[MUD-Dev] Wild west (was Guilds & Politics)

[JC Lawrence]

On Tue, 30 Dec 1997 14:29:17 PST8PDT 
Jon A Lambert<jlsysinc at ix.netcom.com> wrote:

> On 29 Dec 97 at 16:58, JC Lawrence wrote:

>>  To time-watch something, the player must first be able to occupy
>> the viewpoint of that object.  ie You have to go back in time
>> __as__ <whatever> to see what happened to <whatever>.
>> 
>> In the general case this means that you have to either control or
>> own the object that you are going to trace back.  Virtual objects,
>> such as locations can also be used as long as the player occupies
>> or owns that location.
>> 
>> Everything the player sees when time watching will be from the
>> viewpoint of the time-watched object.  If that object did not
>> see/hear XXX, then the time watcher won't either (underlieing
>> technical limitation).
>> 
> I assume if the object is mobile or living, the location will be
> mobile.  This would also mean I could enter non-living world
> objects, for instance a rock.  

Correct.

> What sort of sensory events would a
> non-living object receive? What if I entered a branch on the
> Crytalline Tree?  Would I receive the weight change events or
> breakage events.

At a crude level the only real difference between a "living" (actually
the characteristic is "able-to-hear") object and an inanimate when
time-watching is that the inanimate will only be able to see -- it
won't be able to replay SAY/TELLs etc.  Deaf, but not blind as it
were.

Underneath this of course the base principle is that state changes are
preserved and auditable.  This log is then used to replay past events
and will likely be the most common player use.  However
user-programmers can also use the feature to examine the sequence
state changes an object underwent for debugging -- not exaclt a post
mortem debugger, but not entirely alien either.  Given this, a user
programmer could examine the state changes in the CT while Bubba
climbs on and off, and thus see the in-code effects of the relevant
state changes.

>> Once time watching a player may shift viewpoints to any other
>> object in the vicinity of the object he is time watching from
>> (tight spatial limits).  The limits on being able to make that
>> shift are the same: he must either own or occupy that object in
>> present time, or during the time watched.
>> 
> Interesting.  I let Bubba watch me pet mouse for a week.  A week
> later I get the mouse back from Bubba.  Now owning the object, I
> could travel back in time and view the Bubba's weekly activities
> from the perspective of the mouse.  <grin>

Yup!  Of a sudden object ownership has a whole new meaning and comes
with a whole new set of semantics.

Aside I'm lightly debating the idea of allowing the current owner of
an object to "wipe" (make unaccessable as a viewpoint) all of an
object's past to any but himself and subsequent owners.  I'm not fond
of the idea, but I suspect it might be interesting which would make up
for a lot.

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