I can see the bug reports now…


Flange tells you: lol my mate cant see my new t-shirt y not i am wearing it rofl

You tell Flange: It's not a bug, its just that the t-shirt you are wearing is not that noticeable…

Flange tells you: waht thats not fair lol i mean why cant someone see my t-shirt i want my friend to see how poor i am lol i am bugging it

Flumpy sighs.

So you mean the t-shirt would never show up in descriptions?

What would display if it was the only thing they were wearing? You couldn't very well say they were naked…

For a randomized or partially randomized description, just use some sort of seeded randomization where the seed will be constant for looker and/or lookee, then spamming look won't show different things.

The hardest part is going to be making your descriptions not suck as paragraphs. I think in order to do that, you're going to need to store extra grammatical information about each description, and mix and match intervening text as appropriate. Since I don't know the specifics, I'll just make up a largely irrelevent example. If you were showing an item's color for some reason, where the color wasn't part of the actual description, you'd have to do crap like "His sword is red" and "His caltrops are silvery", which, broken down has a lot of grammatical information. ( male possessive : singular object : third person singular present verb : adjective ) It's pretty easy to figure out case, gender, and noun-verb agreement, but paragraphs tend to have transitions, which is where things get really ugly.

If you can come up with some sort of consistent description system, though, probably with arbitrary types, and you can make sure that each "slot" matches up to every other slot, it might just work.

If it were the only thing they were wearing, it would be the most heavily weighted object, no? Thus it would show up…

Suppose you had the following slots and weights:

Head: 2
Torso: 5
Arms: 3
Legs: 3
Hands: 1
Feet: 1

Now, suppose you were wearing:

Head: nothing
Torso: T-shirt (1)
Arms: Diamond Bracelet (5)
Legs: Blue Jeans (2)
Hands: nothing
Feet: Leather shoes (3)

Ok, so in this contrived example, you decide to display 30 points worth of clothing. Weight is item weight * slot weight.

So…. the most interesting thing being worn is the bracelet (5*5)… the next most interesting is the shoes (3*3). At that point, you've exceeded your description quota, so nothing else is shown.

Now, remove the bracelet. Now, we list the shoes (3*3), the jeans (2*3), the shirt(1*5), and still have 5 points left but nothing left to describe.

I would probably also suggest that seperate values be used for "naked" slots, since certain slots are going to be more "interesting" when naked. The head is probably worth quite a bit (with no helmet/hood/etc, one remembers hair, eyes, facial features). The fact that one has no pants is probably worth quite a bit too.

So, while in our example above bare arms aren't worth any extra, if you removed the pants instead of the bracelet, people would probably remember that this guys had a diamond bracelet and no pants. :)

Note that "weight" is strictly for the description. It has no bearing on item cost, level, stats, mass, etc. So a level 1 character's gear might still have high weights if it's interesting in appearance, and a high level guard's gear might have low weights because it's functional but plain.

You could adjust the total point value displayed with level, or just choose the weights carefully.

Yup, and that's really the main difficulty I'm having (thus this thread).


That's what I was aiming for with my 4 sentence approach, but there are so many special cases that I've been trying to rethink it, and perhaps find a more generic solution.


But that comes straight back to the previous point I made - you could look at that player and see they're wearing a t-shirt, but if they wear a diamond bracelet and you look again, the t-shirt would seem to have vanished.

I understand the reasoning behind your idea, and don't disagree with it in theory, but in practice I think it's going to look like a bug. I'd need to include some sort of generic comment about clothing to avoid that, I think. But even if I did, it still leaves me with the main problem I'm trying to deal with - breaking the description down into managable chunks which can then be assembled into a single coherent paragraph.

Hmmmm, while I don't think it's a show stopper (as most people won't do consecutive looks at people *while* that person is changing their equipment), it is a good point. If you're willing to take the memory hit, you could handle it like an introduction system, where you remember what slots have been seen as long as the item in it remains the same?

I think the assembly of those chunks would be simpler if there were fewer of them to deal with, that's why I was trying to come up with a way to filter the less interesting bits out.

Interesting idea, but I think it might be a bit overkill for something like this. I also display character descriptions on my website, so I prefer not to have too much viewer-specific detail.


Well I think it's okay with four sentences (I've seen longer descriptions on RP muds), and I reckon I could squeeze in another sentence too. It looks like it'd be a problem if I tried to include everything that someone is wearing, but I've now pretty much given up on that idea. Likewise, for non-humanoid forms, I think I may just not bother mentioning equipment at all (eg dragons already have quite long descriptions, including their barding as well would become unmanagable).

