Orc In A Spacesuit on 28 Mar 2003 04:07:01 -0000


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Re: [spoon-discuss] On the Uber-Prop 

From: "Glotmorf" <glotmorf@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
On 3/27/03 at 8:19 PM Daniel Lepage wrote:

On the Uber-Prop

I've been thinking about standardizing and generalizing much of the
current system, and it seems to me that the best way to do that would
be to create a new class of Object, call them New-Style Objects or
NSOs, which have certain properties that eventually, all objects will
have. The idea is that changes could be made in how NSOs behave to
generalize things; while this was happening, other objects could be
ported from Old-Style Objects (OSOs) to NSOs. Once the transition is
complete, the Old-Style rules could be deleted, and NSOs could stop
being called New-Style Objects, and just be called Objects.

This would make the transition fairly easy, and wouldn't require a
single massive overhaul prop.
For that matter, we could create a second Grid using the guidelines put forth in the Uber Prop, and move things from Grid 1 to Grid 2; then scrap Grid 1.
So...the Uber-Prop would cease to be an all-remodeling thing and become a sort of wish-list for how the entire game can be restructured, piece by piece if necessary? That I like. I didn't think it would be possible to get enough people to agree on a single proposal that restructured the entire damn game...and I didn't want to see the results if it could be done.
I'm not completly sure if I understand you, but I think that is a big part of uber-prop is. Some of it's bug fixes, even if most of the bugs aren't really exploitable, and are just minor annoyances that Dave can conviently ignore. But a major part of it, and indeed the idea behind its scale, is the ability to allow anyone to say what they want, and have it happen. Want another grid, that disallows speeders and gnomes, but allows gremlins and has a degree of three-dimesonality, with suface, air, and water locations? The entire prop to make that would be about as long as that last sentence. Want a new region called Jail, with 6 Cells in it for holding players that the Police Gremlins caught? Again, same length. Want a new grid that only has the Football, and each player can purchase Football Players that they coach? Again, same length. The uber doesn't, and was never meant to, restructure the game. Just allow a greater ease of doing so, by changing the wording and definition of things. That's why I made that society prop; I saw that it would be too hard to make societies, the way they were then, fit in with this new system. And rather than include the changes in the uber, as that would restructure the game, I made them seperate. The current societies rule will work, as it will fit in with the uber a lot easier. 


Just for the record, I got the above idea from Python, where a new,
easier to manipulate class of object is being introduced; the idea is
that eventually, all objects will be derived from this class instead of the current base class, but right now the older class is still hanging around for compatibility purposes.
Are there any concerns regarding multiple inheritances? Say we have multiple grids, and some grids allow objects of certain types, and we want objects that function on multiple grids, which might mean inheriting from two different types. Is there a way to cleanly track that?
One of the things that's already covered in the uber. Or at least the part that's in my mind. After so long, I'm not sure which parts I've written out and which I haven't. But multiple inheritances and radically different "grids" shouldn't be much of a problem. If I ever get the #!$#$ thing worked out. 

Orc in a Spacesuit

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