[MUD-Dev] Re: Affordances and social method (Was: Re: Wi

[s001gmu at nova.wright.edu]

On Fri, 7 Aug 1998, J C Lawrence wrote:

> A thought:
> 
>   Many games have a concept of different volumes of speech, such that
> a whisper is only heard by those close by, normal speech has further
> propagation, and shouting can be heard over a wide area if not the
> whole game.
> 
>   The idea is to make gags or squelches a modifier on the above
> system.
> 
>   As the number of gags increased on a player, the distance
> propagation of his speech, or of his proxies speech would be decreased
> proportionally.  Ultimately perhaps he would have to shout to be heard
> by someone standing immediately beside him.
> 
>   Any number of interesting dide effects could occur here, including
> corrupting the speech strings as the gag load increased to adding
> "positive" gags which _add_ volume/clarity to the subject's speech
> rather than supressing it (whispers are heard across the land), or
> making the effect of the gags be geographic and (inversely)
> proportional to the distance between the gag author and the gag
> subject.

Sounds like a simple extension of the basic communications model:

source->encoder->filter->medium->filter->decoder->destination.

where the filters are your gags.  Filters can enhance, weaken or distort
the signal.

-Greg