11/08/99 - Latest News

Character Persistance in Middle Earth
Berendir @ 2:24 pm EST

This isn't news, however it is something I thought to be very interesting that I read off of the message boards at the Middle Earth Vault.

The following was written by Mark Wells, and has some follow ups to it, arguing why its a bad idea, and then some ideas alterning it to make it a better idea, so if you find this interesting, go to the Middle Earth Development board to check it out.

here's how the great and glorious principle of CHARACTER PERSISTENCE, the crowning achievement of my career on this board, was supposed to work.


Every character and every object remains in the game world all the time from when it's created to when it's destroyed.

There are NO game rules (other than those governing AI control) that distinguish between active and inactive player characters.

There are NO game rules (other than those governing AI control) that distinguish between player characters and NPCs.

Inactive player characters act like NPCs. They're controlled by the same type of AI mechanism that controls the NPCs.

Players have an interface through which they can tune their characters to behave in certain ways, including basic behavior, interaction with other characters, and scheduling of actions.

Ideally, this is developed into a full-scale scripting language (something resembling Perl, I'd hope) with which players can program their characters.

Now, why do this?

Basically, because it resolves a whole bunch of known and unknown headaches with the rules. Examples:


We don't have to worry about what to do if someone "commits a crime and then logs off". If you commit a crime, you'll want to stay logged on, so that you can more effectively run from the law.

Some 14-year-old luser who has no discernable life whatsoever and therefore can spend eight hours a day in the game building up skills won't advance in skill that much faster than someone who plays for two hours a week and programs his character to build up skills the rest of the time.

It becomes feasible to run a shop or some other kind of business, because your character can sit there behind the counter most of the time and sell stuff to anyone who comes in. That means that you can compete with the NPCs who will be doing those things before the economy establishes itself. Thus we can eventually replace most if not all NPCs. I'll explain the procedure for this in an upcoming post.

Macroing, obviously, becomes rather pointless.

It's possible to require characters to pay their living expenses: food, shelter, clothing, protection, etc. After all, they need these things whether they're active or not, and they can earn the money to pay for them whether they're active or not.

Some events, such as the destruction of an entire town, have more realistic consequences.

It's possible to get into a 'service business': messenger service, guard duty, delivery, etc. If you sign up for a four-hour watch, you don't have to log on and sit there at your post for four hours every night.

And so on.

Just a reminder that this was in now way an official part of Middle Earth Online, just a unique idea from a fan that followed it for a long time.