I had a bunch of pieces fall into place last night.
I call this mechanism the “walker”. A MU* game, sans any rules or other mechanism, is at it’s core a “talker”. I’m building a web interface to “walk” around places.
The notes are scattered, will fill out in time:
- “rooms” are non-public nodes, any attribute needed
- “doors” can have their own effects, which write to the log
- A portal spell logs: “disappeared in a swirling vortex”
- Doors can lead to instances, such as allowing new passages during a quest
- Doors can allow for non-bi-directional movement, such as one-way passage, misdirection (mazes), or criteria-based passage
- A room can have an implicit connection to other rooms, or a door connects them
- A room renders all the links, both from itself and any “doors” present; ex:
- room-120 to room-121: East is a bubbling brook
- room-120 to room-122: North a great tower can be seen
- room-120 to door-quest-15: The hedge here seems to have a small overgrown passage…
- room-120 to door-summon-stone-UUID: Holding the glowing gem will port you home…
- Player feedback is given through a log of actions, so each door or room transition has it’s own generic or specific log messages
- Areas are essentially tagged rooms, so weather might make all travel “sloshy”, “muddy”, or “wet”.
- Doors can be templated and customized, allowing for player-specific story-telling