RE: [MUD-Dev] Dynamically changing room descriptions

["Koster, Raph" <rkoster#origin,ea.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ben Greear [mailto:greear#cyberhighway,net]
> Sent: Thursday, May 13, 1999 10:19 PM
> To: mud-dev#kanga,nu
> Subject: Re: [MUD-Dev] Dynamically changing room descriptions
> 
> 
> Ronan Farrell wrote:
> > 
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I am considering implementing a system where the room descriptions
> > and properties change according to the weather, time of 
> year and day.
> > For example, we've all seen street lamps in Midgard, and nothing
> > changes from day to night, surely they come on at night.  Similarly
> > the idea that in winter, mountain passes may not be passable due to
> > snow and weather, but in summer they are.
> > 
> > I can think of several ways of doing this, but I am wondering if
> > anyone has done anything similar, and whether people think it
> > would be worth doing in the first place.
> > 
> > Ronan
> 
> I've always been leery of machine generated textual descriptions, but
> static descriptions do leave something to be desired.  Basically, I
> don't see any reason why you couldn't code this kind of thing with
> a brute force approach (ie have to enter many different descriptions
> for a room/obj/mob/etc for different conditions).

Legend has a brute force approach. The game's scripting language allows you
to swap out descriptions based on triggering events, so you can do it for
time or for special effects.

>  I have never seen
> a description or algorithm that does it automagically....though I've
> not seen everything by far :)

The pay-for-play Avalon simply prepends or appends a few stock strings for
light level, weather, etc, to every description. For outdoors, the light
level changes, and thus the description does.

-Raph


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