<!-- MHonArc v2.4.4 --> <!--X-Subject: Re: [MUD-Dev] Hard Sci-fi Muds was Character Evolution --> <!--X-From-R13: "Pevna Bevpr" <oycevprNorqsbeq.arg> --> <!--X-Date: Mon, 01 Sep 1997 23:32:22 +0000 --> <!--X-Message-Id: 199709012116.3614600#bedford,net --> <!--X-Content-Type: text/plain --> <!--X-Head-End--> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN"> <html> <head> <title>MUD-Dev message, Re: [MUD-Dev] Hard Sci-fi Muds was Character Evolution</title> <!-- meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" --> <link rev="made" href="mailto:blprice#bedford,net"> </head> <body background="/backgrounds/paperback.gif" bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000" link="#0000FF" alink="#FF0000" vlink="#006000"> <font size="+4" color="#804040"> <strong><em>MUD-Dev<br>mailing list archive</em></strong> </font> <br> [ <a href="../">Other Periods</a> | <a href="../../">Other mailing lists</a> | <a href="/search.php3">Search</a> ] <br clear=all><hr> <!--X-Body-Begin--> <!--X-User-Header--> <!--X-User-Header-End--> <!--X-TopPNI--> Date: [ <a href="msg00976.html">Previous</a> | <a href="msg00978.html">Next</a> ] Thread: [ <a href="msg00968.html">Previous</a> | <a href="msg01075.html">Next</a> ] Index: [ <A HREF="author.html#00977">Author</A> | <A HREF="#00977">Date</A> | <A HREF="thread.html#00977">Thread</A> ] <!--X-TopPNI-End--> <!--X-MsgBody--> <!--X-Subject-Header-Begin--> <H1>Re: [MUD-Dev] Hard Sci-fi Muds was Character Evolution</H1> <HR> <!--X-Subject-Header-End--> <!--X-Head-of-Message--> <UL> <LI><em>To</em>: <A HREF="mailto:mud-dev#null,net">mud-dev#null,net</A></LI> <LI><em>Subject</em>: Re: [MUD-Dev] Hard Sci-fi Muds was Character Evolution</LI> <LI><em>From</em>: "Brian Price" <<A HREF="mailto:blprice#bedford,net">blprice#bedford,net</A>></LI> <LI><em>Date</em>: Mon, 1 Sep 1997 19:50:08 +0000</LI> <LI><em>Comments</em>: Authenticated sender is <blprice#bedford,net></LI> </UL> <!--X-Head-of-Message-End--> <!--X-Head-Body-Sep-Begin--> <HR> <!--X-Head-Body-Sep-End--> <!--X-Body-of-Message--> <PRE> > Date: Mon, 1 Sep 1997 14:43:11 PST8PDT > From: Adam Wiggins <nightfall#user2,inficad.com> <snip suspension of disbelief discussion> > Depends on what your 'hard science' actually is. You could easily have I'll try to the definition of the genre (hard sci-fi) as defined in literature, doubt I'll do a great job though: Hard science fiction uses an absolute minimum of plot devices which are either against or completely untouched by current theory. A great example of a pure hard sci-fi work is Charles Pellegrino's Flying to Valhalla, all technology used in that book is a direct extrapolation of current theory. Larry Niven is an author who's works are oft referred to as hard sci-fi, I would say that his works are hard sci-fi but he definately skirts the edge. GDW's Traveller rpg (esp add-on works) is another example of hard sci-fi, only two or three plot devices are postulated which are totally untouched by current research, and the postulated 'theory' behind those plot devices are at least not totally disproven by current knowledge. To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a hard sci-fi TV series except perhaps Babylon 5.. There have been a few movies which qualify although Star Wars is _definately_ not one of them. Soft sci-fi makes liberal use of pseudo-technologies which have no basis in current research. Although I enjoy Star Trek and its offsprings immensely, it definately represents the soft sci-fi genre. The line between the two types of sci-fi is not a rigid one and is mostly characterized by an attempt to actively minimize the use of unknown tech plot devices and a general prohibition against violating known physics in hard sci-fi. > interplanetary travel without any sort of vessels - ie, some sort of > farcaster portals (ala Dan Simmons' Hyperion) which were granted by some > more advanced species. > I assume you mean the typical Star Wars/Star Trek/whatever sci-fi where > anyone who can get their hands on a small ship with a FTL drive can go > just about anywhere. Actually I find myself more drawn to the jump gate style of hyperspace ftl model. Only very large (and very expensive) vessels would be capable of hyper-transition unaided, ala Babylon 5. This model provides ftl travel at two widely seperated economic levels, the first allows anyone who can get there hands on a interplanetary vessel and afford the gate charges could travel throughout the jumpgate network. > > Perhaps 25 is too large a number for a workable hard sci-fi approach. > > This line of inquiry begets a number of questions: > > 1. How many zones/rooms would be required to model a habitable > > world? > This goes back to the landscape-generation stuff we always talk about, which > is useful for any kind of mud with landscapes in it. Thus you could potentially > model as many worlds as you want by simply painting landscape maps for them > with a paint program. If this is too tedious for you, there are tons of > great fractal landscape generators that can give you endless random landscapes > of varying terrains. I'm going to attempt to stay text oriented but fractal patterns may have a place. I may end up using a seperate subsystem for terrain mapping in a grid layout using a set of clonable rooms to represent the terrain. Do you know of any fractal landscape generators out there available in source code form? > > 2. How many rooms to model an orbital habitat or station? > > This is more like a normal sized area - like 100 or so is probably good > enough. Of course, I would tend to think that in a mud like this you'd > be moving away from hand-crafted zones and instead start creating lots of > generic objects. Ie, you create a space station object which contains around > 100 rooms, only 10 or so of which were created custom for that space station. > Then you can make many of these space station objects - they are different > because of the people that inhabit them, the stuff that is in them, etc. Yes, I think only some of the main areas will actually be done fully by hand. Others will likely be assembled from pre-built modules. Exactly how to do this without making all zones look the same is still a question though. > > 3. How many zones/rooms to model an uninhabitable world with and > > with out colonies (such as a future Mars)? > > Here it's easy to put limitations - you smack into the edge of the domed > city. Of course, then if you allow space suits and exploration outside the > city, you revert to your fractal landscape, with possibly a few alien artifacts > or ancient ruins thrown in to make things a tad more interesting. Functionally a domed city and a habitat would be equivalent. Features such as ruins would likely be another example of a hand designed area. > > 4. How many zones/rooms to model a gas giant with its moons? > > 5. How to represent an asteroid belt? > > Rooms would suck for modeling these, IMO. Here's where you'd *really* > want to go to a coordinate/object based system. Perhaps a mixture of the two, objects large enough (and friendly enough) to land on would have a room representation, the others would not. Thus a facility on Io could be modeled while still representing a gas giant as a single non-landable(?) object. > > 6. How many of the above features can minimally represent a star > > system (assuming pc inter-planetary travel)? > > You randomly generate as many star systems as you like. Each system generates > a number of planets from 0 to (say) 10, based on the attributes of the star. > Each of these planets is given attributes (size, age, terrain, clime) based > on the attributes of the star and the distance from the star. Yep, there's an excellent system in the Traveller rpg series, detailed in the book Scout. I'd think a derivative system would work. > At this point you have the choice whether you want your races hand-crafted > or not. You may want to create a bunch of interesting alien races, then > have the generator (or possibly yourself, if you don't mind some busy work) > search for a planet which meets all the life-support requirements for the > race. If you want a dizzying number of races (ala Star Trek), you'll probably > want to define basic attributes (ie, 'bumpy forehead' or 'warlike') and > families, then have a generator that actually creates aliens from there. > Giving them culture and history is another thing altogether, but this will > take care of pre-civilization races romping around on various planets. Again a mixture of computer generated and hand crafted, it sounds like an excellent approach. It would be nice to first map out a core region using the virtual star system generator and then 'concrete-ize' those that where to become the hand modified core worlds representing the homeworlds and major colonies of the major races in the game. > > 7. How many zones/rooms can an average builder generate in a years > > time? > > This varies quite a bit, but more importantly I doubt that what you are > after is a hand-crafted, room-based world. At any rate I would probably > throw up if I logged onto a 'space' mud and walked around spacecraft or > even space itself with 'n, e, s, w'...something like this literally begs > to be a coordinate/object system, with commands like 'go towards', 'turn > toward', 'avoid', etc. Space travel and like activeties will definately require a co-ordinate/object type of system. However, for walking inside of objects/areas, I think a more traditional approach will not only work but be more familiar to the players... although I may well go to a facing system for player movement. For a simple test, I logged onto swmud last night and played a bit. While there where quite a few things I didn't particularly care for, I found the vector/co-ordinate based movement in space and the cardinal movement on worlds to combine quite nicely. Brian Price aka Delver <blprice#bedford,net> </PRE> <!