[MUD-Dev] Re: Eye movement.

[quzah]

-----Original Message-----
From: James Wilson <jwilson at rochester.rr.com>
To: mud-dev at kanga.nu <mud-dev at kanga.nu>
Date: Thursday, August 13, 1998 5:52 AM
Subject: [MUD-Dev] Re: Eye movement.

[Snip my first blurb on eye movement]

[Snip reply about varying social aspects due to viewer's state
 and abilities. +example]

>One could also construct misperceptions between races, nations, and
economic
>classes of humans, of course. Members of a clan might notice details
significant
>only to their clan (or perhaps to an opposing clan).

Yes, it seems like you could come up with some really good examples
of this, automatic renaming and such, as opposed to long blurbs would
be good. Also, I guess you would want to save the 'last known state'
of the character. So you could end up with something like:

Boffo enters the room, you notice something a bit odd about his
appearance, but you don't imediatly place it. Then it hits you,
Boffo is missing his right arm! Now that you think about it, he
seems to be limping, and is nearly naked, scratched and beaten
to a pulp.

Yeah, it's a poor example, but I thought it was funny ;)

[Snip my poor example of clinking armor.]

>this sort of automatic perception would be good, but one must also consider
that
>we 'see' things differently as we are exposed to them once, twice, many
times.
>That is, if 'the stranger' comes through here several times in ten minutes,
the
>viewer doesn't need the full description that she got the first time she
saw
>him, AND should probably not call him 'the stranger' after she's seen him
>several times. 'The little bug-eyed man' would be more apropos.

Agreed on this.

>There is also a fuzzy distinction here between perception ("clink!") and
>interpretation ("clinks are probably the sound of heavy armor"). Some
>interpretation is a Good Thing in order to make people bigots (which is
only
>realistic) and make the environment a richer, but too much interpretation
is a
>Bad Thing when it gets in the way of the player using their
imagination/wits.
>Maybe you just report the clink and let the hearer decide if they think
that's
>armor or not. However, there are clinks and there are clinks; presumably a
>dime-dropping clink would sound different from an armor-hitting-chain
clink,
>and the character (as opposed to the user) would be able to make that
>distinction. So maybe you report it as above. This will be an important
area
>aesthetically, as the amount of interpretation provided will color every
user's
>experience.

Yeah, I was just throwing out an example, and I agree on the fact
that you'd just want sounds to be sounds, and not necessarily put
a strict designation on them.

>
>James (using kmail now, hopefully my lines are wrapping properly... death
to
>Outlook!)

Heh, yeah, outlook is hell. What you need to do is just force
a return on your lines, so they're shorter than what you are
quoting. That's what I do anyway, and it seems to work ok for
the most part.

>p.s. isn't 'quzah!' what the zulus yell out in battle? ;)

I'm not sure. I don't know any Zulus. It stems from the mid-
east (of the globe, where all the oil is from and such) and is
a god from there abouts, as far as I remember anyway ;)
-Q-