I do think the four sentence approach makes the assembly easier, though, because this way I know for certain that there's always one sentence for the head and face, one for the body and arms, and one for the groin and legs (the fourth sentence doesn't cover eq anyway) - and I don't have to worry about any of those sentences not existing, so I can construct the paragraph accordingly. Even if the second and third sentences are merged, they don't impact the other sentences or change the order that they're added.

Flumpy's list approach might allow me to show everything, as it'd be fairly compact (and also much more generic than my approach), but I really want to display a description of what a character looks like, not just reel off a list of what they're wearing.

.. do both? Just do different commands for both and make it clear.

>glance flumpy

Flumpy is a tall, handsome Draconian. He is wearing a long coat over a dirty white shirt, and a pair of flared trousers.

>look flumpy

Flumpy is a tall handsome Draconian male. He is about 5'11, with green slitted eyes.

He is wearing a long coat, a dirty white shirt, a pair of brown leather boots, a pair of orange socks and a glove on one hand.

One thing which would make it sound more natural is if you group items together based on similiarity. It gets clunky if you simply process each item one at a time in a set slot order:

> look shasarak

Shasarak is wearing black socks and black shoes on his feet. He is wearing black trousers. He is wearing black braces over a white shirt.

(Translation for our american readers: trousers = pants, braces = suspenders).

Instead the system should notice that the shoes, socks, trousers and braces all have something in common - they're all black - while the shirt is different. So:

Shasarak's shoes, socks and trousers are black, as are the suspenders that he wears over a white shirt.

That reads far more naturally than trying to deal with each slot one at a time. You use a different pattern depending on how many items are grouped - so four items might be "a, b, c <description> as is d". Three items might be "a, b, and c are all <description>". And so forth.

You then extend by noting similarities and differences, e.g. similar colours, but different ages and conditions:

Shasarak's shoes, socks and trousers are all black. The shoes are old and battered, and the socks patched, but the trousers look new. His shirt is white, and a little worn.

And so on.

Colour and material were two of the first things I scrapped, to save space in the descriptions. Bit of a shame perhaps, but I think it's far less hassle than trying to combine them.

It's not so much that you necessarily need to mention colour, it's more that the way the brain works is to focus on patterns - you notice similarities and differences rather than absolutes values. If someone is wearing a mixture of colours you don't register each colour separately, but you notice that there are lots of different colours. If someone is wearing all one colour, that makes an immediate, strong impression. If someone is wearing solid gold armour on every part of their body apart from their arms which are covered in black chainmail, then the first thing that you notice is that the arms are different from everything else. Prose writing tends to reflect this tendency, so if you want the MUD output to read like well-written prose, you need to be looking for similarities and patterns. It doesn't really matter what attributes those similarities involve - it could be based on condition rather than material or colour, for example.

Very good point shasarak.

I'd be more inclined to say "Joe is wearing a ragged set of leather armour, and wields a shining silver broadsword," than to describe each piece, even if they were different. In that sense, if someone really is wearing a total mashup of quality, colour, materials, and style, saying that is probably the right thing to do.

I do think the idea of the normal view being this shortened prose-like paragraph, and also providing a more in-depth examine to see exactly what someone wears in each slot is the way to go. It gives you a bit of slack in how precise your descriptions need to be, since when someone looks closer, they'll see exactly what's there.

Interesting point. Maybe I could generate some sort of summary based on the combined colours of all worn equipment. So you might be dressed "completely in black", "mostly in black", "in a mixture of black and white", "in dark clothing", "in a mixture of different colours", etc. Different clothing could also be given a different weighing based on how much of your body it covered, and obviously hidden clothing wouldn't be included.

Why not just use a switch with cases like example :

for (iWear = 0; iWear < MAX_WEAR; iWear++) {
                if ((obj = get_eq_char (victim, iWear)) != NULL) {
                        percent = number_percent();
                        // Inc/dec probability based on location
                        switch (iWear) {
                                case WEAR_FINGER_L:
                                case WEAR_FINGER_R:
                                case WEAR_EAR_L:
                                case WEAR_EAR_R:

Or use acts in your case switches like this :
    switch (victim->position) {
        case POS_MORTAL:
            act ("$n is mortally wounded, and will die soon, if not aided.", victim, NULL, NULL, TO_ROOM);
            sendch ("You are mortally wounded, and will die soon, if not aided.\n\r", victim);
            break;

        case POS_INCAP:
            act ("$n is incapacitated and will slowly die, if not aided.", victim, NULL, NULL, TO_ROOM);
            sendch ("You are incapacitated and will slowly die, if not aided.\n\r", victim);
            break;

The implementation is the easy bit, it's the design I'm having trouble with. Having said that, the code already exceeds a thousand lines, so this is quite a bit more involved than just a simple control statement.

