[MUD-Dev] Re: Simulation (Was Re: Room descriptions)

["Koster, Raph" <rkoster#origin,ea.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ola Fosheim Grøstad [mailto:olag#ifi,uio.no]
> Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 1998 3:34 PM
> To: mud-dev#kanga,nu
> Subject: [MUD-Dev] Simulation (Was Re: Room descriptions)
> 
> Hmm... Simple "simulationist" worlds can be great fun. 
> Predesigned levels
> does of course help, but (AI) heuristics could help you with that.

Boulderdash, Lemmings, and Worms simulate very specific and narrow
things, some of which are not found in reality. Elite and Populous are
broader, but still focus on narrower areas which would be merely one
aspect of the whole sim in a world sim mud.

> Btw, realism wasn't an issue in those games. If destruction 
> is more fun than building => let the system (re)build.

Which breaks the sim in the case of a persistent game, generally
speaking. 

> Your problem probably is in creating a medieval simulation. That's a
> dramatic problem, not a simulation problem? Maybe that is a 
> problem local to
> UO and not a general MUD problem?

Rather, I'd say it's relative to simulating a world, and not merely a
subsystem within said world. All your examples listed are not full world
sims (which is the assumption I made when discussing simulationist muds,
since that's what gets discussed here most often).


-Raph