[MUD-Dev] Re: Introducing the background hook

[quzah]

J C Lawrence <claw at kanga.nu>, on Sunday, September 13, 1998 wrote:


>On Sun, 13 Sep 1998 19:22:44 +0100 (BST) 
>Ling <K.L.Lo-94 at student.lboro.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>> Unlike fantasy muds that can assume some cliches are universal, eg:
>> dwarves are short, elves have pointy ears, I have a sci-fi mud which
>> has a huge unknown factor.  Absolutely nothing can be assumed so
>> somehow, I must introduce an almost entirely different universe to
>> the players.
>
>I have the same problem.

I was thinking of doing something like making characters only know
very few things when they start the game. For example, I would assume
they know the difference (or can determine) in color, in temperature,
in weight (ie: this is heavy, this is hot) and a few more very basic
things. Aside from that, they would know nothing.

Ideally, they would have to learn everything. If they wanted to make
paper from plant pulp, they'd first have to find out what happens when
they smash a plant up into bits.

They would have to eat something to find out it was poison or not, and
so on. Now, then, I'd like to make it so if they saw someone they
could tell eachother things, and gain knowledge from it.

  %eat berry
  The shiny red berry makes you sick.
  %learn shiny berry sickness
  You see Boffo
  %teach Boffo about shiny berry
  You tell Boffo that the shiny red berries cause sickness.

Ah, that'd be nice. Perhaps some day, I'll figure out a way to be
able to do all that... Right now, it is more of a wish list. I would
also like to do something with creatures and such, that you don't
know what they are until you see them.

  You see a small furry animal here eating nuts.
  %label animal Chipmunk
  You see a small Chipmunk here, eating a nut.

  You see a huge furry animal here, walking on all fours.

Is it a bear? A Mammoth? What? That's up to the player to decide.
Now then, I'd have it so that when creating them from a builder/
coder standpoint, they would have in mind what it really was, and
even could look up the creature by whatever name they gave it when
they made it. However, players would never see that name.

There would be no help files really. Just very very simple ones
that tell the very basic elements of the game (how to move, and
that you only know a few things and must discover the rest).

Also, I would like to - in a related way - keep track of the world
knowledge pool, or area knowledge. This way, as the big group of
people in in area showed up and sort of learned things, that area
would gain its knowledge base. Then, new players starting in that
area would learn about things that the area knew about faster than
an area where they knew nothing about whatever topic.

Sort of like civilizations and what they contributed to their
peoples.

Sorry if this is way off topic, and not what you were thinking
about. Shrug.
-Q-