[Chapel]

Alright so I'm building this awesome area on my building MUD and I want there to be a really violent area whereby aggressive mobs are so aggressive they will even attack other mobs in the area.

Now I've been told this uses a bit of memory, since its a constant thing activated the moment someone steps in the area and the mobs begin to roam...

The admin is pretty cool though and they said its my call. Now do I scrap the idea and find another way to try and regain the same effect? Or do I run the memory for the awesome effect a gangwar can produce?

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[Yazracor]

Well, I do not know how low you really are on memory, If your admin says it's alright, it probably is, so go ahead. If you want a work-around, why not do the following?
Just add an "grall"-trigger (or whatever your codebase uses) to the mobs, so the fighting starts whenever someone enters the room. This way, you won't have all mobs in the area constantly fighting but only those really around the players. That means also you will not run out of mobs in more distant parts of the area because they are all killed before the players arrive there.
Hope this helps a bit

[KaVir]

I can't honestly see any reason why it would use any extra memory (unless the mobs are lopping off each others limbs or something), although it would certainly use a little more cpu time.

The main problem I see is not one of resources, but of game balance. Unless you plan the area very carefully, the mobs would constantly wipe each other out and there would be nothing left for the players to kill. In addition, players would be able to use mobs as tanks, and mobs might end up stealing kills, both of which are side affects you probably won't want.

[Chapel]

Hmmm, you both give very valid responses. Let me elaborate a little more. The effect of the area is that violence is happening 24/7, people should walk into rooms and see rotting corpses, injured mobs (this MUD has perm injury), and so forth. Perhaps even a mass melee of 6 - 7 mobs.


KaVir, totally unrelated....why is your signature so #### familiar?? What game is that from?

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[Ytrewtsu]

Check it out Zork

That is where his signature comes from....talk about back to the beginning, I downloaded it a month or so ago and played for a while.

Ytrewtsu

[Mandrake]

Enter the white house, through the kitchen window ... of course. Head upstairs to snag the rope and the nasty knife....but bring a light source. Lest it be pitch black, and you are likely to be eaten by a grue.

Zork is what seperates the venerable from the newbies.
~Mandrake

[Chapel]

Ahhhh Zork.

Remember when games were good? Man, I'm young and I feel old....

Bleh.

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[Yazracor]

Ok, back from Zork to the topic
I agree with Kavir that the problem with constant fighting might be that the mobs kill each other off quickly, so I'ld put a delay-trigger on the corpses which purges them and reloads a healthy mob chosen randomly from a list - of course only if no player is in an adjacent room. That way you have the "realistic" fighting, injured and killed mobs 24/7 and still don't run out of mobs. Although I don't know your codebase I also believe that the impact on memory and cpu-load shouldn't really be a factor unless you're really low in these resources.
As to mobs stealing kills - if the mob kills another one, I'ld think this is ok, after all, who does the kill gets the benefit.
Using mobs as tanks can be avoided in three ways. Either make all mobiles aggressive or make them assist others of the same group or give them a mobprog which makes them switch targets randomly during the fight - but not if they fight a PC.

[Molly]

And make sure that the mobs don't have any money on them.

I made that mistake way back when I added some spectacular gangwars to the back allies of a city, and ended up with heaps of coins strewn all over the place. This made me eventually resort to the mobs hurling random insults against each other instead, and occasionally - but not always - assisting a PC if he is fighting a member of the other gang.