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

[quzah]

-----Original Message-----
From: Brandon J. Rickman <ashes at pc4.zennet.com>
To: 'mud-dev at kanga.nu' <mud-dev at kanga.nu>
Date: Thursday, August 13, 1998 7:51 PM
Subject: [MUD-Dev] Re: Methods to Reduce Ecological Wipeout


[Raph Koster wrote]:
>> 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...


[Brandon J. Rickman wrote]:
>I've always imagined that, given the various distorions of time and scale
>in most every mud, trying to simulate enough active creatures to maintain
>a natural state would require more resources than are available.  But,
>typically, I'm thinking about hundreds of creatures per player.

This is roughly what I was thinking of doing. I hope to actually do
it a bit differnet. I plan on generating the world at total random,
given possible dimensions will be 8billion x 8billion square kilometers,
with each square kilometer generated at the time of need, and saved to
disk when it is no longer needed. (Once a given terrain is generated,
it will remain with the world indefinatly - or until it is destroyed
by some godly force of nature or some such [in which case, it will
actually just change form, the terrain type being modified and not
destroyed, so it will actually stick around]).

I hope to store the global state of the world, which will effect any
given kilometer. Things like: weather patterns, natural disaster, and
so on and so forth. I hope to store, rather than just the current
happenings, a log of sorts. Then, when a kilometer has been inactive
for some time, and needs to be caught up, all will be enacted upon it
before players encounter it.

This is how I hope to control the given creature population and such.
A given kilometer will store (hopefully) some of the following:
plant life, animal life, terrain layout (as per meter^2), objects,
(buildings [may/will] be considered objects) and the like.

The given life [animal/plant] will be then assulted by the global log
of the world when it [the kilo^2] is brought back into play, thus,
the population of said life will be delt with.

Now then, when a player goes about trying to hunt or something, we'll
check to see their field of vision [ideally ;)] and see where any of
the animals need to be produced. Perhaps if there are a lot of X
type of animal in the kilo, we'll pop a herd of deer or something,
and indicate to them that there are tracks leading out of the forest,
and into the field beyond...

>[distortions of time: although player characters rarely "age", for the
>sake of game play most everything heals at an accelerated rate, even when
>combat or other transactions effectively occur in real time.  So even when
>creatures reproduce once per season the entire population can be killed
>off in a few days.]

I have always hated this. It bugs the hell out of me, especially on
diku muds, as that is what I am used to playing in the past. You go
into a fight, and perhaps a day or so later in mud time, if it's a
big mobbie, you finally kill it. Oh, sure I've read a great deal of
mythology in the past, so I know about those Lancelott-type fights,
that "lasted all through the day, and into the night..." but damn,
I was just fighting a mountain goat, not the greatest knight in all
the land! ;)

>[distortions of scale: even with 1000x1000 locations, the world is a lot
>smaller than it should be if someone can cross 100 locations in less than
>a day of game time.  Since there are few areas inaccessible to a player on
>a casual stroll outside of town there aren't enough places to hide all
>that nature.]

I will avoid this issue in its entirety. (sp) All creatures will be
given a set (per individual) rate of movement. This will change due
to the density of the brush they're in, or be it a city street, and
with their mount, if they have one, (IE: if mounted, there movement
is no longer in question, their mount's is.) their encumberance and
so on. Then, since everything will be a fixed size, everyone will
move in direct time ratio to one another. (Fixed size: everyone will
be in a said kilometer, as such, if they move X meter/second they
will all flow together in a nice [hopefully] mesh of speed)


>And what about natural defenses?
>
>Animals are timid/will try to avoid people.

Naturally. I've always hated the fact that a fish will sit there
in a pond and let me come close to it. Hah! Step into a pond and
watch the fish bolt like lightning. The same goes for most any non-
domesticated animal. [Birds in the park don't count, people feed
them, so they're domestic ;) ]

>Prey animals usually hang out in groups, with strong male (whatever)
>leaders for protection.
>
>Small furry animals can burrow and hide.
>
>And of course predators will starve if they outnumber the prey.
>
>- Brandon

Yes, I hope to include some modle of this which will be slammed
into a given kilometer (and hopefully, it's surrounding) when it
is needed/visited again. I actually would like to do something a
bit like so:

[V][V][N][_]
[V][N][N][_]
[V][V][N][_]
[N][N][N][_]

Ok, V is 'visited', and N is not visited. _ is not yet built.
Now then, 1x1 is the upper left, 4x4 is the lower right. Across
x Down. Now that the obvious terms are out of the way ;)

As 1x1, and 2x1 are currently active (there are players in them)
as are all the ones with a V. So, when the global info for this
tick (or whatever) is enacted, 1x1 gets updated, 2x1, and so on.
Now then, 3x1 will not. However, since it is next to an active
one, it would get updated. However, 4x1 would not, since it is
not yet built.

I am not sure of this yet. See I'd like 2x1 to impact the next
(neighboring) spaces, but I haven't decided if I will. I would
REALLY like it to, but since most of all of this is just in my
head, I can't test it out to see if "good lord this is a resource
hog!" or not. This [update your neighbor] would solve the prob.
of:

"Hey, Boffo, it's really funny, a few minutes ago, when we
were riding through the forest, there wasn't a scrap of life
to be seen, but since we topped this ridge, there's been all
sorts of animal herds, and such. That's really messed up."

Ah well, there's a long long rambling of what I hope to do.
As always, comments and such are appreciated. (Gee, I sure
whish outlook had a spell checker... perhaps I am supposed
to go and buy Office 2000 or some crap to actually let the
one shown under the 'Tools' menu work... ;)

Take care.
-Q-