[MUD-Dev] \"An essay on d00dism and the MMORPG\"

[Paul Schwanz - Enterprise Services]

> From: "John Buehler" <johnbue at msn.com>

> You also made mention of recognition at the beginning.  I'm not quite sure
> why.  That's why the little floating name thing remains in the game, even
> with an introduction system.  Your CHARACTER recognizes another character
> and the little name pops up.  If your character doesn't recognize the other,
> then no name appears, even if the PLAYER recognizes the character.  Or
> thinks so.
> 

I have a couple of questions about this.  In real life, there are all kinds of 
clues that help us recognize who is talking, but I can think of some 
difficulties for virtual environments.  If there are no names, aren't we then 
pretty much forced to show speech appearing above someone's head so that we can 
tell who is talking?  (I'm talking specifically about cases where your character 
DOESN'T yet recognize other characters around him.)  And if we use the 
speech-over-the-head method, what does this mean for a first person perspective 
virtual environment?  If speech is appearing above the head of someone who is 
behind you, do you not hear it?  Or maybe "someone behind you says, 'Hi'" 
appears in a text box, while speech in your field of vision appears over head?  
But this still leaves out many of the sound directional cues that would tell us 
whether a person speaking was near or far, to the left or to the right, etc.  If 
there are a number of people behind us, how do we know which one spoke?  Maybe 
the words would linger a bit so that when we turned around we could still see 
them hanging in the air above the speaker's head?  This is the best solution I 
can come up with, but has anyone else thought about this or considered it's 
implications?  Any other ideas for solutions?

--Phinehas



-----------------------------------------------------------------
	"All things are permissible,
		but not all things are expedient."
-----------------------------------------------------------------                 

_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev