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➜ SMAUG
➜ SMAUG coding
➜ Rethinking "gag"
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| Posted by
| Valcados
(15 posts) Bio
|
| Date
| Tue 24 Jul 2007 03:49 AM (UTC) |
| Message
| The "gag" config option for players is not done as well as it could be. In some senses it gags too much and in some senses it gags too little.
Gags too much: if I'm fighting solo against a mob and every single attack misses in one round, my gag will blot out the entire round. This can sometimes give the false impression that long extended periods of time are going by without any action.
Gags too much (cont'd): physical attacks which aren't actually part of a combat round- manual attacks like kick- are also gagged. This is bad because it seems like your kick command didn't go through at all. Some MUDs like RoD remedy this by putting in special miss messages for these skills. That still isn't a great remedy, though, plus it takes lots of time to write all those miss messages.
Gags too little: if other people in the room are fighting, I will see when they miss.
I've thought a lot about how gag should be changed.
The basic idea is simple: in a combat round, for each person fighting, I should see exactly *one* miss, *if* that person doesn't land any actual attacks. If the person gets at least one hit in, then all their misses should be gagged. This includes third parties. Outside of the combat round (ie manual physical attacks) I should *always* see the attack, whether it's a hit or a miss.
So far so good. But it's never that easy, is it :-)
Complication #1: Weaponspells. If I'm missing every swing, but my weapon is hitting with weaponspells, should I see all the misses (so I know where the heck the spells are coming from)?
Complication #2: Elemental shields. Similar to weaponspells.
Complication #3: Fightprogs with physical attacks. If a mob has a fightprog where they do ten kicks, then in *that* case, the missed kicks should be gagged, *unless* they ALL miss, in which case I should see exactly one. But what if these kicks aren't all in succession, what if the mob is talking between kicks? The plot thickens.
Complication #4: Dual wield. If my enemy is swinging at me with both a sword and a hammer, but all his attacks miss... then what should I see? A slash miss? A pound miss? Or maybe a special "Your enemy's slash and pound miss you."?
What do all you guys think? It's difficult to nail down what gag should do (in a perfect world) in all these situations. | | Top |
|
| Posted by
| David Haley
USA (3,881 posts) Bio
|
| Date
| Reply #1 on Tue 24 Jul 2007 05:07 AM (UTC) |
| Message
| For 1 and 2 (spells) I would either put a parenthetical remark after the spell message (e.g. "reaction to xyz") or just print the message that was going to be gagged.
I would print prog messages, I think, because it is too hard to predict which ones are safe to skip -- maybe the prog kicks are against some third party target (a mob perhaps) and the mob's dialogue wouldn't make much sense without that context.
For dual wield, I would have one set of gagging per weapon. |
David Haley aka Ksilyan
Head Programmer,
Legends of the Darkstone
http://david.the-haleys.org | | Top |
|
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