[MUD-Dev] Dynamically changing room descriptions

[Richard Bartle]

<rkoster at origin.ea.com> writes:
 
>Legend has a brute force approach. The game's scripting language allows you
>to swap out descriptions based on triggering events, so you can do it for
>time or for special effects.
 
>The pay-for-play Avalon simply prepends or appends a few stock strings for
>light level, weather, etc, to every description. For outdoors, the light
>level changes, and thus the description does.
 
MUD1 had weather, which it implemented as a single, shared-room object.
When the weather changed (triggered by a time demon) then the description
of the object flipped from none (sunny) through "It is cloudy." to "It is
raining.". There was also an "It is snowing." option, for when people
asked the wizzes to stop the rain...
 
MUD2 constructs its room descriptions dynamically, the principal reason
for which is to adjust room descriptions according to changes in sensory
modalities. A blinded persona entering a room will hear the sounds, feel the
fires, scent the smells and so on, but won't get the full description. A
persona able to see but not hear will get most of the description, but not
those bits relating to sounds. Other dynamic elements, such as being able
to see important objects on the other side of a river, are added on a
case by case basis. All it takes is a little care when writing room
descriptions.
 
I do weather using the same mechanism as MUD1 though <grin>.
 
Richard


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