<!-- MHonArc v2.4.4 --> <!--X-Subject: Re: [MUD-Dev] RP thesis... --> <!--X-From-R13: @nguna Kbfcr <lbfcrNunjnvv.rqh> --> <!--X-Date: from major.globecomm.net [207.51.48.5] by in12.ibm.net id 865023546.23352-1 Fri May 30 20:19:06 1997 CUT --> <!--X-Message-Id: Pine.GSO.3.95q.970530100156.1793A-100000@uhunix2 --> <!--X-Content-Type: text/plain --> <!--X-Reference: Marcel-1.09-0529231348-0b0Ky&5#Gryphon,iaehv.nl --> <!--X-Head-End--> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN"> <html> <head> <title>MUD-Dev message, Re: [MUD-Dev] RP thesis...</title> <!-- meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" --> <link rev="made" href="mailto:yospe#hawaii,edu"> </head> <body background="/backgrounds/paperback.gif" bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000" link="#0000FF" alink="#FF0000" vlink="#006000"> <font size="+4" color="#804040"> <strong><em>MUD-Dev<br>mailing list archive</em></strong> </font> <br> [ <a href="../">Other Periods</a> | <a href="../../">Other mailing lists</a> | <a href="/search.php3">Search</a> ] <br clear=all><hr> <!--X-Body-Begin--> <!--X-User-Header--> <!--X-User-Header-End--> <!--X-TopPNI--> Date: [ <a href="msg00961.html">Previous</a> | <a href="msg00963.html">Next</a> ] Thread: [ <a href="msg00959.html">Previous</a> | <a href="msg01000.html">Next</a> ] Index: [ <A HREF="author.html#00962">Author</A> | <A HREF="#00962">Date</A> | <A HREF="thread.html#00962">Thread</A> ] <!--X-TopPNI-End--> <!--X-MsgBody--> <!--X-Subject-Header-Begin--> <H1>Re: [MUD-Dev] RP thesis...</H1> <HR> <!--X-Subject-Header-End--> <!--X-Head-of-Message--> <UL> <LI><em>To</em>: <A HREF="mailto:mud-dev#null,net">mud-dev#null,net</A></LI> <LI><em>Subject</em>: Re: [MUD-Dev] RP thesis...</LI> <LI><em>From</em>: Nathan Yospe <<A HREF="mailto:yospe#hawaii,edu">yospe#hawaii,edu</A>></LI> <LI><em>Date</em>: Fri, 30 May 1997 10:27:17 -1000</LI> </UL> <!--X-Head-of-Message-End--> <!--X-Head-Body-Sep-Begin--> <HR> <!--X-Head-Body-Sep-End--> <!--X-Body-of-Message--> <PRE> On Thu, 29 May 1997, Marian Griffith wrote: :On Wed 28 May, Adam Wiggins wrote: :> [Marian:] :> > Why not make the ashes of that bonfire a very real object in that :> > area that will be present in the room every time that room is re- :> > created. Of course you also have to make it decay over time but :> > that's something I find in most muds anyway. :> Right. The trick is, of course, that you just store a general description :> of the world (things like terrain and elevation), and then *changes* to :> that. Things like tracks, campfires, objects on the ground, sigils :> carved in trees, local mana depletions, and so on are stored as lists :> rather than arrays. If you only have one campfire, you only have one :> item in the list. [etc snipped] What if the entire landscape has been burned down? Just a sudden thought... I use a method similar to this, though variations in my variable terrains are random, seeded by the location. I do have thoughts as far as implementing trails and the like... a time weighted apply that is applied to the region the next time it is instantiated. I think I could possibly compress it by reucing it to a regional definition... perhaps a fuzzed third order geometric representation in two dimensions. That way, if you had a big blotch that was burned, you find the nearest fit, mark the time, and next time this random region is intantiated, whatever part of it is visable is going to be presenting its time devalued affects. More concrete features (an object dropped, a tent, etc...) might be stored in the current list I have. I am thinking I also might store population densities with the same time weight, allowing me to randomly model an ecosphere in these regions... even if they happen to be cities. Of course, the interesting areas are going to be the ones with nonrandom thought going into their construction, but I think some incredible things can be done with the random generation. For example... I have a cave world. I define the critical regions, and a clear path between them, and the three or four dozen _types_ of features I have described for these caves... and then I let the engine extend the caves to hundreds of times their current size, making them a truely formidable maze. (What's worse, there are some vital things hidden in that cave system... a hidden sentient aboriginal species, the headquarters of the resistance, and more...) To make it worse, in this case, the walls of the cave are too thick to link to the wormhole network's commnet, which means you are trapped until you get close to the surface, the cave's populace is unfriendly, and the surface is a hurricane gale sandstorm. Its bad enough as I have it now... I created a couple miles of caverns, total... but extending it to hundreds of miles, requiring you to blaze your paths, and scan for signs of traffic... makes it into a thinker's situation. :I'm not sure I follow this all, but my simplistic idea would be to have :a list for 'the forest of green shadows' and another list for 'the :mountains of sorrow'. That should allow more special objects to be kept. :And if that's not enough you can further subdivide the forest and the :mountains until you have a manageable number of objects in each location :in the world, right? Right. I call these subdivisions "nodes", and have one per (approx) hundred meter square, or at least, if the nodes of a 10 km square are not filled, I