Re: treasure items...? wanderers?

[bull@dws014.cs.unr.edu (William E Bull)]

 > > But the point is what for.
 > Wandering monsters dont do anything other than getting in the way.
 
 The idea that wandering creatures get in the way only holds true if they 
 really *don't* do anything. Wandering monsters isn't the issue, wandering 
 NPCs is.
 
 > If I'm looking for an item I dont want to have to travel the globe
 > seeking out this itinerant salesperson in order to buy something.
 
 There's no reason why a wandering NPC would have to sell you anything. At 
 this present time that isn't even a possiblity. The closest purpose for a 
 wandering NPC at present is to tell you some piece of information or to 
 hold some item which you can obtain by killing him/her.
 
 > Most of the time you would be loading maps just for npc's. 
 > 
 
 Cacheing maps for NPC movement would not occur. If NPC movement code 
 existed at the very least a connection matrix for maps could be generated 
 and looked at upon a player's entering of a region. If the NPC is 
 located within the region *then* his position is literally computed. 
 Otherwise the NPC would have to have:
 
   1) a possible list of regions which it travels among.
      (this could have a 'wander' setting which moves among
       the connection graph randomly chosing the next move)
   2) the visit threshold
      (a maximum amount of time which the NPC would stay in any
       region before leaving (or trying to).)
 
   if an NPC reaches it's time to leave and it's not actively being
   updated, it's just updated in the connection matrix and sent to the
   new region if currently opened by a player.
 
 Not currently possible without coding. Like manymanymany things in 
 crossfire, but definately not a drain on map chaching.
 
 > Barrie
 > --
 >                      T  U  M  B  L  E  P  O  P  
 > 
 > 
 
 -web
  william ephraim bull
  bull@cs.unr.edu