[MUD-Dev] Unique items

[The Eternal City]

On Fri, 20 Feb 1998, Mike Sellers wrote:

> At 10:06 PM 2/18/98 PST8PDT, coder at ibm.net wrote:
> >On 16/02/98 at 02:25 PM, cg at ami-cg.GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA (Chris Gray)
> >said: >[Chris L:]
> >>:Why not hand-design the gross features of the world, its basic terrain,
> >>:resources characteristics, etc, and _then_ define the rules which govern
> >>:the use of those resources.  Plug it in, flick the switch, bake at 400 for
> >>:an hour and Voila!  Instant world of 12 million rooms (if you're still
> >>:using rooms).	Want cheaper, easier, more interesting?  Do allt he same
> >>:definition work, but skipp the baking step,  Just load the raw dough onto
> >>:your servers and throw your players in like yeasty raisins.  As soon as a
> >>:player opens his virtual eyes, the world creates itself about him.  The
> >>:question of the tree falling in the woods is finally answered: with nobody
> >>:there, there is no tree, there are no woods, and there are no ears to
> >>:hear.
> >
> >>Pant, pant, drool! That's what I'm slowing heading towards, but I'm sure
> >>the professionals will be there long before I am.
> >
> >I've spent most of the last 48hours working this one over.  Its possible,
> >its a data structure nightmare, but it can be done given enough horsepower
> >(and it will need a lot of horsepower).
> 
> I'm not so sure.  I'm fairly close to completing a prototype along these
> lines.  I hate to dangle this one out there, but I can't say a lot more
> just yet.  If it continues to work, it should be pretty interesting.  And
> the map is, well, big. 
> 

I don't think it needs lot of horsepower at all. I designed a system
like this for The Eternal City, and we've been using it for over a year
(in a text environment). The whole point of using a scheme like this is to
ease the load on your system resources, isn't it? (i.e., why maintain 12
million rooms constantly when you can create and destroy their contents as
needed?) The game map at TEC is basically infinite (or as infinite as we
want it to be :P).

Scott Martins
Worlds Apart Productions