[MUD-Dev] Realistic travel times/virtual terrain

[Inq Admin]

From: Zak Jarvis:

> > My question is, has anyone actually implemented a mud where the
> > travel times are proportionate?  Where the distance travelled
> > in the mud world is directly proportional to the time it takes
> > the player.  What do your players think?  Do they like or dislike it?
> 
> Yup.  We've done it (as I suspect a fair number of others have as well),
> and the few testers that saw the areas that used it heavily felt it was
> unbearable. However, it's worth noting a few things about that. We didn't
> do it very well. Essentially, it was the same text-based movement system
> everyone does, except it gave you a round-time when you moved across very
> large areas. We didn't provide enough feedback on movement (there was only
> a single message, and that was when you tried to do something else while
> moving) and it wasn't an interruptible process. (dumb,dumb,dumb) We still
> have time on travel, but we've shied away from using really large rooms.
> 
> I don't think realistic round times are at all unfeasible. My suggestions
> are:
> 
> Use LOTS of smaller rooms, even with the same description. It gives more
> sense of interaction.

After reading somewhere that a MUD had implemented 'breath' concept,
limiting the movement a player could make in a given span of time, we
began laying out the concept for an event-handled movement system.  The
end result is in place on the MUD for which I work, and has become one of
the aspects the players who remain (grin) appreciate.  Granted, we lost a
rather large number of our playerbase when it was implemented (I estimate
30% of our 'regulars' ceased stopping by so often, with probably 10%
totally leaving the MUD), but it is now rarely even complained about.

Our system divides a room into a matrix (width, height and length) based
upon the terrain type (city sectors are much smaller than say,
forests) and continuously updates their relative position in the room with
their direction of travel.  It can be halted at any time, with several
different commands (such as 'halt' for the obvious, and 'clrcmds' which is
used to clear any event-handled command in the players queue).  Movement
speed can be varied (ranging from crawl to sprint for players, and walk to
gallop for horses), but is also calculated based upon the player/mounts
encumbrance, stats (strength and constitution mainly) and [still being
developed] total distance travelled.  Short of having the same stats, the
same pace, and the same equipment, no two players move at the same
speed.

People passing thru rooms no longer do so without giving those in the room
time to react to them, nor can OOC help be summoned from someone who is
far away.  Rather than travelling from city to city in a span of seconds
with speedwalking, it takes quite a bit of time.  They can offset the time
loss by increasing their pace, but they will run out of moves with the
quicker speed sooner than with a moderate one.  Following in a group works
off of the pace of the leader, but calculates movement loss for each
individual seperately, so its possible to lose members of the
group.  We're working on making it possible for the less-honest players to
'shadow' someone, trailing a room or so behind them without their noticing
(if the player's good and lucky).

The players path can be added to during their movement, or prior to their
movement.  It works with aliases, so known paths can be set by players who
take the time to map them out, but we also have the ability for them to
attempt to 'navigate' their way to a known room name - using a recursive
read thru the rooms, trying to find the best route (modified based upon
the players intelligence).

All in all, the system (at least to my biased perceptions) is well thought
out and well implemented.  We took inputs from the players and worked with
them on it, those that remained, rather than force-feeding it down their
throats.  It allowed us to give depth to the rooms, in a three dimensional
way that is not normally present in a diku-esque MUD.  It certainly
increased the sense of 'reality' of ours, as it is a RP-type MUD.  Our
player police tend to be lightly burdened and have fast horses these
days.  :-)

Robbert
Programmer, The Inquisition MUD
www.theinquisition.net
telnet://theinquisition.net 5000




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