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

[quzah]

From: Adam Wiggins <adam at angel.com>
Date: Tuesday, November 10, 1998 12:13 PM
Subject: [MUD-Dev] Re: Spell components, chemistry, and the like...


>On Mon, 9 Nov 1998, quzah [sotfhome] wrote:
>> in a medieval setting. Now if I remember correctly from
>> physics and other science classes, there are only ever
>> three forms of an element: solid, liquid or gas. I put
>
>Actually, there is also plasma - superheated gas to the point that
>it has a magnetic charge.  You're not likely to ever see any in real
>life, but it might be cool for a spell system.


Ah, I'd forgotten about plasma. Hmmm... I think I'll end up redoing it
so that it takes into consideration piece size (dust vs chunk; drop vs
ounce) as well as state. I may just have to make an array for each one
that holds every temperature increment (liquid point, boil point) and
state/form ... it sounds like it is going to be easier to make this in
to a run-time-loading list again. That way, I can give different
components different numbers of attributes, and don't have to have them
all the same fixed size. (ie: gold has X number of forms, where as Y
has only 1 form ever; and so on)

Question regarding plasma: if I superheat gold into plasma, does it
mush into basically nothingness and so if it is cooled it has no real
chemical properties any more? (I'm thinking no, but it would be really
easy if it were so, that way one component can be "plasma" and can cool
into "mushed crap" or whatever.)

>Don't have much to say about the rest of your post, except that it looks
>very cool.  I love stuff like this; it has a very high Explorer appeal.
>
>Adam W.


Exploration is the main reason I used to play (that and to get the
highest level available); see in the begining, I was just set on
making a sort of explorer/woodsm*n class; but when I started writing
the "gather" skill/command, I decided to write element/components so
I'd have something to gather, rather than "if( str_cmp( arg, "wood" )"
for every possible gatherable type... this way, I can just compare
arg with the list of gatherable components, and their location and
see if they can find some mushrooms for their soup, some sulpher
for their fireball, some wood for their fire, and so on...

I'm big on solo-wandering or paired-wandering, and so naturally a
woodsm*n class was right up my alley.
-Q-