Bay 12 Games Forum

From my time in MUDs, which basically use pointer-based 'connectivity' (even if you import/generate an array-of-array landscape), the data-structure needs revising, then pretty much any abnormal geometry can be catered for as soon as you understand it.

For simplicity, a 10x10 'block' of terrain is stored as 100 'rooms' (a tile's-worth of diggable rock or walkable-ground or flyable open-air) with N,S,E,W(,NE,SE,SW,NW,+up/down composites of all these ) exits leading to the logical neighbouring 'room' in the block (or that of the appropriate co-edged neighbouring room in the next block over). But if one or more of those tiles is to be designated as weird geometry then you modify the affected zone to feed into the pocket-universe within, deal with directional limitations[1], impose any necessary impassibilities (according to suitable game-plot-logic, like making 'diggable' walls now appear as Indistructium in the original link-grid, except for the allowable 'doorways') and arrange the pocket-universe as required (except for the entry/exit, set up impassible boundaries/world-wrapping/whatever) howeverso large it needs to appear. You could also make it hyperbolic/spherical in effective geometry, though you also need to define how this appears as (localised) layout when you have five points to the compass or potentially converging meridians.

There's a lot of really awkward code-bending needed, in most of those cases, for procedurally creation purposes. But though the original undirected-graph of 2D vectorised relationships (or 3D) between nodes is less efficient than the multidimensional array version, it gives an expandability.

(It'd possibly play merry-hell with the A* pathing-algorithm, though, if the shortest route between two points is via a change in universal reference system so that relative nearness can no longer be assumed to be usefully determined in any trivial way.)


[1] In a Doom-like engine I once dabbled with writing, I defined the ability to seperately link visual/passible/audible and even thermal effects from one open space to separate neighbours, so that you could see the room with the bonus item in it, across the (possibly non-evident) divide between spaces, but walking through it sent you into another space, sound cues (you hearing monsters, monsters hearing you) involve a potentially different 'neighboring' location, heat damage (and/or fireballs) might be another location. Having walked through the invisible portal (noting that this was pre-Portal!), to either where you expected or not, there was no guarantee that the link was bidirectional and it could be a wall (as would an indistructible window/viewscresn - wall for movement, 'linked' for vision) or be further into the maze rather than back out again or... Well, imagination was the limit. Including scale-agnosticism: going through a 6'x3' doorway that was linked to a 6"x3" doorway into the destination area would change your relative avatar size to be 1/12th the size. Aas would be obvious when you passed through whatever loop of same-size passage-to-passage links sends you back to the first room, to now apparently have a 72-foot-high doorway that you can perhaps use again to now be 1/144th your original size for... reasons. Obviously it depends on what the level-designer wanted. The plan was to have the editor do sanity-checks (reveal strange loops like this, rooms with rotational symetries of 1/2[2], re-scalings as described) but let the oddnesses remain if they were intentional. e.g. the equivalent to the Eat Me/Drink Me items in Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, or a Tardis-like interior, or a portable-/switchable-door that leads to different locations, depending upon where/how/when you move through it.

[2] It's how I started this idea off, actually. Using creative Doom WAD editing with partially-overlapping rooms that messed with spacial geometry. Nothing that went scale-bending or truly non-Euclidean (within line-of-sight) but sending two corridors across each other such that they did not link or... A favourite of mine, designing a "room" with a handy central object (pillar, stalactite, pile of boxes, whatever fitted) that you'd have to walk around twice, or more, to be back at your starting point, so that instead of (say) four possible exits, it has eight of them, in apparently similar pairs (possibly one entirely fake matting) that you'd see just one of at a time. Or maybe the door locks behind you and only by going round the central pillar twice will you find the 'original' door responds to unlocking and leads you into the next version of the area that you thought you'd just left..

Quote from: Strongpoint on March 17, 2022, 07:08:39 am

1) We conquered this land centuries ago! It should keep being a part of our country only because of that! Sure... It isn't imperialistic. When Great Britain went to war with those American colonies when those went for independence it wasn't imperialism! After all, those Englishmen in the New World spoke the same language and had no national identity of their own

1. The difference is that this land is almost completely populated by Russians who don't want to be independent. This isn't an Algeria or India situation, this is a Falklands situation.

It was probably more that the Colonists went to war with Britain (the King Street incident was sparked by the local mob, though they came off worse... while Lexington was a mess and (whoever fired the first shot) neither of the opposing commanders managed to restrain their troops sufficiently so that it became a skirmish rather than the "making a point" that prior Army vs. Militiamen shows-of-strength had been).

Falklands, as an analogy, is not particularly good. The Argentinians weren't incidentally there as part of "giving the Falklands independence" but "taking 'back' Las Malvinas for Argentina". (Shades of Crimea 2014, maybe, to be vaguely topical.)

Could we describe Siberia as more of a Northern Ireland situation, except (and this is a big 'except'!) without any obvious Republican communities, just (at least vocally) the "More British than most of the rest of the British" Unionists? Or a form of Cornwall, but dialled down and with less opportunities for attracting surfers.

...I don't think there's a decent analogy in any other situation. So many complicating factors that are different between any two potential territories you might care to mention. So a bit of a fool's errand unless you do a bit of mix'n'matching with the necessary qualifications as to which bits (and possibly perspectives) you're repackaging.  

As long as Russia does not cut the connections, near the border. (Though it has to be careful with that. Like the way Loki gets out of his promised beheading by stating that he did not at all agree to parting with any of his neck, any overstepping of the mark will guarantee trouble, and it's almost certainly interlinked in breadth to defeat any trivial attack.)

On putting the clocks forward one hour permanently. Imagine the benefits of putting the clocks forward several hours.

Adopt UTC!

In case you don't like all that bumf[1] in that URI, try https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-60233899

Both are 2/Feb/2022 (or Feb/2/2022, if you prefer) so more than a month of understanding, and development of scenarios, has passed since it was originally newsworthy. I expect that much of the possible tracking has been wound down, even though what tracking is done is now more nuanced. So as long as BA.2 continues to be "not generally worse", and no other VOI arises, I don't think it means more than Covid cases rising in general does, nor will it stop the total lifting of various restrictions/precautions (which I'm not convinced is 'following the science', just politics telling the cautious science that it's not more convincing than the shouty finance).

Still officially keeping masks in Scotland, and I'm not intending to stop this trivial precaution for the forseeable future...

[1] Probably the question-mark onwards could be snipped, which may be how they track shares but really isn't necessary and I see no need to consciously help them. But I also imagine Bloomberg is also embedded-ad-heavy if I try it and check myself, so excuse me if I don't.

Also another handy prisoner/hostage, in case they need one. (c.f. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe)

Also, lobbyists can do a lot to affect that, like the tax write-off for buying a vehicle over 6,800 pounds, as written by Hummer.

Aw, shucks..

£6,500
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4 door Manual Petrol Saloon
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