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

[Peck]

incidentally, calcium is a metal.  However, I really do think that
making up your own chemistry would be a lot easier to do than to use the
real world's.  Here I am devoting my life to its study, and I barely
understand the tiniest portion of it.  Never read Permutation City, but
I'll have to take a look at it.

Matthew Peck

> ----------
> From: 	Hal Black[SMTP:hal at moos.ml.org]
> Reply To: 	mud-dev at kanga.nu
> Sent: 	Thursday, 12 November, 1998 11:48 AM
> To: 	mud-dev at kanga.nu
> Subject: 	[MUD-Dev] Re: Spell components, chemistry, and the
> like...
> 
> On Wed, Nov 11, 1998 at 10:22:28PM -0800, quzah [sotfhome] wrote:
> >    [Hal Black]
> > >> material is what it's made of.  Could be a mixture, complex
> structure,
> > >> or pure molecular/elemental type.  Lots of room for development
> here,
> > >> depending on how involved you want to get.  (are animals and
> plants the
> > >> same or different subtypes of "organic", etc...)  There are
> mixtures,
> > >> alloys, all kinds of neat stuff.  Go to your college book store
> and sit
> > >> down with a Chemistry 101 book and thumb through it for a while
> for
> > >> ideas.  There is some neat stuff in there. 
> > 
> > 
> > For starters, I'm dropping in the element table, from there, I'll
> add in
> > some common compounds, and I'll take it from there. There's no way
> I'll
> > be able to make it so you can combine X and Y and X in the correct
> amounts
> > and produce every possible compound/solution/whatever and make it be
> able
> > to be used correctly, so I am going to have to fake it and put in
> what I
> > can think up (with their correct proportions of X,Y,Z as reference)
> so you
> > can create things from my list.
> 
> A simplified chemistry is definately in order...  You will spend all
> your life
> trying to simulate real-world chemistry (as some people have)
> 
> An interesting reference (which has been referenced here before but
> yet again
> becomes pertinent) is Greg Egan's novel _Permutation_City_  In it,
> there is a
> simulated chemistry system called the autoverse where there are 31
> elements and
> no quantum effects.  Not a lot of technical detail, but a fun read.
> 
> It would be rather ambitious to get a whole world working this way
> (And indeed
> computationally intensive! 8') But just at the level of alchemy, you
> might
> want to consider making up elements yourself, or just making only some
> of the
> elements (or fundamental molecules) be involved in alchemy...  or a
> mixture
> of the two.
> 
> I'd try to pick some representatives of the different types of
> elements.  Maybe
> one sodium-type metal, one noble gas (helium), a few metals (silver,
> alluminum,
> gold, copper, lead), some nonmetals (calcium, nitrogen, chlorine) and
> of course
> hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon are very important.  And I'm probably
> forgetting
> some fun ones like phosphorus.  But with just that limited amount, you
> can do a
> decent amount of chemistry, say make some acids, salts, some organic
> compounds...
> 
> -- 
> MUD-Dev: Advancing an unrealised future.
>