[MUD-Dev] Realistic travel times/virtual terrain

[Justin Rogers]

[Mordengaard]
> [Patrick]
> > "I claim this desert obelisk in the name of France."
> If you're not planning to utilise this kind of broad-scale system, I have
a
> cautionary tale for you.  When I was reading Justin's post, I was reminded
> of D&D's wandering monster system - you know the one, you'd be walking
> along, the DM would roll a few dice, then *bam* you get jumped by a
monster
> that by all rights you should have seen from about two miles back, and
that
> merchant you met didn't tell you about.  You might not mind this kind of
> inconsistency, but they drive me and most D&D players I know nuts.

	I actually think the pregenerating the immediate area around an
adventurer when they are in a wilderness is the way to go with this.
For instance.  If they are in a mountain pass then, YES, they can easily
get jumped by some monsters in a cave or around a bend.  This exhibits
linear sight and isn't that easy in code, but for a simple 2 dimensional
mud that has sight relationships based upon terrain it isn't very difficult
either.
	Yes, rolling random monsters would be bad.  Showing monsters off in the
distance would be that bad.  People could use some command that would give
them
a view of the surrounding area and pick off monsters based on sight
limitations.
These monsters would be pregen'ed into the surrounding areas instead of on
top
of the area the adventurer is in.  I actually propose to use a separate
monster
pool thread with monster spawning locations and monster villages.  But that
is
me and probably wouldn't work in most MUDs.  Monsters get tossed on the
queue
just like everyone else and the Monster environment gets a move every clock
just
like the PCs do.  Balancing monster spawning grounds with players is
certainly
tough, but you can also have the population balance itself with a Bell
curve.

Justin Rogers




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