okunewck@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu (Phil OKunewick) (09/14/90)
Now, let me see if I get this straight.
A Christmas worm... truly a new and original concept. This one definitely
should go into the archives of hacking.
Right. Sure.
"Hey guys, check out what I just developed - a metal box full of heating coils
that singes sliced bread. Not only that, but it pops the slices out when
they're done! Ain't that a hack!"
Ten-Four, good buddy.
This christmas worm an old, overused idea. Anybody who even thinks that a
worm is creative enough to post nationwide is extremely myopic. C'mon, guy -
can't you come up with a *real* hack???? Something that hasn't been done
before?
ObHack: A Generic dungeon. You supply the map, rooms, objects, puzzles,
and challenges (as a text file), and it does the rest. (No operational
version, yet.)
Variation: a random dungeon. Take the generic dungeon database, and use
a random number generator to draw the map and assign the rooms. Better
yet, use an active generator to continuously remap a maze when somebody
is lost in it. Or, what th' heck - if you're in a nasty mood, remap the
entire dungeon a little bit at a time, as a person travels through it.
--
---Phil
"If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the oven."hollombe@ttidca.TTI.COM (The Polymath) (09/15/90)
In article <F!uz0&02@cs.psu.edu> okunewck@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu (Phil OKunewick) writes: }... Better }yet, use an active generator to continuously remap a maze when somebody }is lost in it. ... I did one of these. It's easier than you think. (Must be. I did it in GWBASIC on a PC in about half an hour from a standing start). I borrowed a trick from an old "Scientific American" article on tiling. There's a kind of tile that has, effectively, two possible orientations, 90 degrees out of phase with each other. My program randomly covers the screen with them, then goes through and randomly rotates them. Result: An ever-changing maze. I'd draw a sample tile, but it's impossible to get the proportions right in ASCII. Picture a square with two parallel diagonal lines across it. Each line goes from the center of a side to the center of an adjacent side. (For a fancier effect, substitute 90 degree arcs for the lines). When you lay two side by side their lines will either meet or lie parallel. Do that with a lot of them in random orientations and you get a maze. -- The Polymath (aka: Jerry Hollombe, M.A., CDP, aka: hollombe@ttidca.tti.com) Head Robot Wrangler at Citicorp(+)TTI Illegitimis non 3100 Ocean Park Blvd. (213) 450-9111, x2483 Carborundum Santa Monica, CA 90405 {csun | philabs | psivax}!ttidca!hollombe
rab@well.sf.ca.us (Bob Bickford) (09/20/90)
In the referenced article, Phil writes: >ObHack: A Generic dungeon. You supply the map, rooms, objects, puzzles, >and challenges (as a text file), and it does the rest. (No operational >version, yet.) >Variation: a random dungeon. Take the generic dungeon database, and use >a random number generator to draw the map and assign the rooms. Better >yet, use an active generator to continuously remap a maze when somebody >is lost in it. Or, what th' heck - if you're in a nasty mood, remap the >entire dungeon a little bit at a time, as a person travels through it. >-- > ---Phil Actually, the original (Crowther-Woods) ADVENTURE game worked almost precisely this way; there was this big database file, which was most easily generated from a set of editable (text) files by the use of an appropriate utility, and if you edited these latter files you changed the caves around, added (or removed) rooms/treasures/etc. We did this at college (UOP, 1976-77) and had loads of fun adding truly strange and wierd treasures to the game. [Actually, the TAs in the computer lab did all the editing; I looked over shoulders and made suggestions, and eventually got so envious of the power that I looked around and found the system master usercode and password in a (world-readable) object file, in cleartext form. So I logged in. But that's another story.... -- Robert Bickford rab@well.sf.ca.us Chair, Libertarian Party /-------------------------------------\ of Marin County (CA) | Don't Blame Me: I Voted Libertarian | \-------------------------------------/