Re: Mob Programs

From: Ken kuhlman (kkuhlman@shemp.3stooges.com)
Date: 05/30/96


On Wed, 22 May 1996, Skylar wrote:
> On Wed, 22 May 1996, Hades wrote:
<stuff deleted>
> > If you know anything
> > about coding you can do mob programs with spec mobs. One trillion times
> > faster and usuaslly a bit more stable.
> 
> I agree, but I think it can be taken a step further.  If you've got a 
> special thats used by more than 2 mobs, and its fairly stable, you might
> want to move it to a MOB_ flag and put the code right in mobact.c (that
> is, for mob specials anyways, and objact.c if you've gone that route).
> 
> -Sky
Yeah, the patch called 'mobprogs' may be a CPU hog..it does alot of
expensive string compares in some pretty core places, but even its crude
system makes more sense than mucking up your base with world-speciffic
code.
I, personally, don't care to write 20 specprocs for every new zone
a builder decides to write.  Especially not when I can give them
the power to painlessly give their zone life as they build.  If you've
got a problem with the way mobprogs handles triggers, think about where
it's wasting resources and fix it. World speciffic information belongs
in world files; I don't want that shit contaminating my base.
For example, a simple mobprog like
act_prog p pokes you~
glare $n~
Requires probably 10 string comparisons everytime someone does ANY action
in a room that has a flagged mob in it.  Yucko on performance.  Maybe 
someone (perhaps one of you college students with lots of time on your
hands ;) could rewrite it to be string comparison free. (If mob X is the
victum of command #204 (say), it reacts with command #145 with the victum
being the same pointer as was passed as the ch in the original command.) 
Maybe in order to get the biggest tweaks, we need to compile world files. 
(As it is, I'm educating my builders on the c pre-processor).

Hopefully at least some of this makes sense, I've got a few beers in me.
(I'd definiately recommend Pete's Wicked Ale to interested parties).  Forgive
my spelling.  My asbestos suit is on. Flames to me, meaningful responses
to the group.

-Kahar



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