[MUD-Dev] Population container

[clawrenc at cup.hp.com]

In <Pine.SOL.3.94.970627153251.16316E-100000 at eduserv1.rug.ac.be>, on
06/27/97 
   at 07:57 PM, Wout Mertens <Wout.Mertens at rug.ac.be> said:

>On Tue, 24 Jun 1997 clawrenc at cup.hp.com wrote:

>> In <Pine.SOL.3.94.970619203725.20110E-100000 at eduserv1.rug.ac.be>, on
>> 06/19/97 
>>    at 08:39 PM, Wout Mertens <Wout.Mertens at rug.ac.be> said:
>> 
>> >What is it? Well, you take a kind of monster that you want to
>> >populate a zone with. Now make a population model, something like
>> >Fibonacci's row or so (rabbits!), and update the model every once in
>> >a while. Now, if a player is about, and he 'spots' one (or more) of
>> >the population, decrease you population by one (or more) and make the
>> >appropriate monster appear.
>> 
>> >This way, you can have zillions of flies, musquito's, dwarfs, etc
>> >etc, you could even describe the critters from the container (some
>> >dwarfs are lurking about) (tho I think that's a bit farfetched), and
>> >all with virtually no memory or cpu overhead.
>> 
>> A good idea.  Problem:
>> 
>>   Bubba does a speed run thru the zone and manages to "see" every
>> single mosquito (he's exceptionally shard sighted).  You container is
>> empty and you have lots of live, animated mosquito objects.
>
>I think Firebrand kinda gave a solution to that one: His grouping
>container doesn't instantiate objects until very close inspection.
>Otherwise, it just gives a group desc with special descs for people
>you know.

Okay, Bubba does his seep run while wearing his Goggles Of Incredibly
Detailed Eyesight...  (ie I'm taking a deliberate extreme here)

>Now, if Bubba happens to be affected by 
>Flaming_Torch_Of_Musquito_Killing_Area_Spell, then the zillion of
>critters will have to be decimated in hitpoints and a large number
>killed. But that was very predictable and the same problem would have
>arisen were you to have the actual 1 zillion objects.

Precisely.  Instantiating and then killing 1 kazott of insects is not
going to be fun on your server.  Short circuiting is needed.

>This can, of course, be rectified by letting the population model
>handle the killings, and the spell would have to be redesigned a bit
>to do that. Which is not too great, but then again letting loose 1
>zillion musquito's and allowing people to hurt them all isn't
>either...

Bingo...the mosquito union lawyers are already on the phone with an
discrimination suit.

>> You also need a way of folding the "dead" (ie unseen) objects back
>> into the container at some point.  The problem is guaranteeing that
>> that folding is not detectable by players:
>> 
>>   > l
>>   You are in a corridor that runs east west.
>>   There is a T-Rexx here.
>>   > w
>>   You are at the end of a corridor that runs east west.  
>>   The only exit is to the east.
>>   > e
>>   You are in a corridor that runs east west.
>>   There is a T-Rexx here.
>>   The T-Rexx leaves west.
>>   > wait a really long time.
>>   > w
>>   ...no T-Rexx...

>Well, the only feasible solution to both problems seems to me: Allow
>only a certain number of instances max. to run loose in the area
>controlled by the population container.  It would involve a slight
>redefinition: The population container is a virtual container, that
>contains both the real and virtual ('real' meaning virtual to us, of
>course. This is getting philosophical :)) instances of the
>population, and the model is calculating the numbers. 

I prefer something like:

  If a mobile has travelled a minimum of X unique rooms, during which
time he has had available a minumim of Y alternate routes (ie
different exits from a given room), and if during that time he has not
passed or encountered any objects which either queried any of his
methods, or redirected his IO (ie outgoing descriptions, entrance/exit
strings etc), then that object can be de-instantiated.

>Which leaves me to think that maybe it should be called Population
>Model and not Container... Or how a clever idea turns into a standard
>solution :)
>Ah well, it's not as if I'm not used it on this list :)

You put up the targets and we'll do our best to shoot them down or
paint them a different colour.  Heck you guys have sandblasted enough
of my own already.

--
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...