[MUD-Dev] Re: darkness/visibility

[Travis S. Casey]

On Tue, 30 Jun 1998, J C Lawrence wrote:
> Travis S Casey<efindel at io.com> wrote:
> 
> > That's one problem.  However, there is another, more subtle reason
> > to "get more complex" -- it helps to separate player knowledge from
> > character knowledge.
> 
> Umm, true.  I usually think of them as synonymous (a side effect of my 
> GoPish play style).  I'm rather uncomfortable with the very concept of 
> the game attempting to retain an IC vs OOC knowledge disctinction
> (mostly because it would bug the crap out of me as a player).

Coming from pencil-and-paper games, I'm used to having the distinction
exist -- indeed, when you allow a single player to run multiple
characters, or have the same character being used by different players at
different times, it becomes a *necessary* distinction.  Many muds try to
enforce a policy of "each player can only have one character".  This, in
combination with not having any true death (as, again, most muds do) means
that there is a 1-1 correspondence of players to characters.  In that
situation, the problem is much less severe.

(It can, however, still exist in many situations.  For example, if the
game world is a standard fantasy world and the GM decides to throw in
an alien spaceship crash-landing on the world, the *players* may know
perfectly well what it is, but their *characters* shouldn't.)
 
> Play-style question -- we went over this this way back int he question
> of the degree of seperation of the game character from the human
> player.  Does the character have any existance outside of its human
> player, or is it a pure thoughtless automaton as instructed by the
> player's commands?  I favour the latter.

In theory, I favor the latter.  In practice, for muds and other
semi-real-time computer games, I favor the former.  Why?  Because I don't
think that players should have to log off from the game every time they 
have to do something else for a few seconds or a minute, and that it's 
better to give the character a few basic protective reactions than to
allow players to "pause" their characters or the game.

However, I don't believe that characters should be capable of complex
behaviors without their players; only the most basic, most needed
protective reactions.

> > Of course, now we can get even more complicated in terms of
> > situations -- what if the character should know, based on
> > information that's been given to him/her in-game, but not from
> > personal experience?  For example, two adventurers talking in a
> > tavern:
> 
> Bingo.  

Yep, that's the problem.  In a paper game the problem disappears, because
a human GM can understand the conversations that characters are having and
therefore know if a PC has been told something by another.  For a mud,
however, it becomes a problem.

When/if we get AI programs that can parse and understand normal human
"speech" (using quotes here since, in this case, we're talking about typed
text rather than real speech), a lot of new avenues will be opened up for
muds.  Until then, we're forced to either ignore the problems or seek for
kludges to work around them.

[description of a simulation, and of some problems with it, cut]

> Past a questionable arguable point simulation accuracy doesn't matter
> any more.  

I agree... and I think the simulation that I described is accurate enough
for most practical purposes.  However, long experience on Usenet has
ingrained in me the habit of bringing up obvious objections to or holes in
solutions/ideas that I post.  It's my way of trying to prevent long,
pointless threads where four or five people point out the same hole that I
thought was obvious enough or rare enough that no one would point it out.

> Heck, I occassionally lose the light switches on the wall at home --
> and I see and use them every day.  Mostly this is due to my forgetting
> that in the US flicking a light switch UP turns the light on, and in
> England it turns the light off.  Ergo I've had to relearn (and still
> occassionally forget) the habit of walking into a dark room and
> sweeping my arm _down_ to turn the lights on to now (in the US) sweep
> my arm _up_.  

I have a similar problem... we have several rooms where there are two
light switches by the door (one for a light, one for a fan).
Unforunately, they aren't placed consistently, so I often turn on a fan
when I mean to turn on a light, or vice-versa.

> Perhaps your above problem could equate to modelling my imperfect
> light switch operating habits?

Yes, it could.  :-)

--
       |\      _,,,---,,_        Travis S. Casey  <efindel at io.com>
 ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_   No one agrees with me.  Not even me.
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