ChristopherA
02-28-2001, 09:18 PM
Originally posted by Kyle:
but Please... come establish the Healer circle now.
I just made a proposal yesterday for how we could have add healing to the game sooner, but for a variety of complex reasons it is going to have to wait a little longer.
The brief explanation is that when we build the Marrach 'start story' it allowed you to choose a bunch of characteristics, then algorithmically created the look descriptions for each of you and for all of your affected body parts and placed them inside your character.
The problem with this approach is that we have to hand modify that text to handle things like injury, sickness, haircuts, etc.
We have a new approach where the look descriptions are algorithmically created *every* time you look, based on a set of properties in your character, rather then the one time when you created your character. This we call "property-based descriptions".
Thus all we have to do is set the property "bleeding" on you, and instantly everyone looking at you will see that you are bleeding. Then those with healer skill can bandage you and the property "bleeding" is cleared and a new property will be set to show that you were injured. Over time, that property is cleared and your description turns to normal.
To convert everyone to property based characters will take time, however, if we wait until after the game is pay-for-play, there will be presumably some people that don't want to play anymore so we can cut down the conversion job from the thousands that have tried Castle Marrach to the hopefully several hundred that are committed to the game.
As soon as we do that weeding of characters, it will be a lot easier for us to convert all the characters to be property-based and do some other long delayed conversions.
And that was the brief explanation. The long explanation involves a quite a few other things, including trying to Galactic Emperor ready so that when we convert to pay-for-play that you'll have another game to try, getting the StoryPlotters on board to help us with the day-to-day plots so we can concentrate on the big things, and a number of other competing features that we really do have to make available to you before April 1 pay-for-play deadline.
I'm sorry that I don't have a better answer for you right now, but we are aware of the need for healers and healing skill, and we some good plans for it.
-- Christopher Allen
but Please... come establish the Healer circle now.
I just made a proposal yesterday for how we could have add healing to the game sooner, but for a variety of complex reasons it is going to have to wait a little longer.
The brief explanation is that when we build the Marrach 'start story' it allowed you to choose a bunch of characteristics, then algorithmically created the look descriptions for each of you and for all of your affected body parts and placed them inside your character.
The problem with this approach is that we have to hand modify that text to handle things like injury, sickness, haircuts, etc.
We have a new approach where the look descriptions are algorithmically created *every* time you look, based on a set of properties in your character, rather then the one time when you created your character. This we call "property-based descriptions".
Thus all we have to do is set the property "bleeding" on you, and instantly everyone looking at you will see that you are bleeding. Then those with healer skill can bandage you and the property "bleeding" is cleared and a new property will be set to show that you were injured. Over time, that property is cleared and your description turns to normal.
To convert everyone to property based characters will take time, however, if we wait until after the game is pay-for-play, there will be presumably some people that don't want to play anymore so we can cut down the conversion job from the thousands that have tried Castle Marrach to the hopefully several hundred that are committed to the game.
As soon as we do that weeding of characters, it will be a lot easier for us to convert all the characters to be property-based and do some other long delayed conversions.
And that was the brief explanation. The long explanation involves a quite a few other things, including trying to Galactic Emperor ready so that when we convert to pay-for-play that you'll have another game to try, getting the StoryPlotters on board to help us with the day-to-day plots so we can concentrate on the big things, and a number of other competing features that we really do have to make available to you before April 1 pay-for-play deadline.
I'm sorry that I don't have a better answer for you right now, but we are aware of the need for healers and healing skill, and we some good plans for it.
-- Christopher Allen