[MUD-Dev] Re: Dynamic muds

[Christopher Allen - GM Fangs]

Ilya, Game Commandos <Ilya at gamecommandos.com>wrote:
> I've seen our friend at The Eternal City implement this the
> other way around (and was fascinated by it) -- that is, there
> are group objects.  You can look for things in this group.  At
> the time someone does that, one particular example of a member
> of that group is created.  Until then, the group objects are
> all that exist.  And eventually, the individual instantiations
> are subsumed into the group, if possible.
>
> I have a few ideas to extend this, but that's the core idea.
>
> Anybody else doing this, or have thoughts about this?

We are also doing this here at Skotos, however, I doubt the feature will
make it into the BasicLib that we are shipping this fall. Turns out to
properly implement is quite difficult as you also have to have the object
instantiated be able to uninstantiate if the user doesn't interact with it.
In some cases, any changes to the object might need to be reflected in some
underlying way, such as seeing a crowd, finding a peddler in a crowd,
interacting with him, and then having him fade back into the crowd which
makes the general neighborhood of the peddler more rich.

Two of our commercial games, Meldun (a feudal fantasy RPG) and San
Francisco: 1849 (a historical RPG) are also tying it into an underlying
simulation -- a feudal economy (in the case Meldun) and a city simulation
(in the case of 1849).

We are attempting, however, to have some 'crowding' techniques for many
items such that you might just see "a pile of misc. stuff" in a room if
there are too many items there. You then 'examine pile' to see "many
weapons, a few banners, and a chest". You could then 'examine weapons' and
see "many swords, three halberds, and a dagger", etc. etc. How things
"crowd" is an attribute of each kind of item, and game specific. The first
version of this should be in the shipping BasicLib.

----
Christopher Allen - Skotos Tech <ChristopherA at Skotos.net>




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