08 Jun, 2009, Runter wrote in the 82nd comment:
KaVir said:
This isn't about different rates of decay - it's about having certain items that don't decay. I don't want my buried treasure vanishing after an hour, or a day, or even a week - I want it to stay there until I come back for it, or until someone else finds where I've hidden it. And when I decapitate you and stick your head on a pike, I want it to stay there even after it's rotted away to a skull.
David Haley said:
I thought we'd already said this actually, that different things have different rates of decay.
This isn't about different rates of decay - it's about having certain items that don't decay. I don't want my buried treasure vanishing after an hour, or a day, or even a week - I want it to stay there until I come back for it, or until someone else finds where I've hidden it. And when I decapitate you and stick your head on a pike, I want it to stay there even after it's rotted away to a skull.
Technically never and ever are different rates of decay. :P
08 Jun, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 83rd comment:
We're agreeing, again… Allowing different rates of decay means that things have, well, different rates of decay, meaning that some things can have a zero rate of decay, meaning that they don't decay…
08 Jun, 2009, Runter wrote in the 84th comment:
David Haley said:
We're agreeing, again… Allowing different rates of decay means that things have, well, different rates of decay, meaning that some things can have a zero rate of decay, meaning that they don't decay…
No, I think we should allow different rates of decay.
08 Jun, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 85th comment:
Fool! Obviously, the correct answer is to use different decay rates.
OK, sorry :redface:
OK, sorry :redface:
08 Jun, 2009, Runter wrote in the 86th comment:
David Haley said:
Fool! Obviously, the correct answer is to use different decay rates.
OK, sorry :redface:
OK, sorry :redface:
Talk about agreeing to disagree.
08 Jun, 2009, Scandum wrote in the 87th comment:
I disagree to agree.
Certain items should probably decay when buried, though I guess that's a realism vs playability dispute. It's nice when everything, even worn gear, decays. It makes an easy money sink.
Earthquakes, tornados, lightning, floods, and fires are a good way to deal with structures and other long lasting objects while adding an interesting game element while at it. You can also get rid of small durable items lying around by creating a thick snow pack during the winter, with items vanishing as the snow retreats during spring. If a winter lasts roughly 1 rl month it's unlikely that anyone will miss the pink ice ring that was covered by snow for 4 weeks.
Certain items should probably decay when buried, though I guess that's a realism vs playability dispute. It's nice when everything, even worn gear, decays. It makes an easy money sink.
Earthquakes, tornados, lightning, floods, and fires are a good way to deal with structures and other long lasting objects while adding an interesting game element while at it. You can also get rid of small durable items lying around by creating a thick snow pack during the winter, with items vanishing as the snow retreats during spring. If a winter lasts roughly 1 rl month it's unlikely that anyone will miss the pink ice ring that was covered by snow for 4 weeks.
08 Jun, 2009, Runter wrote in the 88th comment:
Scandum said:
I disagree to agree.
Certain items should probably decay when buried, though I guess that's a realism vs playability dispute. It's nice when everything, even worn gear, decays. It makes an easy money sink.
Earthquakes, tornados, lightning, floods, and fires are a good way to deal with structures and other long lasting objects while adding an interesting game element while at it. You can also get rid of small durable items lying around by creating a thick snow pack during the winter, with items vanishing as the snow retreats during spring. If a winter lasts roughly 1 rl month it's unlikely that anyone will miss the pink ice ring that was covered by snow for 4 weeks.
Certain items should probably decay when buried, though I guess that's a realism vs playability dispute. It's nice when everything, even worn gear, decays. It makes an easy money sink.
Earthquakes, tornados, lightning, floods, and fires are a good way to deal with structures and other long lasting objects while adding an interesting game element while at it. You can also get rid of small durable items lying around by creating a thick snow pack during the winter, with items vanishing as the snow retreats during spring. If a winter lasts roughly 1 rl month it's unlikely that anyone will miss the pink ice ring that was covered by snow for 4 weeks.
Then that would be a design choice. (And I wouldn't design a persistent world at all.)
But I think the entire discussion was built around the premise that someone does want items that truly last forever and how it should be done.
08 Jun, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 89th comment:
David Haley said:
We're agreeing, again… Allowing different rates of decay means that things have, well, different rates of decay, meaning that some things can have a zero rate of decay, meaning that they don't decay…
I hadn't realised that your "room expiration counter" and "cleaner mob" proposals were also intended to deal with objects that never decay. Could you elaborate on how they would work in such situations?
Scandum said:
Certain items should probably decay when buried, though I guess that's a realism vs playability dispute.
Agreed, but you can still do that easily enough - you just slap an expiry datestamp on the object (like I did with my former mud) and update the objects when they're next dug up. You bury a corpse and its ripped-out heart, then dig them up a month later. The mud loads them up, sees that both have expired, so it silently destroys the heart and replaces the corpse with a skeleton.
08 Jun, 2009, Davion wrote in the 90th comment:
If the system was designed with coordinates (as most wildernesses are), one could simply store a objects location without requiring a room. Then upon a character entering the room, it would be created and populated.
08 Jun, 2009, Skol wrote in the 91st comment:
Davion said:
If the system was designed with coordinates (as most wildernesses are), one could simply store a objects location without requiring a room. Then upon a character entering the room, it would be created and populated.
Yeah, that was my thoughts on it as well. Store the date stamp as well if you want to 'decay' as KaVir's been discussing above. Maybe a cron job (or in game) to check once per day to just remove items as well.
How would storage work though, in memory or save a file? I could imagine hundreds of little snip files for each wilderness if it was unique file per 'room'.
