[MUD-Dev] Re: Room descriptions

[Adam J. Thornton]

On Sun, Sep 27, 1998 at 05:19:46PM -0600, Chris Gray wrote:
>    LIGHT,
>    SHORT "You're at Breath-Taking View.",
>    LONG "You are on the edge of a breath-taking view. Far below you is an"
>       " active volcano, from which great gouts of molten lava come surging"
>       " out, cascading back down into the depths. The glowing rock fills the"
>       " farthest reaches of the cavern with a blood-red glare, giving"
>       " everything an eerie, macabre appearance. The air is filled with"
>       " flickering sparks of ash and a heavy smell of brimstone. The walls"
>       " are hot to the touch, and the thundering of the volcano drowns out all"
>       " other sounds. Embedded in the jagged roof far overhead are myriad"
>       " twisted formations composed of pure white alabaster, which scatter"
>       " the murky light into sinister apparitions upon the walls. To one side"
>       " is a deep gorge, filled with a bizarre chaos of tortured rock which"
>       " seems to have been crafted by the devil himself. An immense river of"
>       " fire crashes out from the depths of the volcano, burns its way through"
>       " the gorge, and plummets into a bottomless pit for off to your left. To"
>       " the right, an immense geyser of blistering steam erupts continuously"
>       " from a barren island in the center of a sulfurous lake, which bubbles"
>       " ominously. The far right wall is aflame with an incandescence of its"
>       " own, which lends an additional infernal splendor to an already hellish"
>       " scene. A dark, foreboding passage exits to the south.",
>    CONTENTS (),
>    VISIT 1,
>    south _warm,
>    exit _warm,
>    down _vmess,
>    jump _vmess;
Something to consider.

The Breath-Taking View is a *dead end*.  It contains no objects.  And on
the hardware common at the time, 100 baud teletypes, it would take quite a
few seconds to print out.

Is that a reward for penetrating to the farthest northern recesses of the
map?  Or is it an annoyance for the player?

Or did Don Woods just have a really neat description he'd written (the
"near cave" historically accurate bits: the entryway, the twopit room,
Bedquilt were Will Crowther's, but the Deep Cave is Woods') and had to
stick somewhere?

Adam
--
adam at princeton.edu 
"There's a border to somewhere waiting, and a tank full of time." - J. Steinman