[MUD-Dev] Re: Introduction System

[adam at treyarch.com]

On Fri, 14 Jul 2000, Ryan P. wrote:
> At 05:29 PM 7/13/00 -0700, JCL wrote:
> >One of the aspects I liked in my approach was that there was no
> >concept of a "real name" as supported by code.  The name something
> >carried was the name the viewing cahracter had assigned it, and that
> >name had no necessary relation to any name that other character
> >preferred.
> 
> Although this is trivial, I somehow know you've probably made something
> for this as well: a who command. Do you display real names of characters?
> Well obviously then a character could easily discover whether or not Bubba
> was really Boffo like he said he was by doing a simple who command. Or
> the more intelligent Bubba might claim to be another player who is logged
> in. Do you get rid of the who command altogether?

You don't want to do that, trust me.

> Do you show short descriptions a/o player named descriptions?

That's what Accursed Lands and other LPs I have seen with an introduction
system in place seem to use.  It looks like this:

                            Accursed Lands
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
a man with large hazel eyes
an old man with long black hair
a man with shoulder length dirty blonde hair
a man with lightly tanned complexion
a man with slanty dark eyes
a man with sparkly blue eyes
a male mysrra with long black fur
a female mysrra with black eyes
a man with dim dark eyes
a very old woman with long red hair
a man with dim hazel eyes
Uvatha
a man with long blonde hair
There are 13 unhidden, 3 hidden players, and 3 creators.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Janda, the 18th of Marra, in the chill of autumn of 216YT.  5/18/16

As I'm a newbie, I only know myself (Uvatha).

The introduction system that I coded (but is currently only in use on
familiars) worked in a way I don't think I've seen before: there were
two functions, one for generated a long name (which took your top three
adjectives) and a short name (which only took the top one).

A character might have long and short names of:

a muscular, red-bearded dwarf wielding an axe
a red-bearded dwarf

The view in the room if you didn't know them used the long name:

A muscular, red-bearded dwarf wielding an axe is standing here.

The view in the room (and on the who list) used the short name:

Thorin the red-bearded dwarf is standing here.

But for actions (like "%s leaves north" and "%s swings an axe at your head")
it used the short name if you didn't know them, and their name if you did,
like so:

A red-bearded dwarf leaves north.
Thorin leaves north.

The exception was arrival messages, which were more like the in-room messages -
they used the long name.

I like the fact that descriptions are retained even once you assign them
a name, but they are shortened.

And the descriptions were dynamically generated.  If Thorin lost a leg,
his long and and short descs would read:

a one-legged, red-bearded dwarf wielding an axe
a one-legged dwarf

> Or perhaps if there is an account
> system (you make an account, then you can make characters with that
> account) and you display each account name that is on? (That would also
> be nice for OOC type commands.)

This is how Blood Dusk works.  Account names are shown on 'who' and for
OOC commands, but are otherwise invisible (there's no way to link an
account to a character other than someone telling you who they are).

Also, the message boards use account names only.

Adam





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