[MUD-Dev] Re: fwd [MUD-DEV] Re: Room descriptions, was Re: Roleplaying

[J C Lawrence]

On Sun, 26 Apr 1998 00:27:58 -0700 
John Bertoglio<alexb at internetcds.com> wrote:

> From: Richard Woolcock <KaVir at dial.pipex.com
> Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.admin 
> Date: Saturday, April 25, 1998 3:23 PM 
> Subject: Re: Room descriptions, was Re: Roleplaying

...discussion of anonymous objects, ad-hoc grouping objects, various
other forms of collective handling etc ellided...

For those interested its worth hitting the archives for this area.  It
has been a heavily contributed to thread at least 5 distinct times
that I can think of.

>> 1) Generate a single mob called 'a crowd of citizens', that have a
>> flag set making them impossible to attack.  The description of the
>> crowd can be literally what you would see when looking into the
>> crowd.  This is the easiest way, and it sucks.

Yospe in particular has some interesting ideas on computationally
handling both the attention/perception level of the viewer and the
automatic generation of the crowd's activities along with the trivia
that one's eye catches in wandering (the small boy pinching his baby
sister, the letch stealing an anonymous leer, the mother struggling
with her heavy bags etc).

>> 2) Write a form of the 'combine' code to work for people with a
>> 'citizen' flag, similar to that used for objects in Merc.
>> Depending how many people you see in the room, you should see "a
>> couple of citizens stand here", "a small group of people stand
>> here"...etc..."a huge crowd of people jostle you around".  In the
>> 'look' code, the parameter 'crowd' could list every single person
>> in non-combine format.  This is probably the best way out of the
>> three I have suggested, its easy to implement, but could get spammy
>> with lots of people.

This is what I term "anonymous groups".

>> 3) Write a form of mob-joining code, similar to the object-joining
>> used in smaug.  The result would be a single mob, called "a crowd"
>> or whatever, which would spit out individuals as needed (ie if you
>> attack the crowd, one of the people in it would get split off from
>> the crowd mob for you to fight).

The really interesting part arrives in situations ala:

  > l  // recognition of "interesting" objects in anonymous group.
  There a LOT of humans mulling about!  Suddenly you see your friend
  Bubba!

or:

  > l  // Automatic classification of objects into seperate anonymous
       // groups depending on context (ie you and they are trolls).
   There are a LOT of humans mulling about, with a small crowd of what
  look like Uggurk clan trolls hunched over their drinks in the
  corner.

or:

  > l  // You are stupid
  You are a bear of little brain.  There are many things here, all
  alike...except that some are different and alike, and some are
  merely different.

or:

  > l  // Scaling of objects and resulting groups appropriately.
  Bubba walks away to the north, crunching small running things
  (humans?) underfoot as he goes.

or:  

  > l  // You are very small
  You see nothing but shoes.  Shoes and bare feet.  Smelly bare feet.
  Lots of them.  Hundreds of them.

etc.

> Had similar thoughts about player and player/npc adventuring
> parties. Our system creates a party object when the leader (a player
> with suitable leadership and other skills) announces the formation
> of group. This party is for all intents and purposes another player,
> (it is added to the character database). This "character" had
> certain default characteristics which make it interesting. It
> derives it stats and some skills from the characters who join the
> party. It inherits excess cargo capacity from the characters as well
> as other things. This party is moved through the world by the
> leader. The leader can issue a few party commands as well as have
> full control over his own character. Players in the party have full
> control over their character but a using a movement command will
> automatically remove them from the party (after a warning message is
> overridden).  Messages which target the "Party" character are shown
> to all members of the group.

I'd recommend looking at the Seargent/Orc thread that ran sometime
last year as well.  As I recall it was a split off from one of the
King/Noble/Breeder/Fighter Orc scenario threads (there have been
several).  It was mostly tailored to intelligent autonomous ad-hoc and
dynamic group activity by mobiles (automatic election of leader,
functional base of leader, etc), but has other points of relevance.

As always, please feel free to resurrect the old thread.

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                               Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------(*)                     Internet: claw at under.engr.sgi.com
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...

--
MUD-Dev: Advancing an unrealised future.