[MUD-Dev] C&C and Event Rescheduling

[clawrenc at cup.hp.com]

In <199708200403.VAA17392 at user1.inficad.com>, on 08/19/97 
   at 10:11 PM, Adam Wiggins <nightfall at user1.inficad.com> said:

>[JCL, on priority level of actions and event interruption:] 

>> Bubba is trying to climb a very slippery tree.  A swarm of bees 
>> approaches and begins to sting Bubba:
>> 
>>   a) Bubba stops climbing and now does something about the bees.  They
>> hurt!
>> 
>>   b) Bubba knows that if he doesn't get off the ground soon that
>> approaching flood is going to drown him.  He ignores the bees and
>> continues working on climbing.
>> 
>> AdamW -- Can your system model this last case?

>I'd say these matters are a bit above the level of our priority
>handling. There is a certainly level of 'threat analysis' in place
>for two reasons - one, for mobs to figure out what to do in those 
>situations, and two, so that we can decide that when Bubba Newbie 
>is confronted with an ancient multihued dragon he will scream and 
>run the other way regardless of the player's repeated commands of 
>"climb up the dragon's face and tweak his nose."

Capiche.  I believe we discussed this previously wrt your concept of
"levels of importance of actions" or some such nomenclature, to handle
the case of Bubba ceasing to dig the Panama canal when set upon by
Orcs.

>In the case of situation a, I can't give you an exact example,
>because we've yet to tackle modeling 'swarm' creatures.  

The scenario is not specific to swarms, or bees, they kee is that the
threat is both present and minor when compared to another non-present
but implicit threat.

>Since I don't think that it's imperative to the
>example that it be a swarm of bees, allow me to use a pack of wolves,
>something which actually exists in the game right now.

Precisely.

> > ignore bees!

This is the key.  If you have some sort of suppor like this, you have
the scaffolding available to ignore the bees and climb instead due to
a greater known but non-present threat/importance.

>I suppose the main point here is that life-threatening is basically
>the same priority level all the time - the system won't try to decide
>for you whether the wry guy with the rapier is a larger or smaller
>threat to you than the guy with the big axe.  They are both trying to
>kill you, and it's up to the player to make the exact judgement
>calls.

Does a player have the ability to query his priority stack at any
instant?  Ie can he see what he is trying to do, not do, or avoid
having occur to him, and their relative placements?  Can he
progressively alter the relative placements?  (eg climing tree is more
important than wolf bites unless wolf bites are potentially directly
lethal (neck etc)).

>One nice thing about the character blow-prediction stuff Orion put
>into combat is that you'll happily ignore attacks that (you predict)
>won't hurt you. Thus if Boffo were in a bee-proof-suit, he wouldn't
>even bother with the bees unless the player specifically requested
>it.  Naturally this has some other nice side effects, like Boffo
>*thinking* that his suit is bee-proof but actually finding out it has
>a giant rip right through the seat, resulting in the bees basically
>getting a free attack on the exposed area.

Cute.

--
J C Lawrence                           Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                           Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------------(*)               Internet: clawrenc at cup.hp.com
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