Re: space game

[Darel Finkbeiner <darelf@crafton.net>]

On Tue, 12 Jan 1999, you wrote:

>system. Basically the idea goes like this
>
>	a port has a field for a producer attribute. At the moment
>	these are the generic types: mining, agricultural, industrial,
>	entertainment, fuel (i.e local gas giant or whatever),finacial, 
>	military, underworld. A port may have more than one attribute. 
>	For example mining and industrial. 
>
>	A port also has a wealth attribute. These two and the type
>	of cargo dictate the price fetched. Cargo carried also need 
>	not be limited to one of the generic types. For example, a
>	rich port with only a fincial attributes would pay a higher
>	value for office equipment (or more realistically illegal 
>	drugs) that other places.
>
>	Thought about a government/political/law attribute too. 
> 
>How does that sound ? 

Yeah, that's the idea.  I had only coded in a few attributes on the one I sent,
but it gives the idea.  Obviously we need to decide all the attributes that are
necessary, but that isn't a big deal.
What will take more time is figuring out Port "improvements" like mining
facilities, etc.  I would prefer some kind of base amount determined by the
system it is in and then an additional amount or a calculated amount based on
what sort of improvements have been made.

> 
>> How do we choose a method of displaying that 
>> in-system time, and bind it to the ship object?  This is something I am
>> unfamiliar with.  The ship object itself could remain mostly unchanged as 
>> far as movement is concerned, since the location would own the ship.
>
>(I'm not %100 sure what you mean.)
>
>Each movement from port to port or what ever takes at least 1 unit
>of time, saves messing about with fractionals. The slowest ship might
>have a movement factor of 1, and the fastest possible being a 10. 
>
>days taken to travel one distance = 11 - movement factor.
>
>That sounds easy.  Newtonian physics in won't really make much sense
>anyway. If a finer scale is require quarter days for a time unit could 
>be used. In which case days=units/4 + remainder * 0.25.
>

that sounds fine, we could keep a lot of the overhead out that way. 

>> a whole lot on this yet, but I will send it anywayz.  Please poke 
>> holes in it
>> and let me know a better way to do something.  right now the code doesn't
>> actually do anything, but you can see the port class. 
>
>Standard C types, I'd rather avoid them and use something 
>like *_int* types. 

I don't mind saying that you lost me there.  I am assuming some sort of portable
version of the standard types? 
I was using them out of habit (plus it's been a while since I used C), but won't
any SDK we decide to use enforce some sort of variable structure?
 

>Have bashed some code out, it wouldn't be usable, but it should show
>some of the ideas I'm got in my head.  Will email it to you when 
>I've finished it, a few days. It is in C though, will switch over
>to C++ on.
cool.