tarnished
> broadsword.  A livid white scar runs down his cheek.
> 
> Naturally the description of what they were wearing and wielding went
> away as soon as we made it mandatory for all characters to actually
> *have* the equipment that their desc says they do, along with code
> to make the description come off a little nicer than just a static list
> of what is in their equipment list.  Then we did scars, so that part went
> away.  Then we started doing varied sizes on races, plus spells that
> change your size quite a bit, so we had to code relative descriptions,
> causing things like 'towering' to be completely subjective.  And of
> course the whole evil gleam bit is bad from any perspective - what if
> he's asleep and his eyes are closed?
> 
> This is the tradeoff you make between dynamic and static descs.
> At one extreme you've got a completely static object, which is how it's
> usually handled nowadays, except perhaps for some simple descriptions about
> wound level, equipment or inventory, race or gender, age, etc.  On the
> other end you've got a completely dynamic description, which means never
> creating object descs at all - they are all generated from the object's
> actual state.  We gravitated towards the later, which I much prefer.
> But at times I do miss being able to actually *write* the descriptions
> myself.  Now I try to funnel that same creative energy into improving
> the desc-generating algorithms, but it's not quite the same.

How about having a static description that is state-dependent.  If certain
conditons are met, show the static description, otherwise show the
auto-generated description.  This would allow you both the freedom of
writing descs yourself, and the control of generated descs.  You'd have to
be careful in designing the conditions (is NPC fighting, sleeping,
injured, holding a lamp, in a dark room, etc).

Gunther