Spaces or rooms? (Re: [MUD-Dev] Information sharing (was: Re:Where are we now?))

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad <olag@ifi.uio.no>]

"Koster, Raph" wrote:

> Let me rephrase; "for game design purposes." There's been quite a
> lot of academic analysis of the subject.

I don't see why "academic" should be unsuitable for design.  It would
be rather sad if that was the case... Maybe I got you wrong.

> I don't really understand the logical grouping of "non-spatial" and
> "generated"--they don't seem to have anything to do with one
> another.

?

Think of something resembling shoot'em ups like Galaxy or whatever,
but less linear. They are spatial on screen, but not structured as
such.  Think of it as "spawn space" or "generator space" maybe. You
may say that the player is in the same room all the time but the room
itself is going through some kind of metamorphosis.

> For that matter, I defined online worlds as using a spatial
> metaphor, so non-spatial in my terminology doesn't even exist. :)

Missed that... (Not sure if current designs are experienced as
strictly spatial, with teleports, zones, chat channels,
inconsistencies and all, maps help I guess.)

> Methods of culling what is displayed seemed to be distinct from the
> map structure; in the case of a room-based system the cull mechanism
> and the map structure happen to be coincident, but in a continuous
> map structure is is not the case. And when you get into continuous
> maps embedded in rooms, or vice versa, attaching significance to the
> method of culling starts getting silly. Consider that in a 3d
> environment, there's actually two kinds of culling going on--network
> traffic, which is NOT culled to the "room" created by the view
> frustrum; and visual culling, which is.  Anyway, I don't see
> thinking of that as a room as being very fruitful.

Perhaps because you don't strictly focus on what is experienced.
There are all kinds of possible designstructures and implementations,
thus I'd argue that if you're going to build a vocabulary for design
it is a good idea to focus on what is experienced. I somehow doubt
that most players really experience the map. What hits their screen
matters, I think? Then again, maybe designers prefer to talk about
what is implemented.

In Alphaworld the sliding window has, in my opinion, a serious impact
on how the world is experienced. It is very apparent that you are
staying inside some kind of magic bubble. And because there is user
building it has not been minimized through design either... Various
types of "rooms/viewpoints" provide different degrees of freedom and
control. Yep, I think it is fruitful.  I don't expect you to agree,
but that's ok too!

In fact, when I tried to figure out "what a room is" it turned out to
be incredibly complex, provides all kinds of functionality and come in
all kinds of shapes when you just open up for the idea.  Designers
should think about such issues, I think. Then we would see novel
designs...  Maybe.

> On the spheres... I am not entirely sure what you are defining.

Just an abstraction of room.  Sloppy: "set of objects which are
somehow perceived as related/close and may have a high degree of
interaction and sense each other"

--
Ola  -  http://www.notam.uio.no/~olagr/


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