From: anipa@cs.tut.fi (Niilo Neuvo)
Subject: Re: Hack'n'slash not for me
Organization: Tampere U of Technology, Finland
	<1546@lysator.liu.se> <ANIPA.92Aug23161702@sotka.cs.tut.fi>
	<1992Aug23.160013.15754@uniwa.uwa.edu.au>
	<ANIPA.92Aug23211948@sotka.cs.tut.fi>
	<1992Aug23.190126.26821@uniwa.uwa.edu.au>
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1992 22:14:50 GMT

guddt@uniwa.uwa.edu.au (David Bennett) writes:
> anipa@cs.tut.fi (Niilo Neuvo) writes:
> >Ghosts don't need a score command. You either put a check in the
> >player.c (if(ghost)return), or you just don't inherit the score
> >command. The check is fine as long as the mud is simple, what happens
> >when a player is something else (dragon, frog, gas-cloud, bug, stone
> >statue), do I need to write n+1 if()'s into the score command?

> Are you saying that they do or dont have a score command in these
> states?  What exactly do you DO with races?

The score for a gridbug is rather different from the score of a
player.

> object if you are a lord or a creator or a a player.  Exec has its uses
> too.  And I think that here is amore a case of conflicting mudlib
> designs as opposed to anything else.

This shows the superiority of LPmuds, you have a choice. And some good
reasons for posting useless articles.

> >Yes you can code all this into the player object, only ending up with
> >a huge player.c, but what is the point?

> Player.c's are huge.  Its something that happens with them.  Even if you
> are handling things with exec I bet your player object is still huge.

Object is huge, that can't be avoided. Complex things take lotsa
space, but it has nothing to do with size of an individual file
(actually our player.c is based on a non inheriting 2.4.5 version,
it's 69k, inherits are something like 400k)

	** some differences in point of view deleted **

>  Most of
> the changes that a different race implies are cosmetic anyway, its not
> as if they fight differently, sure they fight with different legs and
> thingys but thats not the point.  Its a change of description with a few
> attribute twiddles and different body.  The rest of the game is going to
> act the same in respect to your monster.  You might also have a
> different size idea.  You could also add languages....

Yes, all lpmuds that I have so far seen seem to think that races are
cosmetic. It's a pity. I have been attempting to make each race
different, but it's really hard to invent a lot of features to every
normal player race (suggestions by email are welcome, no feelings
please as they are just cosmetic).

Fighting is the same wether you are a monster or a player. Not much
one can do about it. Except that gridbugs don't fight the same way as
normal players (they have no heartbeat for example).

Languages are a bad idea. You end up as genesis not being able to talk
to anyone. I even wrote language handling, but people said it's not a
smart idea to implement them so the code remains useless (or actually
everybody speaks "common" or 0 without knowing it).

> Hope this was nicely incoherent.

++Anipa, 15 minutes after my article pinkfish was visiting BatMUD (I win) ;)
--
      NN   NN  NN   NN  NNNNNNNN
    NNNN    N  NN    N  NNNNNN
  NNNNNN  N    NN  N    NNNN
NNNNNNNN  NN   NN  NN   NN
--