Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Proposal: Location, Location

1-10.  Cannot be enacted without change of vote.  Fails. —75th Trombone

Adminned at 14 Dec 2005 21:58:24 UTC

Make TheLoneAmigo an Admin.

Add the following rule under the name “Location”:

=== Location ===

Each subsection of this Rule defines a Location that may be occupied by Protagonists.  A Protagonist may occupy a maximum of one Location at any time. Protagonists’ Locations are denoted in the GNDT field “Location”. New Protagonists have the location “The Ruins of the Fortress of Cheese”. A Protagonist may not change their Location field to a value not specified in this rule. A

All Locations must store the following values:
Description: A paragraph of at least two sentences. If a Command with the text “look around” is made, the Description value of the Command writer’s Location field is automatically the result.
Maximum Capacity: If the total number of Voices in the Location exceeds the Maximum Capacity of a Location, the Voice to have most recently set their Location field to that Location has their Location field set to “The Ruins of the Fortress of Cheese”.

Some Locations have Location-specific Commands. A Location-specific Command may only be added to a Thread if the Command author’s Location is appropriate for the Command. There may be a variety of Location-specific Commands that all produce the same result. These Commands will be seperated by “/”.

=== The Ruins of the Fortress of Cheese ===

Description: A rotting heap of what was, undoubtedly, once some of the finest and awesomest cheese. To the west you see an ominous forest, and north of you the remains of an ancient game room.
Maximum Capacity: Infinite

Location-Specific Commands:

get cheese: This Command produces the Result “(Protagonist) picks up ten pounds of rotting cheese.”, where (Protagonist) is the Command author.
move north/north/n: This Command produces the Description field of “The Anicent Game Room” as its Result. Change the Command author’s Location field to “The Ancient Game Room”.
go west/west/w: This Command produces the Description field of “The Ominous Forest” as its Result. Change the Command author’s Location field to “The Ominous Forest”.

The credit goes to Salamander, I just cleaned it up a bit.

Comments

Saurik:

14-12-2005 12:00:58 UTC

This sentence is kind of vague: “A”. (End of first paragraph. ;P)

By “Voice"s are you meaning “Protagonist"s?

There’s something going on here involving Threads that’s wierd. There wasn’t really a definition of why Threads might exist, or why they are named as such.

If someone adds a Command to a Thread, under this proposal, the Result is based on the author’s context. (Such as what his Location is.)

It seems like it would be better to have something about these commands that change the Location field causing the Result to be the Name and Description of the Location, rather than having to redefine the Result text for every possible command from every Location.

Maybe a Proposal should also be put forward that handles objects (maybe a better version of Inventory), and then deal with the Results and associated removal (or not, for mass objects like rotting cheese) of the objects from the location?

Salamander:

14-12-2005 12:03:29 UTC

against  I think it’s worth really getting this part spec’d well. I’ll prepair another version.

Saurik:

14-12-2005 12:07:45 UTC

Oh, I submitted this without finishing my paragraph on Threads. (Also, I’d like to refer to my comment to Salamander’s “Thoughts on Storytime” about the still undefined Locations such as “The Ominous Forest”.)

Although, it’s possibly good as Salamander touched on this as well. Actually, I’m going to comment on this on his Post instead, as it really fits there better anyway.

Saurik:

14-12-2005 12:23:11 UTC

So, something that I think would be useful to think about is better separation of the command system from Locations, or Objects. Example: I don’t see any reason that a Proposal that defines Locations should also define every command that pushes people between Locations. It seems like it would be better to have a single Rule/Proposal for the concept of Locations (maybe a graph structure, where each node is a Location, each edge from each Location has a name that is the Direction, and the concept of Protagonists being at Locations). Then, there could be a proposal about Commands/Prompts/etc., similar to what we have (maybe the current Proposal), that would indicate how people can request game state changes. Then, a third Proposal could define a set of commands that allowed Protagonists to use Directions to change their Location field. That way there are A) less likely to be specification problems in basic Rules, and B) better support for changing game interfaces later. Although maybe this is stupid, I’m just rambling. ;P

ChronosPhaenon:

14-12-2005 12:25:46 UTC

against Still not good.

Saurik:

14-12-2005 14:50:38 UTC

I prefer Location, Location, Location, and feel the ability to change your location using Commands (or whatever) should be left to a later Proposal, so I’m voting against.

Moonwryn:

14-12-2005 15:48:36 UTC

against

Quazie:

14-12-2005 17:36:46 UTC

against

Elias IX:

14-12-2005 19:55:46 UTC

against Third time might be the charm.

AgentHH:

14-12-2005 20:00:25 UTC

against

Seventy-Fifth Trombone:

14-12-2005 21:49:02 UTC

against

danopato:

14-12-2005 22:57:43 UTC

against

Hix:

14-12-2005 23:44:43 UTC

against