[MUD-Dev] Dynamic Descriptions

[William Leader]

Bernard Graham wrote:

> Has anyone ever created a workable dynamic description-solution
> for their muds.  I am delving into this and would like to get some
> pointers and ideas.

Bernard,

I have come up with a working solution but its one of those
solutions that so powerful it is difficult for the average builder
to use. Right now it only works on a item level but could certainly
be applied to rooms.

As an example lets say we have a cursed weapon, that when employed
does something awful in comparison to killing a mob. An average
warrior character might examine the weapon and get a description
along the lines of "A Rusty Axe". An inexperienced magic user might
examine it and get "A Magic Rusty Axe", indicating they can tell it
has some unknown magic property. A master magic user might examine
it and get "A Cursed Rusty Axe".

Now to explain how it is accomplished. I'll spare the technical
details on concentrate on the concepts.

The server I am building already uses various scripts to determine
object behaviors. For example, it would run script code to calculate
how much damage a give weapon does. The script could be as simple as
a random number in a range, or could take into account all sorts of
variables like the skill of the character using it, or how well
armored the target is. A natural adaptation of this was to have a
script that gets a description instead of damage. The script could
be as simple as to just return "An Axe" to everyone, or it could
complicate things an do a check on the viewer's detect magic skill
like in the above example.

Once this sort of system is working for items, it is pretty easy to
extend it to cover just about anything. Make the sky an object can
examine, and you can get wildly different results based on
calculations made by the script. If the current year divides evenly
by some number, and its night out, tell them that the comet
'Bernard's Star' is visible. Or if its day and they have meteorology
skills tell them that it looks as if it will rain soon.

At that point your descriptions can get pretty imaginative.

-Will
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