[MUD-Dev] Circumstances & Situations

[coder at ibm.net]

On 18/12/97 at 11:26 PM, Ling <K.L.Lo-94 at student.lboro.ac.uk> said:

>Would it be sane to have a mud which contained an internally consistant
>map but the players do not usually travel around in rooms as per norm.
>Instead, the players get something like:

>  > enter city
>  I join the Yut gate queue. [description of stuff in front] [pause]
>  My turn comes, I show the first guard my ring.  The guards bow and lets
>  me pass.  I have arrived at the city of Rathe.
>  > go to the fire tavern
>  I walk down Memory Lane. [pause]
>  Taking the 3rd left for Sage Rul. [pause]
>  I step into the main forum.  Although it is not market day, there is a
>  large crowd gathering beneath the balcony of the Rathe Tower.  A man
>  is making a speech to the crowd. [pause]
>  [user decides it might be interesting]
>  > investigate
>  I am in the forum.  <description of the forum>
>  > listen to man
>  Blah, blah, blah, no, blah, blah, blah, taxes, blah, blah, blah.

While this isn't what I currently do, this is what I want to do.  No more
N/S/E/W etc (well, mostly).  Its all target based.  The original thought
was keyed from watching someone play Mist.  They clicked on where they
wanted to go with the click indicating the target they wanted to go
toward.  

The underlieing idea is that much of the comment interface then becomes
one of communicating intent to the character as vs mechanical commands. 
Intent allows the character to gloss over much of the gritty details,
accomplishing in-world goals in in-world reasonable ways without the
player having to know or understand the details.

I like that idea.  It makes a lot of sense to me.

>This means the characters will have to be vaguely intelligent to get
>things to work.  Anyway, the main theme is that the player will only get
>notified when anything remotely interesting results, otherwise the
>character will quite happily attend to her own needs.

I see more the output of a character being a bit like a movie or
travelogue.  The player communicates an intent, ("go to the bakery"), and
then stis back to watch while the action proceeds, looking for more
interesting things to do.

This of course becomes especially valuable when running multiple bodies as
it essentially equates to automation.  What I don't like is that it
deliberately (seems to) create boring periods on the game where the
playing is waiting for an event (arriving at the bakery) to transpire.  I
don't want humans to wait for machines.

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
----------(*)                              Internet: coder at ibm.net
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...