[MUD-Dev] Modeling spells/skills as collections of affects

[Shawn Halpenny]

On Wed, 10 Sep 1997, Maddy wrote:

> Previously, Shawn Halpenny wrote....

> > - Bubba pulls the rope and the rock moves (the rock receives a
> >   message to be moved (probably came from the rope) and queries its
> >   list of modifiers.  Rock sees the rope modifier and calls a method
> >   on it that lowers the dex required by the action by 3 (and perhaps
> >   spews out a message fragment about being able to move the rock now
> >   that the rope is tied to it).  Execution returns to the move rock
> >   method and the action succeeds since Bubba's dex was 17.)
> 
> The way I see it, is that when Bubba (who is holding the rope)
> tries to move away from the rock, before it does lets him, it first
> tries and moves the rope.  The rope since it has the "attached to"
> attribute, will then also check to see if what it is "attached to"
> can move and is not the object that was checking to see if it can
> move.  Same goes for the rock.  Unfortunately I hadn't thought
> about using strength or dex to limit whether the rock could be
> moved.  

I had presumed that there's no state where Bubba is either holding or not
holding the rope.  He ties the rope to the rock and when he pulls the rope
the rock moves.  No one actually comes in and sees Bubba pulling on the
rope.  I only chose to mention dex because the way I'm going with this,
each modifier has to know about what attributes the action checks so that
it knows if it is supposed to do its modifying.

> I guess the rock would "ask" the rope what strength it had, who in
> turn would "ask" bubba, since the rope wasn't the original object
> who was moving.  What if Boffo comes along and starts pulling the
> rope as well?

That adds a twist and brings up an interesting point:  how to deal
with actions performed by more than one person at a time, where the
efforts of each person involved should be considered in tandem toward
the goal?  

For me, there's no concept of two people pulling on the rope at the
same time and I'm not sure how I could handle it yet.  The same sort
of thing applies to the "dig panama canal" command:  how to have 20
people all digging the Panama Canal at the same time, and work
therefore proceeding much more quickly than if only Bubba were
toiling away?

> l
Bubba is here digging the Panama Canal.
> help bubba
Sorry, digging the Panama Canal is a one-man job.

I wouldn't want to see that.  Nor would I want to see two Panama Canals
being created side by side because Bubba and Boffo both decided to start
digging in the same room.

Perhaps the grouping system could be used.  If you are in the same group
and in the same place as Bubba and you've typed "help bubba" or somesuch,
your stats are merged with Bubba's whenever the digging action is
performed.  I seriously doubt this would work in all cases and could lead
to an occasionally unwanted situation where Bubba doesn't have say, the
intelligence to learn a spell, but if Boffo decides to "help bubba" as
Bubba's learning the spell, suddenly he could catch on.  That example was
rather weak, but it illustrates the possibility of situations where you
wouldn't want helping someone to benefit that person in such a blatant
fashion.  How to distinguish the situations?

Anyone else already doing something like this?

--
Shawn Halpenny

"I bought me an illusion and I put it on the wall
 I let it fill my head with dreams and I had to have them all"
                                        - "Locomotive"