[MUD-Dev] Re: clients anyone?...

[Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt <hhs#cbs,dtu.dk>]

On Tue, 11 Aug 1998, Adam J. Thornton wrote:
> >     All this happens without my being interrupted by the flow of
> >     information from crab to ELIZA.  I don't see the messages, and
> >     I don't need to be in the same room as the crab when people
> >     speak to him.
> 
> Nice!  This sounds like a good way to implement relatively simple
> scriptable NPCs, actually: if they just have their own client, can parse
> the incoming data, and respond appropriately then I don't have to build it
> explicitly into my server or my database model; I can just create an NPC
> object and let its client script handle its responses.

If you want complex scripting, it would be a good idea to extend the
protocol to handle pre-processed data. In reality, your in-game model
of the world is translated into nasty ambigous text for reading of humans,
or even worse - graphics. Unless you want to do some very nasty AI attempt
at understaning the messages (graphics!) intended for the player you 
should extend your good flexible protocol with an AI stream mode that 
allows for nicely formatted events to be parsed to the remote NPC.

Player> Buffy pick up the hammer.
AI> Pickup((Player 52364),(Object 23647)).

or something to that affect.


Hans Henrik Stærfeldt         |  
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  at University of Copenhagen |   Technical University of Denmark.