have a 10 km square node listing significant nodes. I also have one node per (defined) enclosure or region. This includes the insides of containers. It also includes the surfaces of objects with stuff on their surface. On another note, it helps to lazy copy these things. If you have a hundred traffic lights, you can represent them with what amounts to a hundred pointers to one traffic light, until some idiot bangs into one of them, at which point, you have 99 pointers plus one damaged light. Same for instantiated units of a crowd. It also helps to be able to group things, creating crouds out of preinstantiated people, for example. We've discussed this a few times before. I'm getting quite good at the grouping problem. (I think J C coined the phrase Bulking Container?) In any case... I have gotten to the point that I am using groups of lazy copied objects to represent the entire construction (physical) of a Character, groups to handle crowds, to handle dichotomous regions (places that change drasticly over a short period of time), and for any number of other things, including the construction of new Items out of simpler Items. __ _ __ _ _ , , , , /_ / / ) /_ /_) / ) /| /| / /\ First Light of a Nova Dawn / / / \ /_ /_) / \ /-|/ |/ /_/ Final Night of a World Gone Nathan F. Yospe - University of Hawaii Dept of Physics - yospe#hawaii,edu </PRE> <!--X-Body-of-Message-End--> <!--X-MsgBody-End--> <!--X-Follow-Ups--> <HR> <!--X-Follow-Ups-End--> <!--X-References--> <UL><LI><STRONG>References</STRONG>: <UL> <LI><STRONG><A NAME="00936" HREF="msg00936.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] RP thesis...</A></STRONG> <UL><LI><EM>From:</EM> Marian Griffith <gryphon#iaehv,nl></LI></UL></LI> </UL></LI></UL> <!--X-References-End--> <!--X-BotPNI--> <UL> <LI>Prev by Date: <STRONG><A HREF="msg00961.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Quests [was Resets, repops and quests]</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Next by Date: <STRONG><A HREF="msg00963.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Alright... IF your gonan do DESIESE...</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Prev by thread: <STRONG><A HREF="msg00959.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] RP thesis...</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Next by thread: <STRONG><A HREF="msg01000.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] RP thesis...</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Index(es): <UL> <LI><A HREF="index.html#00962"><STRONG>Date</STRONG></A></LI> <LI><A HREF="thread.html#00962"><STRONG>Thread</STRONG></A></LI> </UL> </LI> </UL> <!--X-BotPNI-End--> <!--X-User-Footer--> <!--X-User-Footer-End--> <ul><li>Thread context: <BLOCKQUOTE><UL> <LI><STRONG>Re: [MUD-Dev] RP thesis...</STRONG>, <EM>(continued)</EM> <ul compact> <ul compact> <ul compact> <ul compact> <ul compact> <ul compact> <ul compact> <ul compact> <ul compact> <LI><strong><A NAME="00850" HREF="msg00850.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] RP thesis...</A></strong>, Marian Griffith <a href="mailto:gryphon#iaehv,nl">gryphon#iaehv,nl</a>, Wed 28 May 1997, 00:28 GMT <LI><strong><A NAME="00886" HREF="msg00886.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] RP thesis...</A></strong>, Adam Wiggins <a href="mailto:nightfall#user1,inficad.com">nightfall#user1,inficad.com</a>, Wed 28 May 1997, 15:46 GMT <LI><strong><A NAME="00936" HREF="msg00936.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] RP thesis...</A></strong>, Marian Griffith <a href="mailto:gryphon#iaehv,nl">gryphon#iaehv,nl</a>, Fri 30 May 1997, 05:31 GMT <LI><strong><A NAME="00959" HREF="msg00959.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] RP thesis...</A></strong>, Shawn Halpenny <a href="mailto:malachai#iname,com">malachai#iname,com</a>, Sat 31 May 1997, 00:29 GMT </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="00962" HREF="msg00962.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] RP thesis...</A></strong>, Nathan Yospe <a href="mailto:yospe#hawaii,edu">yospe#hawaii,edu</a>, Sat 31 May 1997, 03:19 GMT </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="01000" HREF="msg01000.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] RP thesis...</A></strong>, Adam Wiggins <a href="mailto:nightfall#inficad,com">nightfall#inficad,com</a>, Sat 31 May 1997, 18:50 GMT </LI> </LI> </LI> </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="00658" HREF="msg00658.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] RP thesis...</A></strong>, Ling <a href="mailto:K.L.Lo-94#student,lut.ac.uk">K.L.Lo-94#student,lut.ac.uk</a>, Wed 21 May 1997, 19:53 GMT </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="00659" HREF="msg00659.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] RP thesis...</A></strong>, Travis S Casey <a href="mailto:casey#nu,cs.fsu.edu">casey#nu,cs.fsu.edu</a>, Wed 21 May 1997, 20:01 GMT <LI><strong><A NAME="00675" HREF="msg00675.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] RP thesis...</A></strong>, Caliban Tiresias Darklock <a href="mailto:caliban#darklock,com">caliban#darklock,com</a>, Thu 22 May 1997, 01:17 GMT </LI> </LI> </ul> </ul> </ul> </ul> </ul> </ul> </ul> </ul> </ul> </LI> </UL></BLOCKQUOTE> </ul> <hr> <center> [ <a href="../">Other Periods</a> | <a href="../../">Other mailing lists</a> | <a href="/search.php3">Search</a> ] </center> <hr> </body> </html>