[MUD-Dev] The MLI Project

[coder at ibm.net]

On 17/02/98 at 08:40 PM, Travis Casey <efindel at polaris.net> said: >On
Monday, 16 February 98, Coder wrote:

>> Quite.  Typically you can rely on the opponents having noticiably slowed
>> targetting routines.  Blurring your peripheral vision puts some balance
>> back in their favour (not necessarily a Good Thing), as well as tending to
>> reward careful and circumspect play ("I don't know if anybody is there,
>> cause I can't see it too well, so I'd better be a lot more sneaky...")
>> which could be either a Good or Bad Thing.

>The only problem I can see with blurring areas of the screen to simulate
>blurred peripheral vision is that most people can shift the point they're
>focusing their eyes on much faster than most games that I've experienced
>allow you to shift your view.  

True.  The root intent of the peripheral blurring would not be to aid the
player or to make the game more realistic, but to make the control of
focal point a tactical skill heavily required by the game.  (This becomes
especially interesting with near-360 degree views)  A similar effect could
be had by restricting the player's view to a small angle, say a 20 degree
cone...  

Ever seen the screen saver which apes the spot a flashlight beam wandering
the screen (all the screen is black except for the illuminated circle
which is shown in full detail)?  In a way this would be very similar, with
the addition of a proper penumbra etc (an abuse of the term, but it will
do).

>Thus, you're giving the players a
>restriction in how they can look at things that they wouldn't really have
>if they were "in the game."  

Yup.  I'm attempting neither immersion or "reality".

>> The current tendency is to map the non-focus window's colour pallet to a
>> shadow set (typically grayed versions of the originals).  It works
>> reasonably.  The advantage of keeping the resolution high is that it still
>> allows the eyeball to  carefully watch state changes in non-focal windows. 
>> We don't have a GUI which moves focus according to eyeball focal point yet
>> -- tho I'm sure Playboy's research dept would love to see one.

>Even if we did, I have to wonder -- which would take more
>computational effort, showing the whole screen in full detail, or keeping
>track of the user's eye movements and trying to show only the portion
>he/she is looking at in full detail?  In an action game, where the player
>may constantly be scanning back and forth look for warning signs of
>danger, it might be possible that doing the entire screen in full detail
>would turn out to be less work.

I note that a major technique of mine in playing Descent and Doom-clones
is constant and regular scanning of the surroundings.  As I'm a
keyboard-only player, a friend commented that I had spaghetti fingers
after watching me pirroutte whilst running full tilt down a long corridor. 


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