[MUD-Dev] Wilderness

[Dave Rickey]

-----Original Message-----
From: Edward Glowacki <glowack2 at msu.edu>
> Quoted from Caliban Tiresias Darklock on Mon, Jul 30, 2001 at
> 05:56:32PM -0700:

>> medieval-style game. There's just no logical rationale that
>> immediately presents itself for the inn to be on one side of town
>> today and the other side tomorrow.  I'd like to hear any
>> plausible rationale people can come up with; I'm sure it would be
>> interesting.

> This quote in particular (and the thread in general) reminds me of
> the movie "Dark City" (which I would recommend watching if you
> haven't seen it).  Basically every night the some or all of an
> entire city is rearranged, buildings shrink, grow, change styles,
> etc. while the humans sleep.  When they wake up, things are
> different.  This is something that is central to the story being
> told, and it's incorporated well enough that you can easily accept
> that this is "the way things are."

> If you build a game and you want to rearrange things to keep it
> interesting, build it into the story so it's an essential
> component.  Maybe the world:

I played with a concept several years back for a game with
Descent-style maneuvering through "hyperspace tunnels", that would
shift and re-arrange themselves over time.  My math skills weren't
up to creating an algorithm for it, but basicly what I wanted was a
mostly predictable system with enough of a random element that it
wouldn't *always* be what you expected.  Not only might tunnels
become longer or shorter, curl around or straighten out and change
in cross-section, but new tunnels would form and old ones close off.
The idea was to get permanent employment for explorers, since other
elements of gameplay I wanted (commerce, PvP, etc.) would be heavily
influenced by how you got from point A to point B at any given time.

Only problem was that I couldn't see how to give it enough of a
sense of "place" that mapping it out would be feasible.

--Dave

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