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Old 09-17-2003, 04:23 AM   #14
KaVir
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Join Date: Apr 2002
Name: Richard
Home MUD: God Wars II
Posts: 2,052
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Dynamic descriptions are one of my favourite features, as I feel they can add a lot of flavour to a mud. You don't need to make everything dynamic - but it does allow you to include things in the room description that would normally be considered bad practice within a static description.

For example, you don't need to refer to the weather in every description - but in some cases you might want to mention the sunlight shining through the windows, or the moonlight reflecting off the lake, or the dead autumn leaves crunching beneath your boots. In these cases you need to know that it's daytime, or that the moon is up, or that it is autumn, or what the viewer is wearing on their feet, and that's just the sort of information that dynamic descriptions can provide.

I've not really used hand-written dynamic descriptions much for rooms (as I prefer to automate that part of the mud), but I do find them very useful for help files. Not only does this give the help files a more personalised touch, it can also provide the player with the exact information they need without them having to do calculations themselves, as well as use data specific to the character in order to provide examples that the player can better relate to, for example:







In particular, note the way the second help file uses one of my character's actual weapons in order to provide an example of how damage is calculated.

Obviously the same sort of strategy can be applied to room descriptions.
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