Room Description Dynamics:

[The Crazy Animal]

Lately I?ve been trying to think of ways to reduce the monotony of the game and to make the game seem like it has a more natural and interesting feel. I was thinking that it might be nice to have a selection of variables that could trigger the use of alternative descriptions and or make directional map changes.

Since we?ve already roughly discussed some of this type of thing in the topics Tides, and Time/Night/Day, but haven?t yet talk about how it could be done well I thought this might be the ideal time to bring this up. I would like to think that the overall effect that these dynamics work on could be turned into a game engine feature that would be both customizable and easy to configure.

The way that I could see this being done is having the default room data, and within that data set have a flag that can be set that tells the game engine that this room can use alternative room data. Then each of the conditions would need to be set to tell the room when to substitute the data fields. This would mean that each effect would need to have an ability variable and have some Boolean logic test that it could use to trigger the change. When a condition set is matched, the game engine would then substitute the data fields that are set in the alternative room?s data tables. I would suggest that each room get 2 conditional triggers and alternative data room links to maximize the effect. Does that make sense or should it be done some other way?

Secondly, because this should be customizable I thought of some other variables that might be handy to track.

Room Usage:
Player Visits ? how often a room is visited by a player.
NPC Visits ? how often a room is visited by a NPC
Kills ? how often a room has a NPC or Player killed in it.

Wealth:
Area Wealth ? how much business is done in an area.
Shop Wealth ? how much business is done in a single shop.

Game Time:
Time ? this one would be to tell if it is night/day
Season ? well this ones obvious
Tide - well this ones obvious
Moon Phase - well this ones obvious

Player Based:
Alignment balance ? tells which way the overall alignment of the realm is falling

Can anyone think of any other variables that would be good to use for description changes?

TCA

[ZLemur]

Maybe how much stuff is dropped in the room would be a good one. The area could look littered.

[The Crazy Animal]

Hmm I guess number of in room items would work though they somewhat already show up in the room unless they are hidden.

I know one that I forgot was a quest completion variable so if you wanted a room to change based on the status of a quest you could do it.

It might be interesting to have one that senses if a spell is cast in a room. Or maybe if a monster is alive.

Any others?

TCA

[SoWN]

I guess one thing to consider is how much most people really spend reading room descriptions.

I, for one, played MajorMUD in a kind of hack and slash style.  I always had brief mode set.  I never read room descriptions unless it was absolutely necessary.  I know a lot of people are into more role-playing aspects .. but in the end aren't a significant amount of users going to want to just 'set brief' and see the room title and nothing else?

[ZLemur]

If this mud does what I expect (and/or hope for), playing at keys with descriptions will be more worthwhile. It won't be impossible to play by hand and it will become interesting to play.

[The Crazy Animal]

I wasn't just talking about room descriptions if you read the other two posts that I mentioned you'd notice that it had larger effects.. It just seemed like a good title for the thread since the discription describes the whole of the room..

Note from top most post:
"When a condition set is matched, the game engine would then substitute the data fields that are set in the alternative room?s data tables."

Meaning any data you set: monster lists, if the room is a shop, what exits there are.... To me this is all part of the overall discription of the room.

Consider this thead talking about how to make it more worthwhile to pay attention to the details and I'm not just talking about reading the text to see if its a button or a lever to open a secret passage.

TCA