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Dynamic Character Descriptions

Dynamic Character Descriptions

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Posted by

Cbond USA (19 posts)

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Date

Wed 15 Apr 2009 12:41 PM (UTC)

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First off, if this is in the wrong section, as in it should be in the General Mud Design section, I apologize in advance.

Okay, I'm trying to implement dynamic character descriptions into my SWR. Here's a brief explanation of how I'm seeing stuff working.

Using config +ddescs sets whether a player is using dynamic descriptions or not.
When you look at someone using them, the look command will shunt you off to something like show_ddesc_to_char instead of show_char_to_char like it normally would.
show_ddesc_to_char would take a bunch of set parameters and string them together, with worn eq changing the desc as necessary, to create a description. For instance, if I set my character as having brown hair, brown eyes, and scars criss-crossing my face, but I was wearing something on my head that has certain words in the description, like mask for instance, someone looking at me would just see something like "A mask covers their face." whereas not wearing something could show "He has brown hair, brown eyes and scars cover his face."

Having ddescs set on yourself, using the describe command would drop you into either something, like how in SMAUG you can lock yourself onto a mob/obj/room for editing and you can set various stuff about your character in there, or just give you a list of options you can configure to your liking, i.e. describe [hcolor|hstyle|build|skintone|etc.]. Then you could have a bunch of options under each type, like hcolor, that's set depending on your race i.e. describe hcolor brown, describe hstyle stringy.. and so on.

Right this moment however the issue I'm having trouble with is, how to store the various choices a player might make using this system. Do I do something like, say, add a bunch of new members to the char_data, or pc_data, structure to hold the stuff in? An int? A float? A string? An array? If so, single or multidimensional?

Anyone have any thoughts on how I can go about doing this as cleanly as possible?

Thanks in advance!

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Posted by

David Haley USA (3,881 posts)

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Date

Reply #1 on Wed 15 Apr 2009 04:30 PM (UTC)

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Quote:
For instance, if I set my character as having brown hair, brown eyes, and scars criss-crossing my face, but I was wearing something on my head that has certain words in the description, like mask for instance, someone looking at me would just see something like "A mask covers their face." whereas not wearing something could show "He has brown hair, brown eyes and scars cover his face."

That sounds like asking for trouble IMO. I wouldn't get into the business of trying to figure out if the thing worn is a mask, closed-face helmet, etc. based on the words in the description. I would go for either:
(a) the simple case and say if anything is worn on the head, the head description is not seen; or
(b) the more complex case where equipment is flagged as hiding what it covers.
This way you could have open-face helmets and closed-face helmets; you could have armor decorations that don't hide the armor underneath; and so forth.

Quote:
Right this moment however the issue I'm having trouble with is, how to store the various choices a player might make using this system. Do I do something like, say, add a bunch of new members to the char_data, or pc_data, structure to hold the stuff in? An int? A float? A string? An array? If so, single or multidimensional?

The simplest thing to do I think is have a mapping from describable location to string description of that location. The mapping could be implemented as an array keyed by integral location constants. I'd put it into char_data, not pc_data, so that NPCs could also have dynamic descriptions.

David Haley aka Ksilyan
Head Programmer,
Legends of the Darkstone

http://david.the-haleys.org

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Posted by

Cbond USA (19 posts)

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Date

Reply #2 on Wed 15 Apr 2009 06:38 PM (UTC)

Message

After reading your response I got to thinking. Maybe I'm overdoing this a little. I mean lets face facts. It's a mud where combat plays a, not insignificant, part and players are going to equip their characters with the best equipment they can get, so nobody is going to be running around naked. Plus we're also already having them choose hair and eye color and build during character creation. I think what I'll do is just add one or two more options to character creation, height and maybe skin tone, then basing the descriptions around those choices and worn equipment.

Now, as for the reason why I was thinking about searching the equipment name for certain keywords is because, it being an SWR, characters can get the makearmor skill which lets them create armor for various wear locations, the head being one of them. I was concerned that maybe someone would create something like a hat, something that generally speaking doesn't cover the entire face. I think I'll just do as you suggested in your (a) option, which is what I was going to do for everything else anyways.

Well, thank you for trying to help and sorry for wasting your time.

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