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Old 12-04-2012, 09:56 AM   #24
KaVir
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Join Date: Apr 2002
Name: Richard
Home MUD: God Wars II
Posts: 2,052
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Re: A huge grid world

The 10x10 tiles were used to create the initial world layout, a bit like laying down pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. This made it easy to ensure consistency, because (for example) an ocean tile couldn't be placed directly beside a plains tile, you needed to have a shore tile between them. Similarly, you couldn't have rivers that went nowhere, they had to start at a spring and end in the ocean (or in a swamp), and they always had to flow in the same direction. It's also really convenient for drawing graphical maps .

I actually retained this concept in God Wars II. You can test it out by typing 'home' as soon as you log on, then type 'zone' to view the 16x16 tile IDs in your home plane, and 'tile' to view the current tile you're on. Try typing 'zone land 1', 'zone land 2', 'zone land 3', etc, and then use 'zone' and 'tile' again to see how they've changed. Try typing 'zone land' on its own, then 'terraform mountain', then 'terraform next', etc - using 'tile' each time to view the specific tile you're starting on.

A concept I didn't reimplement was the ability to customise tiles. In my former mud, once the jigsaw pieces had been placed you could fully customise individual instances. That's how tunnels were dug, forests chopped down, buildings constructed, etc. The mud would track (and cache) individual tiles that differed from the template they were based on. It allowed the initial world to be constructed relatively quickly, while still allowing important parts to be fully customised (you could also anchor traditional rooms to specific x/y/z positions, which was a step up from my earlier wilderness system).

Exactly. Originally the mud was just one vast plain, then I experimented with adding terrain features that covered parts of the world, but in the end I decided it was easier to reuse the tile concept I'd designed in my previous mud. Each tile represents 660x660 feet (1 square furlong), meaning each piece of terrain is 66x66 feet (1 square chain) and 8 tiles are exactly 1 mile. Weapon reach is calculated in feet, and movement speed is feet per second.

In my former mud it was possible to add floors, walls and ceilings around rooms. The implementation in my current mud is very different (it only reused the tile/terrain concept), and I don't bother with that degree of accuracy, instead I just have some terrain types that represent walls, and there's no Z axis. If I want a dungeon, it can be described as steps leading down, but you just 'enter' it.
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