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class
- noun A collection of objects sharing similar permanent
traits, in particular their common properties and uses. Classes
are arranged in an hierarchical fashion (a directed, acyclic
graph, rather than a tree) and objects are therefore almost
always members of more than one class. The main classes are
objects, features,
players, mobiles,
containers, rooms and
treasure. As an example of how classes are arranged, consider
an object like the music box (box4); its place in
MUD2's
hierarchy can be represented something like this:
object
|
+---------------+---------------+
| |
undamageable solid
| |
| +---------------+-------+---------------+
| | | |
| container portable sound-effect
| | | solid
| +-------+-------+ | |
| | | | |
| water-tight openable | metal
| container container | |
| | | | |
| box lockable treasure brass
| | container | |
| | | | |
+-------+---------------+-------+-------+---------------+
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box4
Bleah!
Note that in MUD1, objects
are members of exactly one
class, so for example brands are of
class 'torch' but nothing
else is, and they're not of class 'wood'; artificial classes
have to be invented for some objects, eg. 'access'
is the class for 'door'. Even worse bleah!
- noun (Incorrectly), either muser
or fighter.
Sometimes, people brought up in a role-playing environment
assume that these two distinctions are what D&D-style games
call 'character classes', however they're not. Fighters are
simply musers who can't use magic, and any advantages they have
over musers can be counted on the fingers of one hand (and
that's without the thumb!). The correct terminology is stream
rather than class.
- noun (Incorrectly) either PP or
non-PP. Having found
out that the previous definition is wrong, role-players
will pick on the
distinction between PPs and non-PPs as a place to hang their
definition of class. Unfortunately, there is no agreed way to
refer to these two groupings yet (although class in the
D&D
sense is definitely unacceptable), and it is therefore a little
harder to prevail upon role-players that they are still wrong.
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