[MUD-Dev] Unique items

[coder at ibm.net]

On 20/02/98 at 12:21 AM, Mike Sellers <mike at online-alchemy.com> said: >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:]


>>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. 

How much (in the sense of detail depth) of the world are you making
dynamically generated?  

>>The key datum however is that an area containing (or percieved by) a
>>self-realising object can't be torn down, whereas an area not containing
>>only self-ignorant objects can been freely torn down and rebuilt without
>>impact (presuming your rebuild and prediction tools are good enough)

>Yes, this is key.  

The excessively nasty aspect of this are indirectly reaslising objects:

  -- Bubba leaves a running video camera in the haunted house and then
leaves for the next country.

  -- Bubba places a boulder precariously at the top of a cliff with a
string tied to the stick preventing it from falling down the cliff.  He
then travels a *large* distance away, goes to sleep, and pulls the string
on waking.  On return tot he cliff, what does he see?

  -- Same scenario, but no string, and magic is used to remove the stick.

  -- Same scenario except a carefully positioned magifying glass uses
sunlight to set fire to the stick.

  -- Same scenario except that a trip wire stretched across a cave mouth
is tripped by a bear leaving its cave a 6 months later after hibernating.

>>...I think I'm going to try this.  _BUT_, I'll use a mostly
>>persistant world (fixed terrain, mostly fixed resource maps, fixed major
>>objects etc), and the make the chaff dynamic.  

>Good luck!  Who knows, maybe this is the wave of the future. :)

I suspect in essence it is if only from a computational standpoint: the
macro-world will be constant, tracked, and deterministic.  Only the
micro-world will be dynamic, fractalist, and uncertain.

How about the argument that this is precisely how reality really works? 
We're not too too far from a (very) macro form of quantum mechanics.

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
----------(*)                              Internet: coder at ibm.net
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...