May 2002
- Random Resets John Robert Arras
- Random Resets Kwon Ekstrom
- Random Resets John Robert Arras
- [MLP] The use of ecology models Rayzam
- Interesting things to do (was: Player Accounts on a Non-Commercial MUD) John Buehler
- Apple WWDC? amanda@alfar.com
- Apple WWDC? Nathan F. Yospe
- Apple WWDC? Amanda Walker
- Apple WWDC? Sasha Hart
- Apple WWDC? amanda@alfar.com
- Apple WWDC? Brian Hook
- Apple WWDC? John A. Bertoglio
- Apple WWDC? Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- Apple WWDC? Matt Mihaly
- Apple WWDC? shren
- Apple WWDC? Matt Mihaly
- Apple WWDC? John A. Bertoglio
- Apple WWDC? James Edward Gray II
- Apple WWDC? Brian Hook
- Encouraging groups without grouping Brian 'Psychochild' Green
- Introduction and My solution to Powergamers, Treadmills, and Content Devaluation. Ken Raisor
- The audience is the medium. For now. John Szeder
- The audience is the medium. For now. John Buehler
- The audience is the medium. For now. Damion Schubert
- The audience is the medium. For now. Ted L. Chen
- The audience is the medium. For now. Shane Gough
- The audience is the medium. For now. Michael Tresca
- The audience is the medium. For now. Ted L. Chen
- The audience is the medium. For now. Marian Griffith
- The audience is the medium. For now. Vincent Archer
- The audience is the medium. For now. Damion Schubert
- The audience is the medium. For now. David B. Held
- The audience is the medium. For now. Ted L. Chen
- The audience is the medium. For now. Marian Griffith
- The audience is the medium. For now. F. Randall Farmer
- The audience is the medium. For now. J C Lawrence
- The audience is the medium. For now. Frank Crowell
- Ownership of characters Jasper McChesney
- Explorers? (Was: Codename Blue & Facets - Nick Yee's new studies) Brian 'Psychochild' Green
- Befriending Critters (was: Random Resets) Arthaey
- Questions about server design Ben Chambers
- Questions about server design Michael Bayne
- Questions about server design Sean Middleditch
- Questions about server design Mike Shaver
- Questions about server design Kwon Ekstrom
- Questions about server design szii@sziisoft.com
- Questions about server design F. Randall Farmer
- Questions about server design James Edward Gray II
- Questions about server design Shane Gough
- Extensibility Ben Chambers
- Extensibility Ammon Lauritzen
- Extensibility Kwon Ekstrom
- Extensibility Ben Chambers
- Extensibility "Christopher {siege} " OBrien
- Extensibility Sean Middleditch
- Extensibility Sean Kelly
- Extensibility John Buehler
- Extensibility shren
- Extensibility John Buehler
- Extensibility szii@sziisoft.com
- Extensibility John Buehler
- Extensibility szii@sziisoft.com
- Extensibility Mike Shaver
- Question: Any published research on Sims type game personae? susan wu
- [MLP] Why care about levels? (was: The use of ecolo Richard Woolcock
- [MLP] Why care about levels? (was: The use of ecolo gy models) Jon Lambert
- Component Design (was: Extensibility) Scion Altera
- [BIZ] Selling Stock (formerly Blacksnow revisted ) Robert A. Rice, Jr.
