[MUD-Dev] Re: Introductions and descriptions

[Derrick Jones]

On Wed, 26 Nov 1997, Adam Wiggins wrote:
> [Richard Woolcock:]
> > > Well Bob will find out eventually if he keeps seeing this mushroom, because
> > > for the game to describe it as "Oooh a lovely mushroom", it requires Bob to
> > > perform his survival skill and he could succeed at some stage.  The only way
> > 
> > Hmmm you could use a 'chance of success' - however what I was referring to was
> > more along the lines of skill levels - thus
> > 
> > Survival 0 - You know nothing about survival.
> > Survival 1 - You know the basics, recognise simple plants, etc.
> > Survival 2 - You are intermediate, can recognise poisonous fungus, etc.
> > Survival 3 - You are skilled, blah blah blah....etc....
> > 
> > Thus if Bob has Survival < 2, he won't recognise toadstools, whilst if he
> > has Survival >= 2, he will.  Survival ROLLS would be used in 'chance' 
> > situations.
> 
> Better yet, use seeded randoms.  Thus it's still a roll, it's just always
> the same for a given object.
> For instance, in this case, use the object id of the toadstool plus
> the object id of the character as your seed.  You roll, from 0 to 100,
> a 74 (maybe adding in some 'bonus' for the type of toadstool).  As long
> as that particular character's 'shrooms skill is below 74, they won't
> recognize the mushroom.  Once they reach 74, they always recognize
> it.  Now, a different character might recognize it at 68, and another
> at 77 - giving you a bit of randomness without making looking at the
> room twenty times useful.
> This can be used quite effectively for sneaking, hiding, any sort of
> lore skill, picking locks, whatever that you want to be a little random
> without being spammable (ie, typing sneak over and over until your
> buddy tells you you're sneaking).

So, when the character first encounters the mushroom, the character checks
to see if he can identify it.  (if skill > rand(0,100) + difficulty). The
game then remembers the result of rand() and stores it with the character
for each type of mushroom.  What is gained from this as apposed keeping
track of object recognition?  Certainly not memory, as you have to
remember the roll, which is larger than a single bit (recognized/not
recognized) for each object.  
Or if you simply determine the rand() call from PC and object stats
(idnums) then you've picked which objects the player can and cannot
identify from the point of creation.  Then the characters true probability
of success for a given event is predetermined to be either 1 or 0.  Then
you'll have PC's saying  "Sorry guys, I can't sneak in this room...meet me
two rooms west...I always sneak there.".
I don't like 'skill spamming' either, but simply giving characters a 0% or
100% success rate can't be the answer.  Perhaps not letting characters
re-attempt a failure for a given amount of time.  For example, if Boffo
fails to identify the mushroom, add the mushroom identification to a list
of recent failed skill attempts, and each time Boffo attempts a skill,
loop through this list to see if the skill has been failed recently.  If
the failure is listed, simply assign a 0% chance of success.
So if Boffo walks back and forth passing the mushroom repeatedly, then she
won't 'suddenly' recognize the item.  If she passes another a week later,
however, she has a normal chance of identifying it (looking at mushroom
with a clear mind/different lighting/whatever).  The problem occurs when a
character does recognize the mushroom.  Should we just rely on the player
to remember that the mushroom they saw in the forest is poisonous?  Or is
this a place where I should 'bite the bullet' when it comes to memory and
keep a table of recognized items?  I like to think(from personal
experience as a player) that the player can remember that the 'strange
mushroom growing on the forest floor' is really the 'deadly viper
toadstool' if they are showed both strings at some point...

Gunther