[MUD-Dev] Re: mobile movement

[Holly Sommer]

On Tue, 12 Jan 1999, J C Lawrence wrote:

> On Tue, 12 Jan 1999 13:39:51 +0000 (BST) 
> Ling <K.L.Lo-94 at student.lboro.ac.uk> wrote:
> 
> > The ambitious mud designer will, of course, not define the
> > highways and write an algorithm which tracks players and
> > extrapolate the routes from the players' movements. :)

This is not entirely unrelated to an idea which sprang forth in a 
brainstorming session at 2 am about 3 years ago... The idea of dynamic 
terrains. 

Different terrains would display varying degrees of resistence to 
"trampling" -- that is, the more frequently any thing moves over them, 
the quicker a "path" is formed. Some terrains would "heal themselves" up 
quicker than others -- ie:, a meadow would grow its grass back up within 
a week of disuse, but would also be easy to form a path... compared to 
drier climes, where it takes months to smooth out and depress a path in 
the hard-packed earth.

Just thought I'd toss that general idea out :)

-Holly