[MUD-Dev] About Fencing (was: mass customisation)

[Koster]

From: Damion Schubert
 
> I helped design a system for LegendMUD that Raph used that made
> for a combat system that was more interesting to watch.  It took
> variables on the players and the room into account in order to
> create meaningful combat messages.  Fighting in a desert room?
> Land a small ('scratch') blow?  Say "You grab a handful of sand
> and throw it in XXX's face!"  Are you a hobbit fighting a
> half-giant?  The game says "You jab XXX right in the crotch!"
 
> Raph and co actually implemented it, and can offer feedback on how
> well it worked.

We weren't able to implement all of it--the multiplication factor on
messages got crazy. :) I believe we ended up with all the damage
levels, and all the weapon types, plus random factors. Still a hefty
matrix of possible messages.

I think, but am not positive, that we set it up such that an area
file builder could theoretically overload the fight messages with
custom messages per area to get effects like the desert one cited
above.

Side note: all of Legend's area files are set up that way; they can
inherit base data files, and they can overload stuff. Lots of
sections in the areafile provide configurability to the area--for
example, you can use the default weather messages, or write
area-appropriate ones. For Legend this was important because each
area is strongly distinctive, thematically. The mud is themed around
history, so for example the Beowulf area is written in a style
approximating typical translations from the poem...

> I will note that, on systems that I worked on that were similar, I
> noticed that uniform combat messages in text MUDs serve a solid
> purpose, which is that they are easy to read when you have a
> jillion combat messages flying by at light speed.  Until you cut
> down on the amount you spam players from multiple attack messages,
> resistance messages and other noise, please tread carefully in
> this regard. ;-)

This is very true. Once again, gameplay trumps immersion. And in
fact, Legend ended up with a configurable setting for players,
whereby you could choose how verbose you wanted the fight messages
to be. I think it ended up with three levels, where the least
verbose is dry factual info with no fictional content whatsoever.

Also, it's worth noting that Legend had, for a while, completely
discontinuous combat. Meaning, no rounds; all attacks were simply
based on intervals of pulses. We ended up rewriting it to issue the
messages in clumps of rounds after all, simply because the constant
flow of text was too hard to read.

-Raph

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