[MUD-Dev] Re: clients anyone?...

[Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt]

On Tue, 11 Aug 1998, Adam J. Thornton wrote:
> >     All this happens without my being interrupted by the flow of
> >     information from crab to ELIZA.  I don't see the messages, and
> >     I don't need to be in the same room as the crab when people
> >     speak to him.
>=20
> Nice!  This sounds like a good way to implement relatively simple
> scriptable NPCs, actually: if they just have their own client, can pars=
e
> the incoming data, and respond appropriately then I don't have to build=
 it
> explicitly into my server or my database model; I can just create an NP=
C
> object and let its client script handle its responses.

If you want complex scripting, it would be a good idea to extend the
protocol to handle pre-processed data. In reality, your in-game model
of the world is translated into nasty ambigous text for reading of humans=
,
or even worse - graphics. Unless you want to do some very nasty AI attemp=
t
at understaning the messages (graphics!) intended for the player you=20
should extend your good flexible protocol with an AI stream mode that=20
allows for nicely formatted events to be parsed to the remote NPC.

Player> Buffy pick up the hammer.
AI> Pickup((Player 52364),(Object 23647)).

or something to that affect.


Hans Henrik St=E6rfeldt         | =20
email: bombman at diku.dk        |  voice:      +45 40383492=20
  hhs at cbs.dtu.dk              |  voice work: +45 45252425
phone-mail:                   |  address:
  40383492 at sms.tdm.dk         |       Hans Henrik St=E6rfeldt,
WWW-home                      |       Dybendalsvej 74 2. th,
  http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/hhs/  |       2720 Vanl=F8se, Danmark.
                              |
Student of Computer Science   | Scientific programmer at Center for
  and Information Psychology. |   Biological Sequence Analysis,
  at University of Copenhagen |   Technical University of Denmark.