[Coldstuff] Frobbery

[brandon@roguetrader.com]

On Fri, Dec 21, 2001 at 03:29:11PM -0600, Grimslayde wrote:
> Greets!
>     I heard it straight from the horse's mouth that frobs were "a failed
> experiment" the last time I asked about them, but still I persist in my
> foolish notion that they may be of use to me.
> 
>     I'm dealing with currency, in particular - dropping and picking up
> coins. I've seen the $coin_frob mentioned in the help file and I spotted it
> on tCD, but alas I remain ignorant.
> 
>     Is it possible to use these $thing_frobs for such a utilitarian purpose
> rather than waste a object number on creating when money is dropped? If so,
> can someone point me in the right direction? I'm gonna peer into the
> $wearable_frob, but if someone could sound off I'd love to hear it.

The issue is that you add a lot of overhead through duplicate code,
because ultimately a frob is NOT an object, so things are handled
differently, such as setting parameters, etc (since it doesn't exist
as a unique entity).  Because of this you end up increasing the
complexity of any VR code by an order of magnitude, and for what gain?
Nil.  Objects already are fairly lightweight, why simulate them?

Frobs in general are useful, just not as VR objects.

-Brandon