[MUD-Dev] Persistent Worlds

[J C Lawrence]

On Sat, 17 Feb 2001 21:38:52 -0800 
John Buehler <johnbue at msn.com> wrote:

> J C Lawrence writes:

>> This is one of the reasons I put Orc breeders in impossible to
>> access locations.  That way the cerverns will *always* be a
>> source of Orcs, no matter what efforts are spent on eradicating
>> them.  Similarly, for say larger basilisks (a basilisk in my
>> world comes in roughly at the large hundreds of metric metric
>> tonnes, in the small hundreds when infant.  A human comparitively
>> is a cockroach, and is paid about as much mind by basilisks as we
>> pay cockroaches in our world).  Players are occasionally able to
>> destroy basilisks (they do this by taking over their bodies via
>> spirtual possession and then suiciding them).  It is possible
>> that by repeatedly doing so they could eradicate basilisks from
>> the world.  To prevent this (the presence of basilisks is
>> necessary to maintain the players and every other life-form as an
>> endangered prey species, a dead basilisk merely deconstructs back
>> to an ur-basilisk which is then later substantiated when
>> circumstances collide enough to either require or generate a new
>> one.

> Right, so you've got evident causes and effects, which I consider
> to be a good thing.  Dunno about the 'impossible to access' part,
> but to each his own.  For example, if they're impossible to
> access, how'd they get there?

In the case of the Orcs the presumption is that the cavern system is
largely impenetrable due to physical constraints, and sufficiently
large (and long enough occupied by Orcs) that actually eradicating
the population is effectively impossible.  No matter the level of
effort expended (as available to players) there will always be some
missed who may continue breeding.

As I don't want to build that large of a cavern system (most of it
is dynamically generated from seed values and only instantiated when
player are there) and I particularly don't want to track the entire
Orcish population at any point, I just punt the whole problem down
to a set of DB values I keep track of as the seeds for a pool of
ur-Orcs and the rate (as affected by location) at which I should
instantiate them in suitable circumstances (ie when a player might
detect them).

>> Players have a nasty tendencies to set their own expectations and
>> not to listen much to you at all in doing so.

> I think you're assuming that my marketing would be in the
> mainstream player channels of existing game magazines and such.
> Suppose I restrict my communication to The Disney Channel or to
> The Lithuanian Journal or whatever?  My target audiences are
> already out there and I just have to find out how to communicate
> with them.  'Gamers' are not who I'm after.  

Could you keep them out?  

> They want to play a game and win it.  I want the experience hounds
> who'd like to toy around with exploration, crafting, medieval soap
> operas and so on.

I wish you luck.

>> The phrase, "means to an end" comes to mind.

> The phrases "painful support issues" and "disgruntled players"
> comes to mind for me.

At this point we would seem like two curmudgeons shaking our heads
at our own antics.

--
J C Lawrence                                       claw at kanga.nu
---------(*)                          http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/
--=| A man is as sane as he is dangerous to his environment |=--
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