- Games are Hot. Period Michael Tresca
- Games are Hot. Period Gladimir
- Games are Hot. Period Richard Aihoshi aka Jonric
- Games are Hot. Period Freeman, Jeff
- Games are Hot. Period Richard Aihoshi aka Jonric
- Games are Hot. Period Koster, Raph
- Games are Hot. Period Vincent Archer
- Games are Hot. Period Richard Aihoshi aka Jonric
- Games are Hot. Period Matt Mihaly
- fun Matt Mihaly
- [TECH] Shortest Path William Murdick
- [TECH] Voice in MO* - Phoneme Decomposition and Reconstruction Ted L. Chen
- [TECH] Voice in MO* - Phoneme Decomposition and Reconstruction John Buehler
- [TECH] Voice in MO* - Phoneme Decomposition and Reconstruction Ted L. Chen
- [TECH] Voice in MO* - Phoneme Decomposition and Reconstruction Eli Stevens
- [TECH] Voice in MO* - Phoneme Decomposition and Reconstruction Jon Leonard
- [TECH] Voice in MO* - Phoneme Decomposition and Reconstruction Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt
- [TECH] Voice in MO* - Phoneme Decomposition and Rec onstruction Robert Zubek
- [TECH] Voice in MO* - Phoneme Decomposition and Rec onstruction ceo@grexengine.com
- [TECH] Voice in MO* - Phoneme Decomposition and Reconstruction Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt
- [TECH] Voice in MO* - Phoneme Decomposition and Reconstruction Ted L. Chen
- [TECH] Voice in MO* - Phoneme Decomposition and Rec onstruction Koster, Raph
- [TECH] Voice in MO* - Phoneme Decomposition and Rec onstruction lynx@lynx.purrsia.com
- [TECH] Voice in MO* - Phoneme Decomposition and Reconstruction Ted L. Chen
- [TECH] Voice in MO* - Phoneme Decomposition and Reconstruction Rudy Neeser
- [TECH] Voice in MO* - Phoneme Decomposition and Reconstruction Matt Mihaly
- [TECH] Voice in MO* - Phoneme Decomposition and Rec onstruction Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- [TECH] Voice in MO* - Phoneme Decomposition and Reconstruction John Buehler
- [TECH] Voice in MO* - Phoneme Decomposition and Reconstruction Ted L. Chen
- [TECH] Voice in MO* - Phoneme Decomposition and Reconstruction Mike Shaver
- [TECH] Voice in MO* - Phoneme Decomposition and Reconstruction John Buehler
- [TECH] Voice in MO* - Phoneme Decomposition and Reconstruction amanda@alfar.com
- [TECH] Voice in MO* - Phoneme Decomposition and Rec onstruction Koster, Raph
- [TECH] Voice in MO* - Phoneme Decomposition and Rec onstruction Steve {Bloo} Daniels
- Combat with Style (was Player Accounts on a Non-Commercial MUD) lynx@lynx.purrsia.com
- Playskins Koster, Raph
- People were talking about resets.. Anderson, David
- People were talking about resets.. Sasha Hart
[David Anderson]
> I was thinking of how to do resets awhile ago and basically came
> up with the idea to not have resets work like standard muds.. I
> never liked the idea that creatures just suddenly "appeared"
> magically. If you're trying to RP that you've killed all the
> creatures in an area, and then they reappear, you've done a pretty
> sad job.
if the problem is that you can't extinguish populations of mobs, you
have picked a tricky problem to work around (from the perspective of
a classic diku or the like). it's doable, but you might have to try
a few different versions to get something which is quite playable.
if it is a problem that they appear per se, (e.g. *poof* new rabbit
in room) then your code for handling spawns can check if a player is
in the room, and if so figure out a nearby empty room to spawn the
critter in. or just not spawn there.
if it is a problem essentially that spawning occurs unrealistically
then that is a stickier issue. if you want a population of dwarves,
but your players keep killing the dwarves, you either have to spawn
dwarves at an unrealistically fast rate or somehow discourage
killing the dwarves. or make a dwarf population so big it lasts
forever. ;) the problem with realism is that once you take a piece
of it, you often need other pieces of it to cope with problems
introduced by the first piece. by the end you have something which
might not solve the problems you wanted the game to solve to begin
with (e.g. real life is a TERRIBLE hack and slash game, even through
a number of layers of abstraction).
> What I'm planning on having right now (not quite done yet), is
> that most creature races will have two sexes, male & female. Mobs
> are created with a random sex if you don't set the sex in the
> reset. Then according to a timetable per each race, they have a
> chance to create a young creature of a random sex of the same race
> if a male and female are in a room together.
you don't have any provision for population control. the least you
could do here is put a cap on the population of each critter somehow
- you could allocate the critters per area (the old way, with
spawners of some variety) - if you still want the male and female
scheme then you could have the baby take up part of the spawn quota
of its mother's spawner object. or you could have this specified per
species. a nice advantage of tracking population centrally like this
is that you can also manipulate spawning as a GM tool for events and
the like, you can also have code that increases birth rate to
compensate for heavy cull, etc.
i don't see that having a male and female mob in the same room
randomly spawn a baby really solves versimilitude problems - it is
just a funky way to spawn critters, once again, out of the blue.
and it takes away from the tight control of populations you get from
more traditional schemes. ultimately you decide best what you want
in the game, but don't take away all of your control over the game
to solve a problem which is totally independent of whether or not
you have the control.
> 1. People will empty out the areas really fast and then we'll
> have an empty mud.
Yes. Unequivocally, if the game provides incentives to do so
(e.g. xp).
> 2. Too many mobs in an area if they're never killed.
