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silvarilon · 10-13-2010, 07:45 PM

Anyone mind if I derail this thread? It seems to have achieved it's purpose (although sad the D2 mud is down...)

Randomly generated mazes aren't particularly hard to make, most mud languages shouldn't have a problem creating one.

What I'm more interested in are random generated mazes that generate the same every time, based on an input seed. So I can generate a maze for player Bob and another for player Frank, and have them different. But Bob's maze will always be the same every time I generate it.

That allows me to generate the mazes on the fly, rather than having to create the rooms beforehand (which means literally everyone can have their own mazes) - it also lets us do some more fun stuff. A maze doesn't have to be, well, a maze of tunnels. It could be a randomly generated town. Maybe every PC is able to go back to their hometown, and walk around. You don't want buildings moving around between visit, but nor do you want to save the rooms from every PC's town, if they might only visit once.

We're partway through implementing something like this, we call it "virtual rooms" - where only one room is created, but it is created differently based on their location. When they leave the room, the system secretly puts them back into the same room, but describes it differently (and fills it with different objects) based on the "new location" that they've moved to.

I'm hoping to use it to allow an unlimited sized world to explore, and to allow players to make real changes to the world. If they each have their own town, then they can have quests that make long term changes. A quest to build a windmill, for example, might leave a windmill in their town forevermore. And that windmill might mean the town is more prosperous, and grows (i.e. the maze is regenerated with different parameters) - and the quests available might also change or be added. The end result might be the players visiting a thriving city, where once it was just a farmstead.

And, of course, players should be able to visit each other's towns. Burn down your rival's windmill, etc. (which will give your rival new quests. "Help us rebuild the windmill!" "We're hungry, please bring food" etc.)

10-13-2010, 07:45 PM	#6
silvarilon Member Join Date: Dec 2009 Posts: 144	Re: Diablo 2 MUD? What Happened? Anyone mind if I derail this thread? It seems to have achieved it's purpose (although sad the D2 mud is down...) Randomly generated mazes aren't particularly hard to make, most mud languages shouldn't have a problem creating one. What I'm more interested in are random generated mazes that generate the same every time, based on an input seed. So I can generate a maze for player Bob and another for player Frank, and have them different. But Bob's maze will always be the same every time I generate it. That allows me to generate the mazes on the fly, rather than having to create the rooms beforehand (which means literally everyone can have their own mazes) - it also lets us do some more fun stuff. A maze doesn't have to be, well, a maze of tunnels. It could be a randomly generated town. Maybe every PC is able to go back to their hometown, and walk around. You don't want buildings moving around between visit, but nor do you want to save the rooms from every PC's town, if they might only visit once. We're partway through implementing something like this, we call it "virtual rooms" - where only one room is created, but it is created differently based on their location. When they leave the room, the system secretly puts them back into the same room, but describes it differently (and fills it with different objects) based on the "new location" that they've moved to. I'm hoping to use it to allow an unlimited sized world to explore, and to allow players to make real changes to the world. If they each have their own town, then they can have quests that make long term changes. A quest to build a windmill, for example, might leave a windmill in their town forevermore. And that windmill might mean the town is more prosperous, and grows (i.e. the maze is regenerated with different parameters) - and the quests available might also change or be added. The end result might be the players visiting a thriving city, where once it was just a farmstead. And, of course, players should be able to visit each other's towns. Burn down your rival's windmill, etc. (which will give your rival new quests. "Help us rebuild the windmill!" "We're hungry, please bring food" etc.)