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Author Topic:   Coordinate Based Game
I think Im Back posted 15-05-2003 00:53 BST     
So, since I've made basically a world tick(time, etc.), I've been thinking about instead of a room based game, a coordinate based game. Not building one, just thinking about how it would be done. With a world tick, i'm thinking it could work like this.

One room called whatever that is basically a 10,000,000x10,000,000 graph. Each square of the graph(or a area of squares 100x100, 1000x1000, etc.) has a type of terrain it is(grass, desert, lake etc.) and a few other properties relating to the area it's in(if it's square 108 and squares 90 through 142 are all deserts it should all be considered one area or terrain). A town is located dead center at 0x0. The player steps outside of the towns south gate, his coordinates are now -1x0. The player wants to go to the woods to the south, they are 1000 meters away. The player looks and based on his perception stats, he can see all players or objects and a description of the terrain of the land within his perception limit. If his perception is very good and nothing is in the way, he may see the forest in the far distance as well as the canyon that lies before it and the picturesque fields that lie before the canyon. The player types, 'walk south' and according to his endurance and speed stats he begins to walk south at 1 meter a second. This is where the world tick is constantly going and subtracts(because he's moving south) 1 from his current coordinate thus moving him south 1 meter for each second he is walking(of course distances can be different, 1 coordinate may be 100 meters if you so choose). After fifteen seconds the player types 'look' sees a description quite similar to the one before, then types run south and according to his speed and endurance stats he begins moving at 3 meters a second.

I don't know my thoughts just got interrupted, think about it, give me some suggestions, ideas, thoughts on if it is possible or not. Anything.

redsun posted 15-05-2003 08:53 BST         
I Like That Idea, You prob been dabbling with Quest Much Longer then I, so at this point in my Quest exp, All I Can do is Support the Idea ;)
Computer Whizz posted 15-05-2003 09:54 BST          
Well, there's two ways *I* see this problem...

Loads of rooms, each with the name of their location (ie 100x10, 200x93, etc...) each room could be customized with description.
This is a little hard to move the player from room to room depending on variables though!

A two dimensional array, which would hold the description. Another two dimensional array which would hold the object names. Another yet to hold the exits. And any other arrays to contain anything else.
As you can see this would be a pain in the *cough* butt *cough*.

That's what I think!

Computer Whizz

I think Im Back posted 15-05-2003 16:03 BST          
I understand what you are saying whizz, but you are missing the point. The idea is to move away from a room based game. The only rooms in the game would be one massive(that's just figuratively speaking, it's just a room but the range you assign to it would make it huge) one as the world, and any interior areas you would enter, ie.. you'd be in the world room when traveling around but you spot a tent, walk to it, go in and you move to the tent room(which wouldn't be necessary for a small tent but for perhaps a huge circus tent? who knows). There wouldn't actually be a room for every square on the graph, almost everything would be assumed and carried out with player/object properties. I'm sure it would take a lot of work just to figure out the world room, perhaps I'll start trying to code something of the sorts tonight and give you guys a show.
Gwerradon posted 27-05-2003 14:01 BST          
wow, sounds great, i cant wait to see this in action, just give me a shout on msn ([email protected]) when u want me to play it :)
gamer1962 posted 29-05-2003 05:36 BST          
what would be the benefit ?
I think Im Back posted 29-05-2003 20:05 BST          
The benefit would be a true feeling of distance and depth within the game. You could have a futuristic game of plasma cannons and armored assault tanks all controlled by players battling it out in a huge desert, missiles being launched from the other side of the world, having to shoot them out of the air, all kinds of stuff. Besides that it would realistically be just a fascinating engine. You could have weather dynamically created according to different areas conditions, running, jogging, vehicles moving, even space travel if you so wanted. Now imagine trying to do space travel in a room based game. That's about a billion hours of work creating and describing all the different aspects of each room, but if you could just say, this area of 500 miles is an asteroid field, there's a 1/5 chance of impact with small meteors but class B and above type laser shields can deflect those, afterwards there's a jump portal to the gamma system, the alpha nebula in this direction and planet brixton in another. Fill in a few details for different aspects of the field that could be run into, a few descriptions, and have the engine sort through those based on speed and direction from the player. I don't know how to explain it but I'm trying.
Computer Whizz posted 30-05-2003 01:49 BST          
But you would still need somewhere to store the details for each location on the "map". That would be the array.

There's no other way I can think of apart from an array - and that would be a bit of a pain instead of having rooms.

But yes - it would allow a nice interface.

Computer Whizz