Re: Technical Question

From: jonmmorris@aol.comnospam (JonMMorris)

Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2000 00:00:00 +0000

Chris Williams wrote:

>>Thanks for your suggestion, but I don't think that's quite the answer I'm
looking for. I want to process simultaneous actions as best as possible.
Running the game sequentially, as you suggest, would defeat that objective.

>>For example: I'm in NC, and if I mail out orders all over the country, the
guy who lives in CA would get screwed everytime. The NC guys could have
their orders in several days before the CA guys. If I'm only running turns
once every two weeks, then it doesn't really make sense.

>>Now granted, I do plan on offering emailed turns at some point, but
currently the plan is for a postal game. (PBM, not PBeM)

>>This brings me back to my initial question...

>>If I have a 3D dungeon grid (x,y,z) populated with people and monsters, what
is the best way to process the orders "all at once"?  By person or by
location? and why?

You're going to find it "challenging" to write a computer program that doesn't
process things step by step. This isn't necessarily bad.  After all, for your
example of the item in the middle of the floor that more than one person tries
to grab.  Well, only one will actually succeed

If you want to give a feel of simultaneous actions, you could batch process the
turns and slice them into segments and process each segment sequentially (order
determined randomly, by attributes, by point expenditures, etc.).
For instance, two people could swing their
weapons in phase 1 and in phase 2 your program could determine that both swings
hit their targets and resulted in death.

The first player attacking and killing the other during this turn doesn't
prevent the other from doing the same - as far as they know, it occurred
"simultaneously".

My game is a world-conquest game.  I batch-process the turns and slice them
into phases.  The military phases are processed in phases according to military
efficiencies (air/naval and army).  Actions in each phase may affect further
phases.  Units that you move in the final phase may have been
attacked/destroyed in previous phases, regions could have been lost/conquered,
etc.  It isn't simultaneous but it works.

John

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References

Re: Technical Question
"Chris Williams" <williac6@rjrt.com>
Fri, 21 Jul 2000 00:00:00 +0000