[MUD-Dev] Games vs. simulations

[Bruce]

Dmitri Zagidulin wrote:
> Does anyone know of any examples of text-based muds with non-room based
> location systems?

There is (was?) HoloTrek, a space-based (text-based) sim that was
written in Cold (http://www.cold.org/).  It was entirely coordinate
based as far as I've understood it.  (I've not played on it or seen the
code.)  (It's website appears to be gone and I haven't seen the guy who
wrote the code online in a month or so.)

There is also The Eternal City, http://www.eternal-city.com/.  That game
is written in Cold as well.  It uses a coordinate system and a
room-based system overlayed atop the coordinate system.  The goal of the
system was to soften the hard boxiness of traditional room-based systems
and
to create the illusion of space.  With the coordinate system, you can
see structures and large objects from further away.  You can scan the
surrounding area for objects, including for targetting enemies for
missile-based combat.
The system also employs the coordinate system when doing event and
movement propagation to provide notifications of things that go on
outside of the current room (such as yelling, people approaching and
other
types of 'loud' events).

After trying to completely eliminate the room-based system, we found
that it
was extremely difficult to present a coherent and playable interface,
with
functional prose, to a player in a fully 3D-based system that lacked
rooms.
A coordinate-room hybrid provided the best
bang for the buck, so to speak.

> That is, do you agree that having a large, wide-scope world has many
> in-game benefits and is desirable?
> If so, do you think it's really possible to do expansive terrain (lakes,
> fields, wilderness in general, seas, planets) using the myopic room-based
> system?

Again, TEC has done this with a room-based system by generating the
rooms on
the fly based on coordinate-based data, including terrain features,
probability maps, etc.

These systems have been in use on TEC since 1997 and have gotten a lot
of
use since then.  I'd be willing to wager that at least someone from
MUD-Dev
has been visiting and borrowing ideas. :)

 - Bruce



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