Yes.
> How does this all sound?
It boils down to this. If you don't care about extinction then any
scheme which involves putting a brake on spawning as population size
decreases will serve you well - if what you want is to allow players
to depress mob populations. Actually you don't even need to allow
extinction - you can have a floor spawn rate below which it won't
drop. This gives you the population responsiveness you alluded to at
the beginning of your post, _no matter what the details are about
the spawn_. So whether you use the male and female scheme, or spawn
from spawners, or have autonomous zygotes grow into fully fledged
mobs after many months of fluid simulations in the womb, you are
doing the same thing from the point of view that you are putting new
critters in the world at the same sensitive rate.
Following the "floor spawn rate" rule, you could still drive the
point home that killing can mean total extinction by (from time to
time) manually killing off a population which is at floor spawn and
which you are OK with losing. An advantage is that you can use this
to test the viability of really killing them off - if you end up
doing this a lot and saying "no, I don't want to lose this
population" then it's safe to say it shouldn't do this through
automation either.
If you are doing a hack and slash game (e.g. one in which the
majority of play is killing mobs) then you will hack off players
doing this and should evaluate whether you want a classic killing
game, or something else. If you do this relatively "softly," so that
mobs essentially are guaranteed to repop in some number of hours,
then you just have a mechanism for making players move around the
areas more. Cool. :)
Sasha - People were talking about resets.. Anderson, David
- People were talking about resets.. John Buehler
- People were talking about resets.. Anderson, David
- People were talking about resets.. Arnau Rossell=?US-ASCII?Q?=F3?= Castell=?US-ASCII?Q?=F3?=
- People were talking about resets.. shren
- People were talking about resets.. Anderson, David
- People were talking about resets.. David B. Held
- People were talking about resets.. shren
- People were talking about resets.. Anderson, David
- People were talking about resets.. Michael Tresca
- People were talking about resets.. Fred Clift
- People were talking about resets.. Lars Duening
- People were talking about resets.. Michael Tresca
- People were talking about resets.. Rayzam
- People were talking about resets.. Matt Mihaly
- People were talking about resets.. Tand'a-ur
- People were talking about resets.. John Buehler
- People were talking about resets.. Leland Hulbert II
- People were talking about resets.. lynx@lynx.purrsia.com
- People were talking about resets.. Jason Murdick
- People were talking about resets.. Jeff Lindsey
- People were talking about resets.. Ben Chambers
- People were talking about resets.. Sasha Hart
- People were talking about resets.. David B. Held
- People were talking about resets.. Sasha Hart
- People were talking about resets.. Anderson, David
- People were talking about resets.. David B. Held
- People were talking about resets.. Acius
- People were talking about resets.. Marian Griffith
- People were talking about resets.. Sasha Hart
- Question about copyovers. Anderson, David
- Question about copyovers. Tand'a-ur
- Question about copyovers. Anderson, David
- Question about copyovers. Kwon Ekstrom
- Question about copyovers. Adam
- Question about copyovers. Oliver Jowett
- Question about copyovers. Kwon Ekstrom
- Question about copyovers. Lars Duening
- Question about copyovers. Jon Lambert
- Question about copyovers. fred@clift.org
- Question about copyovers. Zach Collins {Siege}
- Question about copyovers. Smith, David {Lynchburg}
- non-violent activities (was People were talking about resets..) Ammon Lauritzen
- References on personality and emotion models Robert Zubek
- Multimodal interface conference. Rayzam
- Hyperbolies R Us shren
- Hyperbolies R Us Matt Mihaly
- TECH: Systems Administration Issues Thomas Leavitt
- Questions about ... XML as data format Adam
- Questions about ... XML as data format Anderson, David
- Questions about ... XML as data format Kwon Ekstrom
- R&D Matt Mihaly
- Conversation logs? Robert Zubek
- Conversation logs? Rudy Fink
- Conversation logs? Vincent Archer
- Conversation logs? Shane Gough
- DGN: Elastic Advancement in MUDs? Jeff Lindsey
- DGN: Elastic Advancement in MUDs? David B. Held
- Building histories off civilizations automatically adam Martin
- ADMIN: Virii and mail forgeries J C Lawrence
- Hi from the Dragon Empire's CLM Peter Tyson
- Linux gaming ( was Apple WWDC? ) Kevin Mack
- [TECH] Preferred LPC replacement? Jeff Bachtel
- [TECH] Preferred LPC replacement? Damion Schubert
- Who `owns' conversation logs? Joshua Judson Rosen
- The Online Gaming Life for Me! Michael Tresca
- Boredom Ben Chambers
- Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility [was Boredom] Ron Gabbard
- Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility [was Boredom] Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- "MMOG" Bible Brian 'Psychochild' Green
- "MMOG" Bible David Kennerly
- TECH: Single process v.s. multi process? Philip Mak
- TECH: Single process v.s. multi process? Smith, David {Lynchburg}
- TECH: Single process v.s. multi process? Bruce Mitchener
- TECH: Single process v.s. multi process? Bruce Mitchener
- In defense of "soloability" [was Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility] Clay
- In defense of "soloability" [was Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility] apollyon
- In defense of "soloability" [was Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility] Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- In defense of "soloability" [was Law of Diminishi ng Marginal Utility] Koster, Raph
- In defense of "soloability" [was Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility] Michael Tresca
- In defense of "soloability" [was Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility] Paul Schwanz
- In defense of "soloability" [was Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility] Martin C. Martin
- In defense of "soloability" [was Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility] Dave Rickey
- In defense of "soloability" [was Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility] Sanvean
- In defense of "soloability" [was Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility] Matt Mihaly
- In defense of "soloability" [was Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility] Michael Tresca
- In defense of "soloability" [was Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility] Kwon Ekstrom
- In defense of "soloability" [was Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility] Ron Gabbard
- Game shows Peter Tyson
- What keeps people interested in social muds? Martin C. Martin
- What keeps people interested in social muds? Rudy Fink
- What keeps people interested in social muds? Martin C. Martin
- What keeps people interested in social muds? Joshua Judson Rosen
- What keeps people interested in social muds? Ron Gabbard
- What keeps people interested in social muds? Marc Bowden
- What keeps people interested in social muds? Joshua Judson Rosen
- What keeps people interested in social muds? lynx@lynx.purrsia.com
- What keeps people interested in social muds? Richard A. Bartle
- What keeps people interested in social muds? Martin C. Martin
- What keeps people interested in social muds? Richard A. Bartle
- New Beginings Drylar Levre
- New Beginings Acius
- New Beginings ceo@grexengine.com
- New Beginings Bruce Mitchener
- New Beginings David B. Held
- New Beginings Kwon Ekstrom
- New Beginings David B. Held
- New Beginings Kwon Ekstrom
- New Beginings Sean Kelly
- New Beginings Lars Duening
- New Beginings David B. Held
- New Beginings Lars Duening
- New Beginings Bruce Mitchener
- New Beginings David B. Held
- New Beginings Kwon Ekstrom
- New Beginings Paul Schwanz
- New Beginings Zach Collins {Siege}
- New Beginings Miroslav Silovic
- New Beginings David B. Held
- New Beginings Draymoor a Vin il'Rogina
- New Beginings David B. Held
- New Beginings Kwon Ekstrom
- New Beginings Bruce Mitchener
- [DGN] Creating a MUD Richard Krush
- [DGN] Creating a MUD Acius
- [DGN] Creating a MUD Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- [DGN] Creating a MUD Edward Glowacki
- [DGN] Creating a MUD Kwon Ekstrom
- [DGN] Creating a MUD Edward Glowacki
- [DGN] Creating a MUD Fred Clift
- [DGN] Creating a MUD David Bennett
- [DGN] Creating a MUD fred@clift.org
- [DGN] Creating a MUD Damion Schubert
- [DGN] Creating a MUD Taylor
- [DGN] Creating a MUD Matt Mihaly
- [DGN] Creating a MUD Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- On the creation of constructive/social behaviours in online games! Marc Demesel
- [DGN] MUD Books James Edward Gray II
- [DGN] MUD Books Scion Altera
- [DGN] MUD Books Jeremy Noetzelman
- [DGN] MUD Books Tand'a-ur
- Positive reinforcement for socializing [was In de fense of "soloability" ] Jeff Lindsey
- Character skill distribution and trade-offs Ron Gabbard
- Character skill distribution and trade-offs Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- Character skill distribution and trade-offs Vincent Archer
- Character skill distribution and trade-offs Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- Character skill distribution and trade-offs John Buehler
- Character skill distribution and trade-offs Sean Kelly
- Character skill distribution and trade-offs Ron Gabbard
- Space partitioning, R-Trees? Dread Quixadhal
- Space partitioning, R-Trees? Daniel.Harman@barclayscapital.com
- Space partitioning, R-Trees? Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt
- Space partitioning, R-Trees? Crosbie Fitch