[MUD-Dev] Blending graphics with text

[Mik Clarke]

u1391470 wrote:

> I am currently developing on a mud which has implemented a top-down 2D
> graphical view (somewhat similar to Ultima 4). The graphics are all .jpg
> or .gifs, and come bundled in our custom client. The world file has been
> modified to support this, moving the basic object from a room to a zone.
> Again, the best way I can describe it is to say that it strongly resembles
> Ultima 4, in that there is a wilderness map which you move around in to
> get to the zones, which upon entering, has a new map.
>
> Each position in the zone is associated with a room (for flags etc),
> because of memory constraints. Given the number of "coordinates" (ie.
> unique locations a person can move within the world), we found it to be
> too memory intensive for each to have its own structure.

Interesting. I'm sort of slowly working my way towards a VRML 'overlay' which
is a full text mud plus VRML.  This would allow players with text only
interfaces to interact with players using the VRML interface.  The VRML
players would probably be sent room descriptions and contents lists as VRMl
objects rather than as text (although they should probably have the option to
examine the object or the room and see the text).

To handle large areas, I'm thinking of a VRML file that covers several rooms,
and of giving each room a 'bounding box' within that VRML file.  This means
that one VRML file could map to many rooms.  VRML itself provides a very fine
coordinate system which, with the bounding boxes would be mapped into the
rooms.  Actors and actions in some neighbouring rooms would be visible (I have
this working in text only at the moment), generally where the rooms are linked
open areas (like 9ths of a big square).  I also need to make the text version
support more directions - 'up north' and maybe 'balcony'.

Do you map one text tile to a room or many tiles to a room?  I assume this
means you also have coordinates for objects? You might want to take a look at
NetHack, which has a very nice top down interface.  Additional textual (think
about permitting a URL) descriptions of rooms and objects would be nice, but
should only be shown on request.

Mik




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