I just saw someone post an advert for Gemstone which included what appear to be generated descriptions - I'll include them here:

>l querthose
You see Querthose Mallick Faendryl the Sorcerer.
He appears to be a Dark Elf.
He is shorter than average and appears to have come of age. He has green-tinged golden eyes and dark olive skin. He has very long, glossy emerald green hair intertwined with thin strands of dark golden braids. He has a narrow face, a small nose and thin lips. His left forearm is covered in small scars reminiscent of small runes.
He has a tattoo of a crumbling ebon gate entwined by a sinuous emerald serpent on the back of his hand, and a deep emerald winding serpent tattoo poised to strike his jugular on his neck.
He is in good shape.
He is holding a black willow crook that curves at the top resembling a sickle in his right hand.
He is wearing a dull black neckpouch, a black spidersilk shroud, some plain black leather hunts, a loose-fitting partially buttoned silk shirt, some tattered leather hand wraps, a dull black belt, a dark mesh bag with adjustable straps, a tightly woven spidersilk sack, some wide khaki shorts, and a pair of calf-laced sandals with thin soles.

And:

>l kiz
It is difficult to get a good look at Kizun due to the number of mirror images of him nearby.
You see Kizun the Loresinger.
He appears to be a Human.
He is taller than average and appears to be youthful. He has piercing pale grey eyes and a smooth, healthy tone to his skin. He has chin-length, sleek steel grey hair that falls in tapered layers to partially conceal the right side of his face. He has a square-jawed face, a small nose and high cheekbones.
He is in good shape.
He is holding a sonic shield in his left hand.
He is wearing a prickly thanot thorn crown, a tiny silk pouch suspended from a twisted black ora chain, a sinuous shroud of dark ethereal mist that drifts about eerily on unseen winds, a dark golvern mesh cloak with an oversized hood, a luminous glowbark cloak clasp, a high-collared tunic of tiny overlapping dark golvern scales, a silver-etched black ora armband, a pair of sleek dark silk hand wraps, a low-slung golvern link belt, some fitted dark chainsil trews bound from knee to ankle in black silk, and a pair of dark golvern-plated boots.

The items seem to be a simple list, which is pretty ugly IMO, but they have separated held items into another line. The description of the actual character is also separate (rather than being combined with equipment as I prefer) and is rather clunky to read, but it looks like they allow people quite a range of different appearance options.

Overall I'm not impressed with the result, but I like the idea of giving players a really big selection of appearance options to choose from, and the clarity of placing held items on a separate line.

Americans know what trousers are. Braces? Interesting.

I like this system and especially Tyche's article. Makes me want to think about doing something similar.

I just care about the information being displayed clearly. I don't particularly care how more or less formula-based or well-written the random generation process makes the description.

Well you could just display the information as individual items in sequence then, that's simple enough to do. Most muds already do that for equipment, and you could just display physical features in the same way - either one per line, or clumped together into paragraphs like Gemstone has done for equipment.

However a lot of people really do care about how the information is displayed, how well written the descriptions are, and how nicely they read. So that's what I've been trying to come up with a solution for in this thread.

How about this?

Instead of showing what is bare. Why not set the equipment to show what is covered.

Johnny is wearing a breastplate that covers his chest. He is also wear bronze bracers that are protecting his forearms. On his hands are a pair of black studded gloves. A belt is worn on his waist. His legs are covered by thick hide leather trousers and a pair of knee high, soft leather boots protect his feet from the elements.

Now, you can set up a table with generic coverings.
Each table has 25%, 50%, 75%, 100% coverage with an appropriate grammatical sentence.

Chest: 25% <object> that covers his chest, leaving his back exposed
Chest: 50% <object> that covers his chest as it wraps around his ribcage
Chest: 75% <object> that completely covers his chest, from neck to waist as it also wraps arounfd toward the back
Chest: 100% <object> that completely covers his chest and back offering protection of his entire torso

Once you have the table set, it should be short work to combine them into a paragraph.

I think that concentrating on what is covered is the best way to go about it.

That chest example could work well for your helmet problem, as a full helm would be 100%, and you can write the covering sentence that way.

This is how I would handle the problem and make it more dynamic. You could add more percentages and have your builders set that on the equipment during creation.

Grey