Since we've discussed the crap out of the wilderness addition, have people who can, decided if they want to make the addition? I know my skills aren't up to it, although I could do grunt work on things such as the OLC. And, would we want it to be a 'patch' into RaM or simply add it TO RaM?
08 Jun, 2009, Runter wrote in the 92nd comment:
Skol said:
Yeah, that was my thoughts on it as well. Store the date stamp as well if you want to 'decay' as KaVir's been discussing above. Maybe a cron job (or in game) to check once per day to just remove items as well.
How would storage work though, in memory or save a file? I could imagine hundreds of little snip files for each wilderness if it was unique file per 'room'.
Since we've discussed the crap out of the wilderness addition, have people who can, decided if they want to make the addition? I know my skills aren't up to it, although I could do grunt work on things such as the OLC. And, would we want it to be a 'patch' into RaM or simply add it TO RaM?
Davion said:
If the system was designed with coordinates (as most wildernesses are), one could simply store a objects location without requiring a room. Then upon a character entering the room, it would be created and populated.
Yeah, that was my thoughts on it as well. Store the date stamp as well if you want to 'decay' as KaVir's been discussing above. Maybe a cron job (or in game) to check once per day to just remove items as well.
How would storage work though, in memory or save a file? I could imagine hundreds of little snip files for each wilderness if it was unique file per 'room'.
Since we've discussed the crap out of the wilderness addition, have people who can, decided if they want to make the addition? I know my skills aren't up to it, although I could do grunt work on things such as the OLC. And, would we want it to be a 'patch' into RaM or simply add it TO RaM?
I'm pretty sure this type of addition is outside of the intended official purview of RaM. (Although it seems RaM has been fairly dead for a while.)
08 Jun, 2009, Skol wrote in the 93rd comment:
Yeah, that's why I was thinking of it as an 'add-on' perhaps. Wasn't RaM just 'RoM' but fixed?
08 Jun, 2009, Scandum wrote in the 94th comment:
Davion said:
If the system was designed with coordinates (as most wildernesses are), one could simply store a objects location without requiring a room. Then upon a character entering the room, it would be created and populated.
Not needed if you design your wilderness map as an array of pointers. Unused rooms can point to a default (hashed) room, used rooms point to an actual room loaded into memory.
It's an initial high memory cost, but you don't have additional memory costs. If you use a grid of unsigned characters instead you need all kinds of sorted lists to store your stuff, which ultimately might end up having a much higher memory usage.
08 Jun, 2009, Runter wrote in the 95th comment:
(4 bytes) * 32,000 * 32,000
Yeah, that's only 4 gigs of ram for your pointers alone in KaVir's example. :P
Yeah, that's only 4 gigs of ram for your pointers alone in KaVir's example. :P
08 Jun, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 96th comment:
KaVir said:
I hadn't realised that your "room expiration counter" and "cleaner mob" proposals were also intended to deal with objects that never decay. Could you elaborate on how they would work in such situations?
For starters the cleaner mob proposal wasn't my proposal – I merely commented on it – but secondly and more importantly, I'm not sure what exactly you're asking me to talk about. I'm still talking about the game design, I haven't talked about implementation (which I'm not terribly interested in exactly right now, and certainly not until a design is decided upon). I don't see the point talking about implementation details of random systems when the higher-level design questions aren't settled. After all, the implementation can change drastically depending on what exactly one is implementing, ne?
I'm not sure why it seems to bother you so much when I agree with you these days. :wink:
08 Jun, 2009, Scandum wrote in the 97th comment:
Runter said:
(4 bytes) * 32,000 * 32,000
Yeah, that's only 4 gigs of ram for your pointers alone in KaVir's example. :P
Yeah, that's only 4 gigs of ram for your pointers alone in KaVir's example. :P
Kavir has 32,000 x 32,000 locations, not 32,000 x 32,000 rooms. Assuming he has 40x40 tiles that's only 800 x 800 x 4 which is roughly 2.5 MB.
08 Jun, 2009, Runter wrote in the 98th comment:
Scandum said:
Kavir has 32,000 x 32,000 locations, not 32,000 x 32,000 rooms. Assuming he has 40x40 tiles that's only 800 x 800 x 4 which is roughly 2.5 MB.
Runter said:
(4 bytes) * 32,000 * 32,000
Yeah, that's only 4 gigs of ram for your pointers alone in KaVir's example. :P
Yeah, that's only 4 gigs of ram for your pointers alone in KaVir's example. :P
Kavir has 32,000 x 32,000 locations, not 32,000 x 32,000 rooms. Assuming he has 40x40 tiles that's only 800 x 800 x 4 which is roughly 2.5 MB.
Cause every mud uses multiple locations in one room, amiright?
08 Jun, 2009, Scandum wrote in the 99th comment:
Runter said:
Cause every mud uses multiple locations in one room, amiright?
Using a classic character grid for a 32,000 x 32,000 wilderness (so 1 location per room) you'd still need 1 gig of memory, so it's pretty much a given that a mud with that many locations uses tiles.
What exactly is your argument?
08 Jun, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 100th comment:
Scandum said:
Using a classic character grid for a 32,000 x 32,000 wilderness (so 1 location per room) you'd still need 1 gig of memory, so it's pretty much a given that a mud with that many locations uses tiles.
Not a given at all! Who says you have to actually instantiate all of this in memory at all times?
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This isn't about different rates of decay - it's about having certain items that don't decay. I don't want my buried treasure vanishing after an hour, or a day, or even a week - I want it to stay there until I come back for it, or until someone else finds where I've hidden it. And when I decapitate you and stick your head on a pike, I want it to stay there even after it's rotted away to a skull.