I had some feedback on this from a few people, and thought I should share the conversation that I put to the imms. My last topic for today, but this is the conversation as it relates to the poll I posted (which does feel like it slants toward room descs not being worth the time).
To clarify, this is meant to be less work than more. The idea here would be that when you create a room, if you do not give it a room desc, it returns a generated view based on the variables (which maybe we could set on some global level or room level?), but if you want to type in a 2-5 sentence desc, that is what shows up instead of the generated one. The hope is that if players do not REALLY worry about room descs a lot, this could speed up building time a ton. I have gotten a handful of notes from builders already stating that they spend more than 80% of their time writing the room descs, and if we could bypass those, zones could be done in a matter of a couple of hours, not days or weeks.
I started a poll on this topic, and I think it might be useful to help speed up building of zones. The idea is that if a room desc is left empty, it will then draw upon several other variable sand craft a desc when the player 'looks' (or enters the room, essentially doing an auto look). It would accoutn for several things like time of day, weather, season, sector, maybe material if you are indoors, and maybe ed add descriptions.
Off of the top of my head, here are a couple of examples I put down:
It is early in the morning and the skies are somewhat overcast. The wind
is blowing fairly hard, and in doing so is causing the dry autumn leaves
above to rustle against one another like a chorus of whispers. There is a
hut nearby.
The kinds of key triggers for the above might be:
time: 6am
weather: cloudy/windy
season: autumn
density: high
sector: forest
condition: good
position: outdoors
The same terms could be used to pull different data or pull it differently
and maybe generate a desc like:
The wind is blowing fairly hard, and in doing so is causing the dry autumn leaves
above to rustle against one another like a chorus of whispers. The trees are
close enough together that the wind is somewhat broken up. The grass is untrampled
and the surrounding woods healthy - thiving even. There is a hut nearby.
Or maybe it pulls slightly different variables in the 3rd room, flagged the exact
same way and looks like:
It is early in the morning and the skies are somewhat overcast. The trees are close
enough together that the wind is somewhat broken up. Three is a hut nearby.
And indoors example:
There is mid-afternoon sun shining brightly nearby outside. The wooden walls are in
excellent condition. There is a table, a chair and a fireplace nearby.
Triggers might be:
Time: 3pm
weather: sunny/calm
season: summer
density: low
sector inside
structure (maybe only used for inside sectors): house
material (same as above): wooden
condition good
position: indoors
Variant desc of the same room if you were to leave and come back might be:
The warmth of the summer sun is shaded from inside. The wooden walls are in excellent
condition. There is no sound coming from the outside elements. There is a table, a chair
and a fireplace nearby.
the material thing - maybe a reference to stone walls instead of wooden if material changes.
maybe cracked stone if the condition is poor. if there is a storm with wind, maybe the wind outdoors
can be heard howling...
Anyway, those are some random thoughts I had on the topic