[Robbert]

Originally Posted by Finding players near each player would be O(n*n), where n is number of players

Why would you need to find players near each player? This is inefficient and unnecessary. Take your known point of origin, Player_A, and extrapolate from that location outward N points, to find OBJ's and PLAyers in the range shown. Allow for mediation of this value to account for extra large objects (the further out you get, the larger the object must be to be 'seen&#39, and limit the function based upon the weather/race/eyesight/time of day/etc.

In some cases, such as finding if others are nearby as well, you could take the data culled from above and sift through it again, placing relationships between the player and the objects/other players:

Frank is here, standing near the large oak tree. Wilhelmina and Ruprecht can be seen beyond him, almost at the edge of the copse. Far on the horizon, the towering mountain, Spinterfang, can be seen dominating the horizon. In your peripheral vision you can make out a type of building to the right, and the forest continues to the left.

The above is an example of an intricate dynamically built location description, taking all the data from the extrapolation (Fred, Wilhelmina, Ruprecht, a building, Splinterfang Mountain, and a Large Oak Tree) and placing it into a (well?) written sentence.

At no time does it become O(n*n), because we are not concerned where -everything- is in relationship to everything else, only to our known focii, the character. There's no need to find Fred's distance from the tree, or Wilhelmina, because it is implicit in their relative location to the viewer.

[Loriel]

Originally Posted by Finding players near each player would be O(n*n), where n is number of players

Originally Posted by Why would you need to find players near each player?

I think I failed to make my point clear - I was supporting your (Robbert's) proposition that the basic algorithm would be O(n), before further improvements.

The only circumstance I can see where the O(n*n) would apply is the one I quote above, finding number of players near each player.

You could look at one 'game loop' in this context, where you might need to construct n 'player views', each of O(n) approx, so the complete game loop computation is O(n*n), though even in this case I think O(n*p) is a better value.

As you said, there are various improvements that would reduce this in practice.
For example, if we have found when constructing Frank's view that Frank is near Ruprecht, we know when constructing Ruprecht's view that Ruprecht is near Frank and don't need to calculate it again .
Similarly if Frank is near Ruprecht, and Ruprecht is near Wilhelmina, we know that Wilhelmina is at least 'fairly near' to Frank, though we may need to refine that.

[Alexei]

Firstly, please excuse the shortness of this reply (Only have time to check in right now)

Secondly, thanks for all the replies, they've been very informative and helpful.

Finally, does anyone know where I can see a full coordinate system (Like Physmud++) in action? I've done some searching but so far no luck.

Thanks,
Alexei

[Raghar]

Hello boys I'm doing some very hard and complex simulation and I found this topic very interesting. Basicaly I simplified seeking of targets to something like 3D room and I wanna know if there is better and FASTER way to do this. I do probably have two problems big list for seeking and considering of what data I would need.
Could you post some links?

It's strange I do RPG Strategy Simulation and I found lots of interesting problems here, and not on the graphical/ game servers. Probably becose I have similar problems like muds but for different reasons. At least most of them are different.