--X-Body-of-Message-End--> <!--X-MsgBody-End--> <!--X-Follow-Ups--> <HR> <ul compact><li><strong>Follow-Ups</strong>: <ul> <li><strong><A NAME="01075" HREF="msg01075.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Hard Sci-fi Muds was Character Evolution</A></strong> <ul compact><li><em>From:</em> Adam Wiggins <nightfall#user1,inficad.com></li></ul> </UL></LI></UL> <!--X-Follow-Ups-End--> <!--X-References--> <!--X-References-End--> <!--X-BotPNI--> <UL> <LI>Prev by Date: <STRONG><A HREF="msg00976.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] MUD Design Fundamentals (Was: Looking for</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Next by Date: <STRONG><A HREF="msg00978.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Hard Sci-fi Muds was Character Evolution</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Prev by thread: <STRONG><A HREF="msg00968.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Hard Sci-fi Muds was Character Evolution</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Next by thread: <STRONG><A HREF="msg01075.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Hard Sci-fi Muds was Character Evolution</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Index(es): <UL> <LI><A HREF="index.html#00977"><STRONG>Date</STRONG></A></LI> <LI><A HREF="thread.html#00977"><STRONG>Thread</STRONG></A></LI> </UL> </LI> </UL> <!--X-BotPNI-End--> <!--X-User-Footer--> <!--X-User-Footer-End--> <ul><li>Thread context: <BLOCKQUOTE><UL> <LI><STRONG>Re: [MUD-Dev] Hard Sci-fi muds was Character evolution</STRONG>, <EM>(continued)</EM> <ul compact> <ul compact> <LI><strong><A NAME="00998" HREF="msg00998.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Hard Sci-fi muds was Character evolution</A></strong>, Miroslav Silovic <a href="mailto:silovic#helga,zesoi.fer.hr">silovic#helga,zesoi.fer.hr</a>, Tue 02 Sep 1997, 09:13 GMT </LI> </ul> <LI><strong><A NAME="00935" HREF="msg00935.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Hard Sci-fi Muds was Character Evolution</A></strong>, Travis Casey <a href="mailto:efindel#io,com">efindel#io,com</a>, Mon 01 Sep 1997, 04:41 GMT </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="00938" HREF="msg00938.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Hard Sci-fi Muds was Character Evolution</A></strong>, Brian Price <a href="mailto:blprice#bedford,net">blprice#bedford,net</a>, Mon 01 Sep 1997, 05:49 GMT </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="00968" HREF="msg00968.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Hard Sci-fi Muds was Character Evolution</A></strong>, Travis Casey <a href="mailto:efindel#io,com">efindel#io,com</a>, Mon 01 Sep 1997, 21:03 GMT </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="00977" HREF="msg00977.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Hard Sci-fi Muds was Character Evolution</A></strong>, Brian Price <a href="mailto:blprice#bedford,net">blprice#bedford,net</a>, Mon 01 Sep 1997, 23:32 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="01075" HREF="msg01075.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Hard Sci-fi Muds was Character Evolution</A></strong>, Adam Wiggins <a href="mailto:nightfall#user1,inficad.com">nightfall#user1,inficad.com</a>, Thu 04 Sep 1997, 10:46 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="01092" HREF="msg01092.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Hard Sci-fi Muds was Character Evolution</A></strong>, Nathan Yospe <a href="mailto:yospe#hawaii,edu">yospe#hawaii,edu</a>, Thu 04 Sep 1997, 19:36 GMT </LI> </UL> </LI> </UL> </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="00978" HREF="msg00978.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Hard Sci-fi Muds was Character Evolution</A></strong>, Brian Price <a href="mailto:blprice#bedford,net">blprice#bedford,net</a>, Tue 02 Sep 1997, 00:15 GMT </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="01034" HREF="msg01034.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Hard Sci-fi muds was Character evolution</A></strong>, Brian Price <a href="mailto:blprice#bedford,net">blprice#bedford,net</a>, Tue 02 Sep 1997, 22:30 GMT </LI> </ul> </LI> </UL></BLOCKQUOTE> </ul> <hr> <center> [ <a href="../">Other Periods</a> | <a href="../../">Other mailing lists</a> | <a href="/search.php3">Search</a> ] </center> <hr> </body> </html>