[MUD-Dev] The MLI Project

[Ling]

On Wed, 25 Feb 1998, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:
> On 11:04 PM 2/24/98 +0000, I personally witnessed Chris Gray jumping up to
> say:
> >[Caliban:]
> >

[Practically a complete design treatment for a mud based on a
combinational interface of top down and first person snipped.]

> Okay, so I harp too much on Quake being viable for MUD development. So
> what? All of us in here harp on *something* people think is a dumb idea. ;)

I get reverse motion sickness on Quakey games so I can't comment much but
I do think Syndicate style is a great concept for mud development. :P (I
actually do)

> >With graphics output, the position of the items in the displays would
> >correspond, so figuring out which went with which is fairly easy. My
> >thinking on layering is something like this:
> >
> >    - display a normal graphics view of what the player sees
> >    - for an extra sense, there are some options:
> >	- display a transparent blob over things which are triggering
> >	    the sense. The size, colour and density of the blob are
> >	    available to display parameters of the sensed data. A very
> >	    large and dense blob could effectively be blinding the player
> >	    to what is responsible for it - an interesting effect.
> 
> How realistic is this? Let's say I have a great sense of smell. That blob
> is supposed to represent the pile of horse manure in the corner? What if I
> go into some location and there's a bucket of spoiled milk? Would I be able
> to see anything in the room at all? ;)

The above is pretty much what I was thinking when I suggested the layers
system.  Didn't go into detail at the time coz I had been up mudding too
long. :P  Except the blob (technical term) shouldn't change in size, just
transparency to represent magnitude.  Layers/senses could be switched on
and off for clarity if things become too much.  Very strong stimulus
can be emphasised by having the normal description/view invaded by a blob
even if the sense has been switched off.

> This is a fantastic idea for "detect magic" or the like, though.

I admit, I was thinking along the lines of detect magic and very little
else.

> >	- display a numeric value, with an indicator pointing to the
> >	    center of the location the sense is triggered from. Additional
> >	    clues, like the size of a bullseye indicator, colour of the
> >	    text, etc., could be used as visual cues.
> 
> Ugh. I hate numeric values in displays. "There is a rank 14 magic aura over
> THERE." Uhhhh... what the hell does that mean? ;)

Agreed.  I do like the bit about a little arrow though.  Admittedly, it's
confusing/distracting in games to have more than 2 arrows pointing to
stuff off the screen.  So how about a threshold and even then only show
the top two strongest directional senses triggered?

I like to point out that I can't tell where a smell originates except by
associating smells with experience and poking my nose around.  (which
stops dead upon finding household ammonia.) 

> >    - multiple extra senses could be displayed at once, using variations
> >	on the above, but too many would definitely get hard to handle.
> 
> That's for sure, but color is certainly an option to make it a little easier.

Well... if each sense was assigned a colour and the transparent blob
altered in colour depending on the 'smell' of the object...  Hmm.. Okay,
I just hit a brick wall.  The colourmap needs an extra dimension. :P
Uh, lemme 'redo from start'.

A layer system would only work if each sense was assigned a colour.  Say
purple for magic.  Coz this is a scalar value, some senses like smell
could be split into multiple senses (for implementation purposes).  So
green would be for the smell of apple blossom and brown for poo.

Magic horse manure would be viewed as graphically brown with a dense brown
mixed with light purple transparent blob superimposed upon it.

PS: I like to point out at this stage that if you hadn't already gathered,
I'm one of those talented people who implicitly understands something but
is rather hopeless at explicitly understanding.  (I'm an awful case for
proving I'm self-aware.)

  |    Ling Lo of Remora (Top Banana)
_O_O_  Elec Eng Dept, Loughborough University, UK.     kllo at iee.org