[MUD-Dev] question about tile-based games

[Chris Gray]

I'm working on a tile-based demonstration world right now, and have run into
something that I'm not sure how to resolve. So, I thought I'd ask others out
there what they have done in this situation.

Do you allow more than one character (player or NPC) to occupy a given tile
or cell of your world at a given time? If so, are there any limits? If not,
what do you do if a player is just entering the game (either is a new player
or a resuming player in a game where you remove the character from the
world when the player is not active), and there is already a character on
the cell that you want to put the new one on? You can deny the new player,
but that lets players control that. You can try searching for an empty
place to put the character, but if you are not careful in how you do that,
you can end up putting him somewhere he wouldn't normally be able to get to.

You can do a careful search, starting from the original space, looking for
a connected, unoccupied location, but that has its hazards too. What if
other players position themselves so that the new one ends up on a trap?
What if the area is small and can become full?

I think I'd prefer the rule that only one character can occupy a space, since
in some ways that's more realistic, and it does allow for some fun game
activities. I guess I could have a compromise: the newly appearing character
can land on top of any number of other characters, but must only move to
an unoccupied space. That can result in new characters not being able to
move, however. Perhaps if you are on another character in that way, you
can move onto another one. Kinda wierd!

--
Don't design inefficiency in - it'll happen in the implementation.

Chris Gray     cg at ami-cg.GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA
               http://www.GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA/cg/



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