[MUD-Dev] Biosystems (was Fair/Unfair? Scenarios)

[Travis S. Casey]

On Thu, 9 Dec 1999, Dundee wrote:
> Richard Ross wrote:

> >The basic idea (for me anyway) was to have creatures that only came out of
> >their lairs when they were hungry.  A griffin that only ate once a month
> >might seldom be seen out of it's lair (nest?), and when it is out (and
> >hungry) it attacks smaller creatures it encounters on the way, roams around
> >until it's full, then goes home.
> 
> My players have asked for wolves to eat rabbits, cats to chase rats, dogs to
> kill cats, etc.
> 
> I can fake it.
> 
> You can fake it too.
> 
> The npcs don't need to be playing the game in order to give the illusion
> that the npcs are playing the game.

[snip details on faking it]

And, I'd like to add that even if you want something more realistic, you
don't have to model it in detail.  Instead of actually having wolves and
rabbits roaming around in areas where the players aren't, you can keep
track of the population of wolves and rabbits, and base the chance of
encountering them on that.  If you want, you can model population changes
over time -- e.g., if the mud's denizens go on a major wolf-killing spree,
the rabbit population may rise as a result.  That doesn't require actually
keeping track of where rabbits are and having a chance that they reproduce
when two of them meet, though -- you can just have the population
automatically increase by a certain percentage every so often (and have a
decrease based on the number of rabbit-predators every so often as well).

This sort of model may also be easier to adjust if things go wrong --
instead of actually having to destroy a bunch of rabbit objects to get rid
of extra rabbits, you can simply change the population.

--
       |\      _,,,---,,_        Travis S. Casey  <efindel at io.com>
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