[MUD-Dev] Re: Methods to Reduce Ecological Wipeout (fwd)

[Marc Hernandez]

	I am assuming this wasnt posted to the list (it was sent with my
posting privilege request).

On Wed, 12 Aug 1998, Koster, Raph wrote:
}> -----Original Message-----
}> From: Michael.Willey at abnamro.com [mailto:Michael.Willey at abnamro.com]

}>      Author:   mud-dev at kanga.nu ("Koster, Raph" 
}> <rkoster at origin.ea.com>)
}>      Date:          8/12/98 3:13 PM
}> 
}> >The breakdown occurred when all the food was grabbed and all
}> >the creatures were killed before they managed to find any.
}> >Given this, the computation power spent on the AL code was
}> >wasted and therefore the AL code was disabled.

<Info about competition snipped>

}habitats were indeed being encroached. Not that it mattered--they were
}dead as soon as they appeared, because of the mass demand for hides
}(from which to make armor) and feathers (for fletching arrows) and meat
}(usually for sale to innkeepers).

<possible solution snipped>

}It boiled down to supplying enough for all the newbies who just want to
}kill, plus the craftspeople making a living off of them. Plus the
}adventurers demanding that the resources taken up by deer be spent on
}orcs instead...
}-Raph

	A little while ago I wrote a simple ALife program that was based
on a program described in Scientific American about little bugs that would
run around and through a simple set of genes maximize the amount of food
eaten.  I had a fixed size array and consequently when the bugs got too
good the population would bump its head againts the max (dead bugs would
free up a slot).  On a whim I made the age a bug would die a variable in
the genetic string.  
	I thought this would change nothing.  The bugs would just maximize
this variable to a large value and keep bumping againts the array max. 
What emerged was a surprise. The bugs self regulated their population
below the array maximum.
	This seems to indicate that a small amount of genetic algorithms
can at least partially, be used to balance certain functions (player pop,
mob pop, CPU/Memory usage etc).  Trolloc (like an Orc) skills could derive
from parent entities with slight mutations.  Ones good with archery could
be assigned to an archer unit and ones good at hand to hand could be
assigned foot soldiers.  If the archers always get slaughtered they would
have less breeding potential and thus would either adapt or perish.
Animals could have a 'skittish' factor that defines how close they will
let other people come.  
	Pools of processing power could be assigned to sections of the
simula.. I mean game.  When time is up, no more processing for that
section.  Perhaps then bears would get more aggresive, or deer would have
a shorter lifespan.  
	This is a great list.  Browsing over the megs of archives the last
few days I have found an immense amount of relavent information for design
and implamentation of a mud of any type.  

Marc Hernandez		marc at eisoftware.com
Programmer		www.eisoftware.com
Student			www.cs.uoregon.edu