[MUD-Dev] Graphic MUDS/Ultima Online

[clawrenc at cup.hp.com]

In <c=US%a=_%p=EA%l=MOLACH-970805184845Z-15089 at molach.origin.ea.com>,
on 08/05/97 
   at 07:17 PM, "Koster, Raph" <rkoster at origin.ea.com> said:

>This is what we do in UO. We track raw materials and even abstract 
>qualities (spookiness, for example, there's only a fixed amount of 
>spooky stuff in the world). and have a fixed total in the world
>(well,  fixed except that it increases as playerbase increases). We
>call these  "resources" and we also base our AI on them.

This presents an interesting idea:

  Various players are doing their player stuff dealing with various
spooky items.

  Bubba summons a massively spooky demon.

  All the spooky items immediately/gradually dissappear from about the
other players?

I've been beating my head against this sort of null-sum game
limitation in some of my ecology/economy models I've been messing with
(see recent posts).  The result was to keep the zero sum, but to make
the total quantity elastic.  It will tend towards a set value, but can
and will deviate as the game pushes and pulls at it, with increasing
deviation becoming incresingly difficult/expensive (eg the quotas for
particle manufacture increase).

--
J C Lawrence                           Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                           Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------------(*)               Internet: clawrenc at cup.hp.com
...Honorary Member Clan McFUD -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...