> I am looking into impping random weather events that do things like flood,
> destroy villages, hurricanes, earthquakes, Has anyone ever tried this? If so
> did you have any luck whatsoever?
> And to answer the unasked questions I am going for realism.
Yes, people have tried this.
However, this assumes not only more than a decent bit of code
knowledge, but also about 3 metric tons of planning and re-architecturing
circle code, sinc it's not setup to be a realistic system.
This is because there isn't any good system out there in a mud
which even comes close to a reality model. This, in turn, is because
there's a fundamental difference between defining low-level (even only at
the material level) interactions, and defining a game based on hit tables
and resolution.
If you want a hurricane to break walls, destroy houses, move
people, water, etc, you have to program it to to exactly that. You'll
miss something though:
"Why is this room still called 'fshermans wharf' when there's no
wharf? Howcome the room description hasn't changed to show the devestation
of a huricane? Hey, how come the fish are still there, 3 rooms away?
Where are the broken remains of the pier? Howcome this doesn't affect the
other zones?"
This is flawed and difficult. You want realisim, so instead, you
need to program how each thing interacts, and also a way to describe the
interactions (and the results of the interactions) to the characters using
objects, mobs, rooms, and most important - words.
Let's put this in light; If your system is realistic, I would
expect to be able to grow wheat, mill it and discard the husks, and then
grind it a bit finer.. take that and some yeast, and water, maybe eggs or
baking soda, and some salt, mix them together in a bowl, throw it in the
oven for an hour at 350-400, and get bread.
Oh yeah, without having 'bread' listed anywhere in the code.
Or flour. or water. or salt. or mill wheels. etc.
You have to describe the chemical and thermal properties of each
ingredient, as well as the result of any interaction (mashing, mixing,
heating, etc).
No... reality is a far way off. You don't want reality anyway.
It would take too much time programming the backbone to actually even
concentrate on the effects & neat stuff.
Instead, focus on what you want specifically, and then what you
need to get there. I guarentee that unless you've been developing your
mud for 4-5 years, you won't even have the building blocks to begin things
like structural damage, or logical creation/destruction of items from
component parts (without being explicitly coded/listed, as per assemble
patches).
Figure out what you want to happen in a hurricane, or tornado, and
don't restrict yourself to the path of 'realism'. Results beat reality
hands down.
Lets go back to that fishermans wharf: you want your hurricane to
do what? Remove mobs with 'fish' in their title from the area? Have npc
shop keepers lock their door and add the description to the room that all
the windows and doors are boarded up?
Maybe you have a copy of the zone as it would look after a
hurricane, and it gets loaded instead of the original?
That's just some of the room/obj/mob affects, I haven't even
gotten to players - how do they deal with it? Does it hurt them? blind
them? drive them in different directions? Can they drown? Hit by flying
objects? What about magic? etc....
Sure, you'll end up with discrepancies, but you don't have a
choice. There never is enough time to program every feature you want. In
some cases, it's better to put in the most noticable ones, leave room for
the others if you have time. Elsewise, you may not even get time to
start.
PjD
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