[MUD-Dev] Sustainable Ecosystem

[Jon A. Lambert]

> ERI wrote:
> 
> I'm currently designing what I'm calling a "virtual world". Basically I'm
> trying to create a simulation of a low-fantasy world, keeping it as close to
> reality as I can without sacraficing game-play. The ecosystem is my primary
> project right now.
> 
> The way I'm handling it currently is a base "seed" population exists behind
> the scenes. While characters can explore parts of a forest, it's assumed
> that they can't explore all of it. A mob populates itself behind the sceens,
> and once it reaches a certain threshold (a dynamic number based on the
> species of animal, weather, season, and food supply) the system starts to
> release that particular mob into the "playing" environment.
> 

Bingo.  Search the archives for "population containers".  My thoughts
have been along these lines:

There may be thousands of deer in any given forest.  A player is not likely to 
see but a very small portion of them.  Now this is realism.  There's no need for 
thousands of mobile critters consuming processing time.   Have deer appear 
randomly out of the population container at a predefined rate and have them folded 
back into the container at a predefined rate.  A container that holds "deer" can 
grow and shrink according to genetic algorithms, and according to other 
containers in range (a wolf container for instance).   Define a neighborhood
or range for population containers.  Define population container dependencies
on other containers.  Call them resource containers.  Maybe you have
a grass container or some such dependency for deer.  Define a migration
threshold, etc.  Bleat...gotta run... sorry for the half fininished thoughts. 
;-)

--
--* Jon A. Lambert - TychoMUD        Email:jlsysinc at ix.netcom.com *--
--* Mud Server Developer's Page <http://tychomud.home.netcom.com> *--
--* If I had known it was harmless, I would have killed it myself.*--
 





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