[MUD-Dev] Event handling

[Vadim Tkachenko]

Shawn Halpenny wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 9 Jan 1998 s001gmu at nova.wright.edu wrote:
> 
> >
> > On Thu, 8 Jan 1998, Vadim Tkachenko wrote:
> >
> > > s001gmu at nova.wright.edu wrote:
> 
> [ snipped since others are capably currently carrying the ball but the
>   following was something I'd specially wrestled with in my initial
>   design stage ]

[snipped since topic has changed :-)]

> Does game time pass for your players while they are logged out?
> How are your events time-stamped?
> Are players outside of long-term storage (the ones just sitting there)
>   affected by game events?  Are those within the storage affected?

I guess, this question is bothering everyone around :-) See below

> I ask because I was initially thinking something akin to what you are
> describing when I started down the event-driven road.  The reasons I ask
> are outlined somewhat:
> 
> - Bubba drinks a vial of poison whilst relaxing in a local inn and he
>   has his poison bit set for the next 20 minutes--the arbitrary
>   duration of the poison (implying that an event is immediately
>   scheduled to ripen in 20 minutes that will unpoison Bubba).

See my previous message

> - game is shutdown/crashes/etc. 3 minutes later.  No events are saved.

Well, the only solution is not to defer ANY state changes and keep the
transactions clear. This is yet another reason for me to think about
dividing the executables, preferrably putting them on different
computers, for the business logic (aka world handling) and data storage.

> The above were my prime motivations for keeping all game objects in
> the game until they are removed from the DB (i.e.  no longer exist).
> I suppose it is possible to log the player out, but continue to let
> any pending events have their way with Bubba's player object, but
> what if the poison kills Bubba while he's logged out?  What happens
> to the body?  His inventory?  What if the vial Bubba drank wasn't
> poison but was a slow-acting agent that gradually caused the imbiber
> to come under the complete control of the person originating the
> potion?
> 
> (I don't require an answer to those questions, but Greg might :-) ).
> 
> I know that as a player, I would find that anything that happened to
> my character while I was logged out (and I'm assuming the general
> case with current MUDs that when logged out, the body is no longer
> there) would be tremendously unfair.  After all, how can something
> affect me if my body isn't in the game?  OTOH, if I was aware that
> when I logged out I was only severing my control with that body and
> any game element could still affect it, then what happens, happens
> unless I took previous steps to prevent it.

My solution to that may seem a bit artificial, but just falls in line
with other features - once again, starting point for my project was
'Castle Amber', thus, reflections (in God's sake, can somebody tell me -
is 'reflection' a correct double translation English/Russian/English of
what is a name of all worlds except Amber? Or is it 'shadow'?)

Now,

- Every user has its own piece of reality, where he resides while logged
out. Time is frozen *for the user* while logged out, unless somebody
else managed to intrude into this piece of reality in a close vicinity.

- Also, every user has a potential to create that alternate reality
(reflection, or shadow)

- Every other user has a potential to discover that alternate reality
and break in, unsuspending the time flow in it.

In other words, all realities exist only for your senses and cease to
exist when you leave (but they're still there when you get back).

Don't have time to expand this now, but the keywords here are alternate
reality and terraforming.

> Shawn Halpenny

--
Still alive and smile stays on,
Vadim Tkachenko <VadimT at 4CS.Com>
--
UNIX _is_ user friendly, he's just very picky about who his friends are