[MUD-Dev] Breaking down the walls

[Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt]

On Wed, 12 Jun 2002, Acius wrote:
> Brian Lindahl wrote:
 
>> I'm currently working on a more CPU intensive, but definately
>> more interesting style of location. My interest was sparked in
>> this concept by an intelligent post on one of the google.com
>> groups.
  
>> The concept basically does away with all directional
>> movement. You don't really move in directions, you move TO
>> things. For example, if I want to go to the Inn, which just
>> happens to be to the east, I don't type 'go east', I type 'go
>> inn'. Of course the locational system has much more intriciate
>> commands which include modifiers of speed, pace, manner, etc. But
>> thats the basic idea.

> It's very difficult to create meaningful landmarks for
> cross-country travel: how do you intend to solve the problem of
> walking across long stretches of countryside? How many times must
> I type "walk to fat tree", "walk to stream bank" "walk to north
> fat tree" "walk to northwest skinny tree" just to get somewhere? 
> In the end your MUD is just a variation on the connected graph
> (like a traditional room-based MUD is), only the connections are
> harder to traverse, and far more difficult to map.

I agree that it would be a mistake to totally discount directional
movement, but enriching the navigation in this way may make it
easier to navigate the world.

If you impement that landmarks can be more than mere 'points' , you
could extend such a system to accept commands such as 'walk along
road toward town' or 'follow forest edge toward river', using
features that describe paths in the landscape will probaly greatly
improve the navigation.

Ofcause you need to provide these features, so even distant objects
along the horizon should be described to navigate by (distant
mountains etc).

Hans Henrik Stærfeldt   |    bombman at diku.dk    | work:  hhs at cbs.dtu.dk      |
Address:                |___  +45 40383492    __|__       +45 45252471     __|
DTU, Kemitorvet,        | Scientific programmer at Center for Biological     |
bygn 208, CBS.          |  Sequence Analysis, Technical University of Denmark|

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