[Sidmouth]

[Estarra]

[John]

[fmike]

[Treestump]

I would worry about it, personally. I realize that a majority of players do not read room descriptions, but every mud has people who do.

It sounds to me, having not seen the code you are refering to, that it just isnt put together very well. I base that solely on the fact that you say that it cannot be used and have the description still be fluid, so I mean no disrespect to whoever wrote it.

At the end of the day, if the descriptions dont look good when using the dynamic stuff, why do it?

Maybe you could write a few descriptions using the dynamic stuff and post them here for us to take a look at. I really shouldnt be commenting when I havent even seen the product.

[Sidmouth]

No, this is entirely not code related.  The point I was trying to make is that if I make a description wherein it asks the mud for 10 different variables and comes up with something based on a bunch of sentences that I put in there for each of those variables, the thing is likely to be a little choppy.  That's because I'm not about to sit there, frankly, and make sure that all 324 permutations of my sentences are brilliant.  It's hardly a code problem.

I might go grab something later, but the general idea looks like this:

if timeofday==night
Whoa dude, it's totally dark out!
else
Whoa, the light is so bright!
endif
if temperature==hot
Global warming is killing us all slowly.
else
It feels fine outside.
endif
.
.
.
.
.

So if it's night and hot, the player sees:

Whoa dude, it's totally dark out!  Global warming is killing us all slowly. (whatever other phrases you put outside the if functions here)

That was just four sentence combination, my worry about choppiness came from situations in where I was creating considerably more permutations for myself.

EDIT: Ok, for clarification, cause I see where the confusion is. The mud is not generating any stock phrases here. I am writing the phrases and giving the mud the conditions under which it should use them. My complaint about choppiness has to do with situations wherein the mud could combine my phrases in say, 20 different ways. There's no way to eliminate possible awkward sounding combinations. And very slightly awkward I should add, it's not like you're going to get a desc that says "The sun is bright in this absolutely dark room". I'm actually more interested in the time problem and the general "how do I know when I'm going totally overboard" question than in the question of fluidity.

[Treestump]

[Sidmouth]

[Treestump]

[JilesDM]

We use dynamic descriptions heavily, and have found that, for our purposes, the best method is to leave most standard "global" dynamic descriptions out of the room. If people want to see what time of day it is, they can always look up. Scents can always be observed with the "sniff" command, and sounds can be "listen"ed to.

As for earlier comments that players won't read descriptions anyway, that's true only if the descriptions on your MUD don't matter.

[Treestump]

If you arent using time of day, smells, etc, what sort of information are you using dynamically in room descriptions?

[JilesDM]

Relative descriptions (all size descriptions on our MUD, for instance, are relative (an ogre may see a shortword while a gnome sees the same weapon as a claymore)) and special case descriptions . All dynamic descs that show up in the main description of the room (with the exception of the light level) are specific to that room (e.g., the varying level of activity in the marketplace at a given time of day, or perhaps the way the light reflects off of a bronze statue at various times).

What Sidmouth seemed to be describing are generic descriptions that will show up in every single room. These are what I meant by "global" dynamic descriptions.

[Treestump]

Very interesting, thanks. Its nice to hear multiple implimentations of the same general idea.

[KaVir]

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.