[MUD-Dev] Room Generation

[Mordengaard]

From: "Bruce" <bruce at puremagic.com>

> J C Lawrence wrote:

>> On Fri, 19 Jan 2001 10:22:14 -0600
>> Nathanael Dermyer <NDermyer at HNTB.com> wrote:

>>> What I'm wondering is if anyone has some sort of mechanism (perl
>>> script, C program, VB, whatever) that will accept some sort of map
>>> file and a list that defines what each map symbol means, and spews
>>> out individual room files.

>> I'm not aware of such a tool (we're too enarly in the technology
>> curve for much standardisation).  That said, its not an inherently
>> difficult problem.  The basic algorithm would be something like:

> Tsk tsk!

> On The Eternal City, we've been doing something similar for over 3
> years now, with some key differences:

>   * We don't have room files, all objects are in a
>     database.
>
>   * We have a coordinate space and we define characteristics
>     of an area using polygons within that coordinate
>     space.
>
>   * We generate and destroy these rooms on the fly
>     to create our wilderness areas.
>
>   * We can store particular rooms if they are changed/modified
>     so that you can add customized content in a vast plain
>     or forest.

I find it interesting that everyone is talking about generating rooms,
when surely the easiest way is to generate views.  On Yhared we have a
mix of "standard" room-based areas and wilderness areas.  These
wilderness areas are in fact a single "room" that holds each group of
objects in it's own compartment - the compartment description changes
according to the player's actions, and sometimes compartments can be
merged and seperated to let players approach and retreat from other
objects.  Within the coordinated space are "hot spots" where
non-standard views are held - all other views are randomly generated
based on the type of terrain and surroundings.  In effect, when a
player leaves a coded area we strap VR goggles on them and let them
wander in a virtual world until they get to somewhere "interesting".

Mordengaard

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