Distance and Movement

I'd like this topic to serve as a place for the discussion of the problems associated with non-room-based game environments. These may eventually sprout off into topics of their own.

Some things I intend to document further are:

  • Effect of distance on descriptions
  • Effect of distance on object movement - When you travel, do you have to sit through a commensurate length of time, or do you experience accelerated time? What affect does this have on other players?
  • Modelling physics in a text-based game

See Also

  • See Passage of Time for a possible solution to the "effect of distance on object movement".
  • Hard Problems has some additional topics which are related.
  • Both Location and Containment have some information about how objects are related to each other locationally.

— GedTheGreysHain - 13 Aug 2001

— --

The standard MUD system is basically a statically defined node system, in LP muds more than others. I like the idea of a node system; it seems likely to be efficient. However, it should be dynamic, with a system of reference rather than the LP-mud freestyle.

So. Let's imagine a scene of St. George, about to finish off a member of an endangered species. We have the castle, whence came the saint. The cave, from whose maw the dragon crawled. And the field of battle itself. Three nodes: node 1 at (0,0,0) contains George and a drawbridge. If he wasn't in so much armour, George could look backwards and see the castle.

Node 2, at (1600,1600,0), is some way away from node 1, but there's nothing that's going to stop the Dragon going straight to it. None of this south then west nonsense, this is a Dragon on a mission. The dragon's tail is still curled around its heap o' gold, in the cave.

That's all so far. Node 3 doesn't exist yet. It is created when, on his way to the Dragon (at 800,800 for the sake of argument), George's horse decides it doesn't want to be the a la carte special, interrupting George's charge most unceremoniously. Soon afterwards, the Dragon's head arrives. Its tail has almost left the cave, but not quite. So where is the body? Somewhere between Node 2 and Node 3; maybe node 4, or maybe we shouldn't worry about irrelevant details.

Now, Old George didn't get to the venerable age of 28 by being stupid, so in a stroke of tactical genius he lobs the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch. By reflex, the Dragon chomps it. 1... 2... 3... (counteth not to 4, 5 is way out). The HHGOA does some serious damage to the oxen Dragon-san was digesting, which are shortly joined by Dead George.

I always preferred Dragons. Key issues:

  • Pathfinding - if there's a Dragon in the cave, you'll have to be very thin to get at the gold
  • Travel time - events can occur enroute
  • Node-spanning entities - maybe this just (temporarily) unites the nodes?
  • Dynamic node creation
  • Object containment

Maybe nodes are completely pointless and complicate a simple system. I like the idea of having 'interesting locations' which entities can be 'near to' (in some abstract and unspecified sense), and I'm fairly sure they'll allow a more flexible approach than trying to map every plane and vertex of every object. Which detail could never be expressed to the player through a text interface anyway.

Please, someone, continue this.

— AlexisLi? - 09 Apr 2002