[Divunal-devel] The Problem with Perspectives

[James Knight]

At 12:53 PM -0400 7/20/99, Michael Dartt wrote:
>I was talking about a table-like idea, but I still think we should have it
>based on the perspectives that are present in the room, rather than the
>players or the objects.  First of all, the number of different
>perspectives will always be less than or equal to the number of players,
>and will probably be less than the number of objects in most cases.
Your idea is completely different from what I think glyph was proposing
before. The proposal before was a way to have an object have a dynamic name
as determined by who is looking at it. There is no such thing as a
"Perspective" really that's at all distinguishable from a Thing at the
moment. When we talk about perspective, we're just talking about how a
certain Thing (Player) sees the world. With the idea of perspective that
I'm talking about, there is no such thing as a shared perspective...and no
real way to make one. The way you see the world is determined by all of
your properties...a dynamicProperty can check any property of the thing
viewing it that it wants to. So each player has to have a unique
perspective (view of the world). Also, at the moment, there is no way to
filter data coming into a player's view through a single procedure for all
Things. While this is an interesting idea and could concievably be useful,
I think it is sort of secondary to the discussion at hand (namely, how to
make dynamic names without screwing everything up). Once everything we want
to be dynamic is able to be dynamic, then it shouldn't be too hard to allow
all the info to be filtered through something else and if necessary,
changed.
-James

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