[MUD-Dev] Dynamic Descriptions

[Mike Rozak]

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.

Here's another way of thinking about the problem, which I'm using
for my combat descriptions:

  1) The PC perceives 100's - 1000's bits of information about a
  scene.

  2) You can only text/speak about 5-10 bits of information to the
  player or they will be overwhelmed. (This can be a player
  setting.)

  3) To describe a scene, or combat action, you should shift though
  the 1000's of bits of information and find the 5-10 most relevent
  ones for the player. Basically, every bit of information will have
  a relevence score. (Information that the player has already been
  told has a lower relevency.)

  4) Keep a list of 10-100 possible ways to phrase the information,
  and chose the phrasing that that produces the highest relevency
  score.

Example:

  In my combat system, a killing blow to an orc knows the following
  bits of information: Attacker's weapon, armor in hit location, how
  accurate the attack was, how good the defence was, how much damage
  the attack did, how much damage the defense absorbed, where the
  attack hit, what type of damage was caused by the attack
  (bleeding, impaling, etc.), how badly the enemy is hurt, if the
  enemy falls down, if the enemy falls uncosnicous, if the enemy
  dies, where the attacker was aiming, where the defender was
  defending, how well the parry went, etc.

Put all that inforamtion in a sentence and know one will read
it. Therefore, I have templates like:

  You hit the (enemy) in the (body part).
  Your (weapon) (impales - attack type) the (enemy) in the (body part).
  (Enemy) barely dodges your (weapon's) (swing -attack type)
  (Enemy's) (parry/shield) blocks your attack.
  (Enemy) falls to the ground dead.
  Etc.

If your blow kills the orc, sentences that inform the PC of the
orc's death will get the highest score and one of them will be
displayed.

Mike Rozak
http://www.mxac.com.au
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