[MUD-Dev] Wilderness

[Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com]

> From: Freeman, Jeff [mailto:jfreeman at verant.com]
>> From: Caliban Tiresias Darklock [mailto:caliban at darklock.com]

>> The major problem, of course, is that the concepts behind it
>> don't apply very well to the "real world" as you would want in a
>> medieval-style game.

> Oh, I think it does - on a larger scale, at any rate. If they
> don't have sophisticated maps of the world then they don't have a
> good idea of the size and shape of the world to begin with.  The
> rationale is "It was always there, you just didn't know it."

> Take this map, for example:

> 	http://home.swbell.net/cynack/maps/205BB.jpg

Aren't you approaching this backwards? The reason maps like this
existed was surely related to speed of travel and size of the
world. Trying to 'inflict' the maps when they aren't a result of the
world and peoples perception thereof seems to be arse-backwards if
you see what I mean. You need to create an environment where those
kinds of maps are the natural result, and I don't feel randomly
changing the world with lots of auto generated content counts.

>> 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.

> No, the towns (and for that matter, kingdoms) would need to remain
> fairly static.  But the wilderness - the area between civilized
> regions, doesn't need to be static.  Average traveller gets from
> point-A to point-B by following the itinerary, whereas the
> explorers are able to find new routes (and new points, for that
> matter) through the wilderness.  A fanciful/magical explanation is
> explicitly what I would want to avoid.

> I also like the idea of areas changing - forests getting
> burned-down, turned into swamps, grown into larger forests, and so
> on - possibly changing the routes from one point to another (say,
> if you can travel through the orc-infested forest, but once it
> becomes a swamp then it is impassable, and someone will have to
> find another route).

The areas changing is great, but changing the spatial relationships
in the world seems odd. I would also contend that true
auto-generated content is dull. Exploration is only interesting if
there is a reasonable expectation of finding something interesting
and unique, if its just more of the same random stuff, whats the
motivation?

For instance, I went for an explore in Anarchy Online and found this
amazing battery of guns that fired into space. The whole ground
shakes when they go off, and you can see these huge ammo shells
loading into the guns. It looks great. It motivated me to explore
further - at least until the point where I got 1 shot killed by a
slug...

Now contrast this to Acheron's Call where I went for an explore and
found nothing but featureless and mostly flat landscape. That got
boring really quickly and the over-riding difference between the two
experiences was the level of human ingenuity involved in creating
the content. AO's dungeons are dull beyond belief once you hit the
mid 20s as you've seen every room template 50 times over by then...

Going back to your original desire to have vasts tracks of
wilderness, perhaps you could create the world-perception you
describe by shaping the transport systems of the world around it. If
people traveled in caravans along known routes at an accelerated
pace, I think their perception would start to be as you describe. If
you can then put compelling content off the beaten track, you might
find people explore.

Were you to implement this caravan idea, you could also expand so
that people could create trade routes between settlements. If the
travel along the routes is faster, then you can have similar rules
for caravans containing cargo and defense of said caravans etc. If
people decide they don't like the costs associated with transporting
cargo in a proper caravan, then they _could_ try to forge off on
their own off the route, but its going to take them a long
time. Thus you can control things enough to support proper
arbitrage. In addition, you could use some of these tracts of
wilderness as farmlands that are actually to scale. This all really
appeals to me!

I still contend that vast barren wastes won't add anything to your
game however :)

Dan
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