[MUD-Dev] The 'consider' command

[Richard Woolcock]

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For those who haven't been following rec.games.mud.diku, I thought you
might be interested in taking a look at the following post.

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In article <35e94634.5921764 at newshost.micro.ti.com>, lewiszephyr at hotmail.com says...

>>Basically, everytime you look, you notice something new. The ability to
>>consider should determine how much info you can notice on a given
>>consider, so someone who's not too bright may only notice one thing at a
>>time, but others can notice even discreet mannerisms.
>
>and on this line..... err well,   Consider could be a skill....  a
>skill that is not able to be maxed....      the more you use it the
>better you are at it.  with bonus for consider a similar
>class/guild/skill   and negatives on ones you have no idea about.

Well, let me give a possible system a shot.

There are several factors to this issue: knowledge of an area, skills
of observation, skills of deduction and alertness at the time of
consideration.

Knowledge in an area determines how much a person can tell about an
individual's skills.  Proficiency is irrelevant because of the fact
that one does not have to be skilled in an area in order to be capable
of recognising talent; if one is a student of a great fighter one will
have seen what great fighters look like even if one is not one of them.
Knowledge itself will only get a person so far; knowledge will increase
observation for certain individuals in that to a person more experienced
in a field, a feature that is rather obvious within the field will stand
out more to the person.

Skills of observation are an important factor because without them, even
a person knowledgeable in the relevant area will only notice the very
obvious features.  People who are observant are more prone to notice
minute details.  As skills of observation grow, not only does one notice
more detail but also the detail that is important above all.  Hence, the
more time a person spends carefully observing things and situations, the
more their skills of observation will grow and the better they will be
able to see minute features, even if they are not able to see the full
relevance of them.

Skills of deduction are also important because everyone is not
automatically Sherlock Holmes; if one is the student of fighting and one
examines a man on the street who looks fairly burly and has mud and
straw on his shoes, one might make the assumption that he is a fighter and
has returned from a battle; however, someone with more skills of deduction
might automatically see past the surface and because of their deductive
interest, examine the straw and see that this person is in fact a field
worker.  A player only sees what is given to him by his character.  If
the character is able to deduce things better, the player will receive
the information that comes from this deduction.

Alertness at the time is only a small factor unless a person is extremely
fatigued.  One must remember that observation and deduction are somewhat
weakened at times of drunkenness, fatigue, weakness, hunger, and even
disinterest and that even if a person tells his character to observe
carefully, no rational observation can be made whilst in such states.

So we have a basic set of three traits (the fourth is a transient state)
that factor into any observation of a person.  They are all codependent;
knowledge of an area will not be relevant unless a person has skills
of observation and not much inference can be made from the observation
even when a person has knowledge of an area without deductive skills,
observation is irrelevant unless a person has knowledge and deductive
skills with which to apply the gathered information, and deduction is
not relevant unless the person has knowledge to draw upon and
observational skills with which to obtain evidence.

We may divide the process of examination into two parts: basic
observation and deduction.  Observation is fed by three factors:
observational skill, external knowledge that makes some features obvious,
and temporary alertness.  Deduction is fed by four factors: deductive
skills, external knowledge, evidence gained from the observatory stage,
and temporary alertness.  When deduction leads the character to posit
a question that can obviously be answered by observation, the observational
stage is repeated with the deductive result as an added factor.  The
following diagram represents the complete flow:

  +-------------+
  |  Knowledge  | -------+-----> +-------------------+
  +-------------+      +-|-----> | 1.  Observation   | <-+
                       | |+----> +-------------------+   |
  +-----------------+  | ||                |             |
  |  Observational  | -+ ||               \./            |
  |     Skill       |    ++----> +-------------------+   |
  +-----------------+     +----> | 2.   Deduction    | --+
                          |+---> +-------------------+
  +-------------+         ||
  |  Deductive  | ---------+     Recycle back to 1 only
  |    Skill    |         |      if deduction requires
  +-------------+         |      further observation.
                          |
  +-------------+         |
  |  Alertness  | --------+
  +-------------+

What feeds into the sources remains to be examined.

Knowledge is developed through proficiency in or exposure to certain
areas.

Observational skill, because it is a composite of all ability to observe,
et cetera, can be ascertained by a record of how much "practice" the
character has at observing.  For instance, a character might gain slightly
more observatory skill if he or she examines more things, takes more time
to read things, 'considers' more people, et cetera.

Deductive skill can be ascertained by a record of practice as well.  Those
who experiment more with their environment, find more concealed areas and
objects, and use more creative solutions for killing can be considered to
have more deductive skill.

Alertness can be determined by a combination of simple factors such as
drunkenness, weariness, and hunger, and the more complicated factor of
disinterest, which can be determined by comparing fields of specialisation
of the object of their examination and their selves.

When combining sources in the observatory stage, we must basically make a
list of traits of the examined person and put them in order of noticeability.
This list is affected by the sources.  In order to rank the traits, it is
possible to use the following process for each trait: first, compare the
professional obviousness of the trait with the knowledge of the examiner in
that field and make it necessarily obvious if they match; second, compare
the sensual obviousness of a trait with the observational skill of the
examiner and make it necessarily obvious if they match; third, compare the
sensual obviousness of the trait with the alertness of the examiner, and if
the alertness is too low negate the previous findings and make the trait
nonobvious; fourth, compare the sensual obviousness of the trait to the
novelty of the trait to the examiner, and if the trait is sensually obvious
and the novelty is high-range, declare the trait novel and therefore obvious.
The list of obvious traits that is output to the deductive stage must be only
a few of the traits and a few of their details, and only those that are in
a high range of obviousness.

The deductive stage uses the list of obvious traits found in the observatory
stage.  For each trait, given hypothetical 0-10 scales of deductive
obviousness of the trait, professional level of the trait, deductive skill
of the character and professional skill in that area of the character, we
may use the following process:

    result = ( [character's knowledge] - [professional level of trait] if
             [professional level of trait] < [character's knowledge] ) +
             ( [character's deductive skill] - [deductive level of trait] if
             [deductive level of trait] < [character's deductive skill] )

This results in a number which provides exactly how much the character will
know about each trait.  A different description must be written for results,
but only one for each degree of vagary, so if something is made to be
fairly obvious one might only have to write one or two descriptions.  However
it would also be a good idea to write an extension of descriptions for the
professional level, because though professional and deductive combine for the
deductive aspect, the professional aspect remains pure.  In addition, we may
subtract some kind of small number from the eventual result based upon
lack of alertness.

There is also an issue as to the meaning of a combination of traits, for
instance the connection between straw on a person's boots and dirt in their
fingernails.  However, these connections can be viewed as traits in
themselves and indeed programmed in such a way.  A special marker might be
defined that makes the code recycle back to the observational stage with
a switch set on if the character reaches a deductive degree that triggers
re-examination of certain traits so that they may be added to the obvious
traits list.  The ultimate output would be the combination of deductive
outputs from every obvious traits list, unless already stated or
unimportant.

In order to ensure growth with each examination of a person, one might
implement the system so that each examination adds to knowledge in areas
(possibly by making each examinable person an "area of knowledge") and
deductive and observational skill.

Anyway, there is probably no one who wants to bother implementing a system
so comprehensive for one simple command, but I thought I would post my
ideas on the current discussion.  Please tell me what you think of all this.

-Karzan.


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