[Encore] Interactivity project idea: Weather and Climate in EnCore

[Kevin Jepson]

Good Morning Barbara and everyone!
 
I hope you and yours are well.
 
I've started working on a system for making weather and climate practically
useable in MOOs.
 
"Practically" is the key word there.
 
It is based on a weather modelling system developed for table top RPGs.
There is a nice web page describing the system here: HYPERLINK
"http://evergold.iwarp.com/weather/index.html"http://evergold.iwarp.com/weat
her/index.html
It occurs to me that this would be an excellent project to have in enCore as
well and hence my question to you as leader of the "Interactivity Project".
 
(Everybody else feel free to chime in!)
 
Is there a document that outlines how best to make the WEB side of enCore
able to be modified on the fly?
 
As you probably know this is what's called, in the text based MOO world,
"integration".  It is also one of the hardest things for people to do with
the WEB side of enCore.
 
In my work trolling through the archives for stuff to post at the Barn I
came across a system, proposed and demonstrated by Alexandre Borgia, that
makes such on the fly WEB side changes possible and it works!  
 
I'm trying to make it generate standard enCore type WEB pages.  The key
element of his system is that the code that generates the WEB page, the
_html verb, can call MOO code directly.  For example it can call a verb to
generate the description on the fly rather than just reading the description
property.
 
I'll be posting this to the Barn once it is easier to integrate into enCore,
or if I can't figure it out I'll just post his original idea so others can
play with it :-)
 
If there is already a standard way to do this I'd be interested to see it
before re-inventing the wheel.
 
How I envision the weather system working is that there would be an object
that contains the tables and code to generate weather and climate messages
when called with appropriate arguments of location, date, time etc. 
 
There would be a generic object (a Realm in rpg terms) that would contain
rooms that are based on a generic "outdoor room" class.  All outdoor rooms
contained in a given realm would get the same climate messages so the
climate in that Realm would be consistent over time.
 
When a call is made to the rooms look_self verb it would get a weather
message that would be integrated into the description returned to the user.
 
All of which is actually pretty trivial to do on the text side, hence my
query about how to integrate these description changes into the WEB side.
 
Imagine if the user would see pictures of some place taken under different
weather conditions and seasons changing in a coherent way with time?!?!
 
Ideas and suggestions welcome.
 
Ciao
KJ  

======================================================
Kevin Jepson R.E.T.
President
4K Consulting Inc.                    
An't nanum hearm deth, doth hwaet ye willath.

PHONE: (403) 875-8372
Email: kevijeps at telusplanet.net
=======================================================


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