[MUD-Dev] Re: Spell components, chemistry, and the like...

[quzah]

-----Original Message-----
From: David Bennett <ddt at discworld.imaginary.com>
Date: Tuesday, November 10, 1998 1:19 PM
Subject: Re: [MUD-Dev] Re: Spell components, chemistry, and the like...


[recieved via email to me, but I thought I'd reply to the
 list due to the additional questions it raises]


>Gas would be steam I think you will find.  Are you going to deal with
>elements that sublimate?  Like co2, goes straight from dry ice to gas and
>has no intervening liquid state.
>


Or would it be "fog", or "mist", that's the reason I didn't put its
name in there. I wasn't sure what of the three forms to call it. Any
ideas on how to handle more than one name for the same state? This is
a bit of a problem, due to the fact that "fog" and "mist" are generally
colder than its solidifying temperature, where as "steam" is at its
evaporating point or higher. I was hoping to keep it simple this
way -- I could modify it so that it checks for its state under
the "water" component, and if it needs its gas form, it is then
forewarded to another component, where its pieces are made up of
"fog","mist","steam". Though, this means adding another three variables,
since we would no longer be asuming that the first state is always a
solid, the next a liquid and the third always a gas...

And what of "snow", or "hail". I guess this would be just different
size solid forms, so that isn't really a problem - sort of. Back to
the drawing board.


>>Next, temperature:
>>We only need to keep its freezing/solidifying temperature (which I
>>*THINK* is always lower than its liquid form, at least that's how
>>I'm doing it), and its vapor/solid-to-gas temperature. Everything
>>else is solid. (Yeah, I know that water both freezes and melts at
>>the same temperature, but we're going to say it freezes at one, and
>>melts at one higher.)
>
>Depends on pressure too :)
>
>What about other properties of the solid?  If you strike gunpower it will
>explode.  Yet the elements apart do not explode.  So you need to handle
>reactivity of mixing as well...
>
>Wombling down the path to success,
>David.


I'm not sure how I'll handle this. Compounds I haven't fully explored
yet. I may just make a "gunpowder" component, and handle its component
attributes in the "mix" or "make" command (ie: make gunpowder)... yet
I don't like the sound of that, so I think I'll end up changing the
component_table/component_struct thing to be something like this:

{
"name1","name2","name3", ... ... ... and so on ...,
madeof[MAX_SUB_PIECES]   <-- a list of its components
}

Shrug. Anyway, I'll run this around in my head today and see what
I can pull off.