Room Environments

[Saffire]

Room Environments

Summary
Every room should have an environment set. An environment would be just a flag that would specify what sort of terrain was within it. For example, in a city, the environment might be 'urban'. If you're walking through a forest, the environment would be 'forest'. In a desert, it would be 'desert'. There would be many types of environments, and every room should have one. Players are able to determine what type of environment the room they're in is.

Why Needed

• When creating maps of the game world, intuitive players will color each room according to what type of environment it is. Desert rooms would be yellow, forest green, rivers blue, etc.
• It would allow players to be able to quickly determine what sort of location they're standing in without having to read the room's description (Not everyone wants to read all of that, trust me).
• Flagging every room with a specific type has certain coding benefits for programmers, such as being able to apply certain code to only specific types of rooms (Such as a tree climbing skill that only works in forest type rooms, or a swimming skill that works in rivers, oceans, ponds, etc).

Arguments Against

• It will take a bit of time to go through each room in the game and flag it with an environment.
• It will take builders a slight bit more time to create each room, as they have to determine and set each room's environment.

Changes Required

• Add an administrative command: Set environment <environment> - Sets the current room's environment to whatever is within the brackets. If the specified environment doesn't exist, create it.
• Add an administrative command: List environments - Outputs a list of all environments, as well as some utility information beside each one, such as how many rooms are currently set to that environment, and if they are swimmable or not.
• Add a command: Environment - Allows a player to view the environment of the current room. "You determine the environment here is <environment>"
• Add an environment flag to each existing room, and to every newly created room after implementation.

[Justin]

Yep, this is definitely something I plan on doing.

[Justin]

Okay, this is sort of done. Right now the environment types are kind of ad hoc, but they can be set and changed. All rooms have been set to a default of "urban" until I can go through and change the few that aren't in the city.

LOOK HERE will give some information. Maybe I'll change that to ENVIRONMENT later.

At some point I have better admin commands, too. Something like what you have suggested.

[Saffire]

Sounds good. I've been on vacation for the past few days and don't get back until tommorow, but I'll be sure to check it out then first thing.

[Andril]

I don't know that I'd personally want an entirely seperate command just to figure out what type of environment I'm in. Why not some sort of color coded scheme for room names instead? That way players would be able to tell instantly that they're in, say, a forest if the room name is bright green, maybe cyan for water, yellow for deset, default gray for urban. Something like that because, even though the person who built the room should probably have described it in such a way as to make the environment obvious the players, as Saffire pointed out, don't always actually read them. This would be a way to let the players know what type of environment they in, as well as the environment any neighboring rooms are, if you color coded exits the same way as well, so it'd be pretty much an instant, "Aha, I'm in a desert because the room name is yellow".

[Justin]

I'm not fond of so many different colors myself, but I'll think about making it an option. One issue is that you could have a lot of different terrain types, though. As many as you want, really.

[Andril]

That's true. I guess you could always have it so that when a player enters a room they automatically get a message letting em know what the terrain type is heh.

east
Room name/desc/exits show as normal
extra message: You are in the desert/mountain/swamp/city...

[Andril]

A penny for your thoughts?

Here's an idea that I think ties in with the whole terrain theme rather nicely. Elevation and pressure pressure changes. Have everything default to a set elevation, such as sea level, or just a bit above it. Then, while the majority of the game world would most likely take place at that elevation, going into the mountains would, naturally, increase the elevation you're at. You could have it so that once a player is above a certain threshold they begin getting the occasional message that their ears are popping, with some random pain thrown in, purely in the message, not actually affecting the character. But if you get high enough players begin having trouble breathing due to the thinner air, which could have a detrimental affect on them. One thing that could be done is lowering their stamina/fatigue recovery rate.

If you go deep enough under water, assuming that becomes a feature at some point in time, it could actually kill them if they aren't wearing proper protective gear. I realise that's may be a bit extreme but you would make it so that the deepest parts of the ocean that are made can be reached with the right gear, and there might be some nice loot to be found, on a possibly random basis.

Something to think about, or dismiss out of hand I guess.

[Justin]

The elevation thing would be pretty easy, actually, as long as all  you do is assign a room an elevation. Don't know if I will be doing it any time soon, though.

The terrain type in the room descriptions is something I will think about.

[Saffire]

I like the elevation, but I think it should go in it's own topic so as not to derail this one.

As for the room environments, I think they work perfectly as they are. You don't always need to know what exact environment you're in, and if you do for some reason, and can't bear to type out look here in each room, it seems like it'd be really easy for a player to just have a couple triggers to input 'look here', hide the output from it, and display it in a more concise format every time they move to a new room.

[Justin]

I like the elevation, but I think it should go in it's own topic so as not to derail this one.

As for the room environments, I think they work perfectly as they are. You don't always need to know what exact environment you're in, and if you do for some reason, and can't bear to type out look here in each room, it seems like it'd be really easy for a player to just have a couple triggers to input 'look here', hide the output from it, and display it in a more concise format every time they move to a new room.

Alright. For now, if you want the terrain to show in the room description, feel free to edit objects/room.rb, it isn't too hard.