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

[Travis S. Casey]

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 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?

The rope could keep a list of who's pulling on it and in what directions.
Thus, if Bubba has strength 16 and Boffo has strength 18, there are
multiple possiblities:

Bubba and Boffo both pull north:
  rope pulls north with strength 34 (assuming a linear scale)

Bubba pulls south and Boffo pulls north:
  rope pulls north with strength 2

Bubba pulls south and Boffo pulls west:
  rope pulls northwest (assuming a mud with standard compass
  directions) with strength 24.

etc.

This would allow for tug o' war and other such fun things.  :-)
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