[914] in Coldmud discussion meeting

Re: [COLD] ColdCore 3.0 TODO

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Sun Jan 28 21:46:59 1996 )

Date: Sun, 28 Jan 1996 19:25:48 -0700 (MST)
From: Brandon Gillespie <brandon@tombstone.sunrem.com>
To: coldstuff@tombstone.sunrem.com
In-Reply-To: <199601280614.WAA07682@yam.tenetwork.com>

> I'm working on my "timezones" at the moment which are a super-set of 
> realms, so I'm happy to help there.
> 
> For me, realms are used to define diffrent areas of construction to 
> allow different wizard-types to build different parts of the world.
> 
> Does that make sense to others?

Realms are one of the area's I have given a disservice.  To ease further 
confusion I'll explain them (finally), or at least my concept of them (as 
they were never actually implemented, a skeleton structure was created but 
not much else).

Realms are a sort of 'meta-locations'.  They are controlling/guidance 
objects for a group of other locations (which can also include realms).  
When a location wishes information about itself, it asks it's realm, 
which may ask it's realm, and so on, until you hit the base realm object 
(depending upon the nature of the need).  This is best explained with 
examples.

You have an Inn.  Each room in the Inn is located within the realm of the 
$mountain_inn (assuming that is the name of the realm).  The 
$mountain_inn realm is located inside the realm which controls the street 
it is on, which is within the realm of the city, which is within the 
realm of the local area, which is in the realm of the world.  If somebody 
were in a room in the Inn, and the room wished to know the weather so it 
could place correct descriptions in the prose (using CML/Ctext), it would 
query the $mountain_inn.  Since this realm has no control over the 
weather it passes on up the line, until one realm returns a response.

Furthermore, realms are also inversely applicable.  If somebody were 
singing a bawdy drinking song at the top of their lungs, it is likely 
that others within the inn would hear it (abeit muffled).  Howerver, it 
is unlikely that those venturing on the busy bustling street outside 
would notice anything. (although this is not a great example, such an 
effect may be better handled by passing it through the exits, using a 
measurement of the noise and reducing it by factors based on the exit).

Realms also have the handy side effect of grouping like locations.

I used frobs as realms because at the time there was to be information 
relative to the realm for each object (such as where it is located in the 
realm (interior vs bordering on another realm)).

-Brandon Gillespie-