Organisms

An Organism in the FaerieMUD world is any Item which is "alive", which for the purposes of the game is defined as "capable of independently initiating Events". This includes all plants, animals, <span title="not 'virii', thanks to tom christiansen">viruses</span>, and fungi, as well as other such beings if there is an interest in modelling them.

To the attributes conferred by its being an Item, Organism adds a boolean state that indicates its aliveness (or the lack of it); a lifespan, after which the object's aliveness is toggled off, and an age to measure it with; a decaying behaviour (subject to environment, of course); and a heartbeat or timeslice function which can be set to periodically give the object the opportunity to create events to affect its surroundings or itself.

Ged's Notes

• The "heartbeat" and "decaying" behaviours will most likely be types of Properties so they can be added to arbitrary non-Organism objects.
• Perhaps "alive" should be a property, too, though I can't think of a reason for it to be.
• There should also be some relation between "alive" and the accumulation of Mana such that the Mana of living things increases with their age, but I don't know what it is yet.

— GedTheGreysHain - 20 Jun 2003