[MUD-Dev] Re: regulating player-created objects

[Adam Wiggins]

On Wed, 29 Apr 1998, Dan Shiovitz wrote:
> Anyway, so it seems like players creating objects is a major part of
> any sort of "big ecosystem" game (ie, one where players play more
> roles than "insert coins into circulation; remove loaves of bread and 
> monsters from circulation"). I know a bunch of people here are working
> on variants of this. I was wondering what kind of regulation there is
> on the objects players can create. 

This is possibly one of the toughest issues.  It all relates back to "at
what level am I modeling the world?"  As someone pointed out, if all you
do is model the individual atoms and their reactions with one another, you
could potentially do about anything.  Naturally this is not feasible just
yet for a number of reasons.  The main thing is that the effort for which
it takes to get specific "neat" stuff in your universe is inversely 
proportional to how atomic you set things up.  It's for this reason that
most muds have opted for simple scripting along the lines of:

NPC::Dragon::AttackRoutine[chance to occur = 30%]
begin
   if myself.Fatigue < 0
      return

   myself.InRoom.Message("The dragon breathes deadly flame!")
   myself.InRoom.Damage(DAM_FIRE, dice(4, 6))
   myself.AffectFatigue(-10)
end


Thus it's very easy for anyone to implement a fire-breathing dragon.  If,
however, you're trying to model realistic creature anatomies, or realistic
room damage, or are using non-room systems (all things that some folks on 
this list have attempted), it gets much more complicated.  You need to
create some sort of streaming fire that lasts for X amount of time, you
need to calculate the effect of the fire on the blast area (meaning the
floor, the furniture near it, any characters near it, anything the
characters are wearing or hoilding), how the fire originates and then
affects the dragon's anatomy.  What happens when a brave warrior shoves a
lance through the dragon's belly when it's building up its internal fires?
And on and on.  Naturally the results of all of this stuff can be very
cool.  But this is just an illustration of how difficult it is to
implement "standard" mud devices.

> For instance, say I have the woodworking skill. Assuming I have some
> logs, appropriate tools, and nails, I ought to be able to build a
> table. This seems like a reasonable use of the skill. But how does it
> work? Are there are a list of five things I can create with
> woodworking, so I type "woodwork #5" and it says "ok, you create a
> table"? I guess the alternative would be to make no such game object

That's all I've ever seen.  My first run in with it was the tanning skill
on (I believe) the SillyMUD base, where you typed "tan corpse leggings" to
get a pair of leggings based on the race of the critter that died.
More recently, watching my friends play Ultima Online I see them doing
carpentry by clicking on a piece of wood and getting a menu with icons of
all the different things they can try to create - the same thing only
visual.

> as "tables", but you'd do something like "carve flat piece of
> wood. nail sticks to the bottom of the flat piece of wood" and presto,
> there's your table. This is obviously more flexible than the previous
> method but also pretty clearly harder to do. Or is there some
> in-between stage that I'm missing?

I would imagine the effect you describe here would be suited only for a
graphical environment (realtime 3d to be exact).  There it's very easy to
have an object "a chunk of uncut wood" that you apply a saw to and the
player can shape new objects of whatever shape they want.  Making table
legs is therefore you and your character's abillity to guide the saw the
way you want it.  Making boxes for legs is going to be much easier than
making nice rounded ones.  From there you attach them however you like to
other pieces of wood.  The only thing that defines it as a "table" is
whoever owns it; the server doesn't care.  The physics of the world
(collision handling and gravity to be exact) will take care of the fact
that a well-built table will have a level top where you can put whatever
you like.

As cool as this is, I imagine a server that actually puts this to
practical use is still a ways off.  Is there something inbetween?
I think so; I would call this "name compositing."  The tanning on dikumud
was a basic example of this: when you did "tan corpse leggings" you always
got a pair of leggings, but they were prefixed by the race creature you
killed.  One could easily extend this...see below.

> Regardless, once I've made a table somehow, can I customize it? It
> seems like you really have to let players do this to make object
> creation of any interest and have the hopes of creating a real economy
> where someone could sell tables for a living. But how do you let
> people create tables that look like "This table is made out of
> polished oak with a carving of a dragon inlaid in dark stone on the
> surface" but not tables that look like "*** YOU HAVE DIED ***" or some
> other sort of joke items, which AFAICT totally blow away any system's
> chances for realism. 

Right.  The trick is to make them still have to choose from a fixed list,
just make that list very large and multi-dimensional.  Thus you might
have:

  < i
  a piece of oak
  some nails
  a saw
  a hammer
  a brush
  a pan of dark finish
  a small brush
  a small container of gold paint
  < woodwork oak into table
  You begin working at the piece of oak.
  ...
  You finish creating an oaken table.
  < l
  You see here a raw oaken table.
  < l table
  The table is simple and made of raw oak.
  < woodwork table with scrollwork on legs
  You carve some scrollwork into the legs.
  < l table
  The table has some impressive scrollwork on the legs and is made of raw
  oak.
  < woodwork table with inlaid dragon on surface
  You carve an intricate dragon into the surface of the table.
  < l
  You see here a raw oaken table inlaid with a dragon.
  < finish table
  You hold a brush in your right hand.
  You grab a pan of woodfinish in your left hand.
  You apply the finish to the table.
  < l
  You see here an dark oaken table inlaid with a dragon.
  < gild table
  You painstakingly apply gold paint to the table's scrollwork.
  < l table
  The table has some impressived gold-gilded scrollwork on the legs and a
  gold-guilded dragon carved into the surface.  It is made of darkly
  finished oak. 


I would assume, of course, that someone with insufficient woodworking
skill might end up with:

  < l
  You see here a deeply gouged oaken table.
  < l table
  The table is scratched and gouged on the surface and legs.  Gold paint
  has been splatered here and there.  It is made of darkly finished oak.

Thus wasting the (expensive? hard to acquire?) materials.

This is still a finite amount of choices, but seems quite a bit more
rewarding to me than "woodwork table -> You now have a table."

> I know other people have thought about this more than me, so has
> anyone come up with a good solution? (one obvious one is that wizards
> occasionally check out newly created items and dispose of those that
> aren't in the spirit of the game. But that's a pain in the
> ass. another is to disallow player customization and describe the
> table based on character skill level, so a woodworking 10 person makes
> "This is a rough wooden table, sturdy but with lots of splinters" and
> a woodworking 90 person makes the previously-mentioned dragon
> table. But what if the woodworking 90 person wanted to make a rough
> table?

This reminds me a little of our skill-modifying commands to allow people
to teach.  It works like so:

  Bob says, 'I'll give you three jade rings of you'll teach me swords!'
  < consider bob swordsmanship
  Bob's swordsmanship seems to be very poor.
  < skills swordsmanship
  Your skill in swordsmanship is excellent.
  < skill swordsmanship on bob at poor
  You will now use your swordsmanship against Bob as if it were poor.
  < say okay, let's spar

So, I could imagine if for whatever reason you wanted to imitate a bad
carpenter:

  < skill woodworking on table at terrible
  You will now use your woodworking skill on the table is if it were terrible.

> Yet another solution is to say all items get made by wizards,
> so if you want a table, you place an order with Bob the NPC woodworker
> and he carves you one to order, unless you give a silly
> description. But this is even more of a pain in the ass than wizards
> just checking out new items.)

Yeah, this defeats the whole purpose, which is (I assume) to make the
place appealing to players that fall into Bartle's "explorer" category.
Getting some member of the admin to rename your ordinary table is hardly
any fun at all.

Adam


--
MUD-Dev: Advancing an unrealised future.