[Reality] Re: T-minus 450 hours and counting

Fri, 14 Jun 2002 16:46:43 -0500 (CDT)

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From: Jp Calderone <exarkun@meson.dyndns.org>
Subject: [Reality] Re: T-minus 450 hours and counting (Was: Something a lot longer)
Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2002 12:36:17 -0400 (EDT)

> On Fri, 14 Jun 2002, Glyph Lefkowitz wrote:
> 
> > First and foremost, I am planning to integrate Reality as much as
> > possible with Beyond 2.0, which is the next iteration of Jason Asbahr's
> > definitive white paper on the topic of virtual worlds.  I'm really not
> > sure at this point what all the pieces are going to be called when
> > that's done, which will be "reality" and which "beyond", but I really
> > don't want TR to be a text-only solution from bottom to top; it should
> > use virtual world abstractions which are more universal.  I don't want
> > to rush Jason's design, so there will probably be some delays in my
> > involvement as we work things out for a much broader category of games
> > than Reality was originally intended to be used for.  (On the plus side,
> > there are lots of things in the graphical components of Beyond that
> > Reality won't need to move forward, initially.)
> 
>   Yay.  I have long dreamt of a system capable of properly handling
> multiple styles of input, but never had either the skill or the drive to
> make it happen.  Are the existing Beyond documents available to the
> general public, or are seekrut ninja access codes required?

There are two documents that you can read at:

    http://www.asbahr.com/papers.html

However, neither of these will match the mind-altering onslaught of the Beyond
2.0 paper, which will unify Jason's experience in the field to date, as well as
document the plans for an open-source platform rather than a closed-source
game.

> > So, that said, the initial motivation I have to do something to sentence
> > will be to separate the process of parsing text (determining intent)
> > from the process of dispatching actions (determining consequences).
> > Each game will need to both extend the parser and dispatch new kinds of
> > actions.

> > [snip : text parsing is fun, documentation is good, users are unclueful]

> > Once you're done dealing with whatever mangled garbage the so-called
> > "user" has deposited at your prompt, you only know what they *want*. [snip]
> 
> Oararkgurglegurgle...
> 
> So this is basically the "central command registry" or whatever it's
> called?  My main concern about this is that it makes it somewhat difficult
> to differentiate between commands (Intentions, Abilities, Skills...) that
> go by the same name.  Perhaps this is a moot point if the Intentions are
> dispatched properly, ie, only to what would currently be the ambient_*,
> verb_*, and ability_* methods Reality has.  I have trouble groking this
> sort of thing without an implementation to pick up and poke and try to
> break :)

In order to respond to a particular action, you're going to have to implement
the interface associated with that action, rather than dispatching simply on
action name.  Hopefully, there will be a rather large unified action repository
that is sufficient for most games.  (For example, I hope for PickUp, PickLock,
and Choose to be in the base Reality distribution).

> > [stuff shouldn't all be unique]

>   Hooray.  I'm all for uniqueness, but I'm not God, or even a major diety,
> I can't make stuff that fast :)  I have some ideas for an item
> construction system to let players partially participate in the creation
> process (Nothing unique, I'm sure.  I've been told it's a lot like the EQ
> system) and algorithmic generation can be another source of unique, if not
> terribly creative, items/locations/creatures, but a template system (which
> is already partially available simply via python classes) strikes me as a
> must-have.

Getting to know some existing systems is a pretty good idea.  Player-generated
content systems generally fall into two categories; decoration and crafting.
Decoration systems allow players to position items in aesthetically different
configurations essentially for free; crafting systems allow players to create
new items from specified formulas.

I hope that dash eventually works out the generalized "chemistry" system that
he described in his last post to the Divunal list one day...

> > [snip : a game that makes sense]
> >
> >
> > I still have a lot more thought to give this, since I'm re-treading
> > ground I haven't walked on for quite some time, as well as waiting to
> > see how the critical related components of Beyond turn out.  Any
> > comments on the general direction?
> 
>   Comments... Comments... Can't think of anything more interesting than
> "sounds good" at the moment.  Please, keep us updated :)

I will.  Thanks for not being too impatient :-).  Speaking of keeping folks
updated, if you guys could use this list to discuss your changes and updates to
Reality that would be great.

> "Minerals are inexhaustible and will never be depleted. A stream of
> investment creates additions to proved reserves, a very large in-ground
> inventory, constantly renewed as it is extracted... How much was in the
> ground at the start and how much will be left at the end are unknown and
> irrelevant."  -- Morry Adelman, World Renowned Economist

This cracked me up :-)

-- 
 |    <`'>    |  Glyph Lefkowitz: Traveling Sorcerer  |
 |   < _/ >   |  Lead Developer,  the Twisted project  |
 |  < ___/ >  |      http://www.twistedmatrix.com      |

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