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Iluvatar · 10-04-2003, 12:55 PM

I'm sure we've all been in boring, repetitive landscape at one time or another in real life but what we usually don't notice is there is always a minor change with each step taken in any direction. It's those minor changes that people key in on and consider as "progress" towards whatever goal intended. Even in the most boring terrain of all, an ocean, there are subtle differences ranging from the height of swells to mysterious plops of water from invisible things. I've always focused on about a 4-5 line formatted room with those minor changes to both the base redit and directional descriptions and it works well.

Simulating distance with our medium can be one of the most challenging tasks facing any text based world and I have a technique I would like to share. Like Molly's idea (a narrator, who'd a thunk it, our Molly! Tsk Tsk) it's somewhat controversial but works well in application. Create a generic set of 20-25 rooms that are similar but change ever so slightly as I described earlier and copy 4x to 100. Have your coder create a format cube 10x10 that changes the directional exits each reset or reboot so you aren't limited to NSEW in all etc. Each set of 100 winds up with a fixed exit to a new zone, it can reasonably be duped as a full zone to expand an area as many times as you wish AND like a true wilderness or ocean you get lost really easy but keep a 'sense' of direction because the exits never change. The only real hard part about this is to keep in mind that the mountain or island off in the distance (if you can see passed the trees or clouds) used as an exit desc landmark must be carefully considered if used because of the variable relocation.

10-04-2003, 12:55 PM	#13
Iluvatar Member Join Date: May 2002 Location: Mississippi USA Posts: 142	I'm sure we've all been in boring, repetitive landscape at one time or another in real life but what we usually don't notice is there is always a minor change with each step taken in any direction. It's those minor changes that people key in on and consider as "progress" towards whatever goal intended. Even in the most boring terrain of all, an ocean, there are subtle differences ranging from the height of swells to mysterious plops of water from invisible things. I've always focused on about a 4-5 line formatted room with those minor changes to both the base redit and directional descriptions and it works well. Simulating distance with our medium can be one of the most challenging tasks facing any text based world and I have a technique I would like to share. Like Molly's idea (a narrator, who'd a thunk it, our Molly! Tsk Tsk) it's somewhat controversial but works well in application. Create a generic set of 20-25 rooms that are similar but change ever so slightly as I described earlier and copy 4x to 100. Have your coder create a format cube 10x10 that changes the directional exits each reset or reboot so you aren't limited to NSEW in all etc. Each set of 100 winds up with a fixed exit to a new zone, it can reasonably be duped as a full zone to expand an area as many times as you wish AND like a true wilderness or ocean you get lost really easy but keep a 'sense' of direction because the exits never change. The only real hard part about this is to keep in mind that the mountain or island off in the distance (if you can see passed the trees or clouds) used as an exit desc landmark must be carefully considered if used because of the variable relocation.