Question Handling Extreme Weather

So while I'm putting in crafting recipes, I was thinking of how I was going to handle a certain part of this adventure players would go through: making the perilous trek through the Frostfall Mountains.

At first, I was thinking of attempting to make a complicated series of scripts to simulate suffering from extreme cold, which would take into account the player's gear (in particular, the material) which would either help protect them or hurt them (depending on whether they are wearing metal or leather/hide/fur). Then, after thinking about it some more, it might actually be easier (and cooler) to implement it into some actual code.

Now I have an idea regarding how I would handle this, and it would be rather simplistic, but I was wondering if this is something anyone else would be interested in seeing. Even if it is just for the fun of looking at it and saying, "Sucks to deal with that, hahahahaa!" I'll work on it when I'm done with all these recipes... (one out of four crafting skills done)

I like the idea and would be interested. I always appreciate a few really tough zones in any MUD for the more die-hard players. Everyone gets sick of hack and slash eventually and a zone requiring some forethought and strategy is always nice. You could start out simple if you wanted to experiment. Maybe a timer trigger based on the characters stats on how long they could last in the cold. You could out right kill them when it expired or be nicer and just force them back to shelter. The more complex scenario you stated would be great to force players to try and equip themselves with the best and I would assume rarest gear to survive. Let us know what you try and I'm sure someone on the forums has probably tried something similar.

I made a system to handle hypothermia. Players need to equip warm clothing to prevent exposure. Failing to do so slowly applies cumulative penalties until death.

The nuts and bolts: add a new condition called Temperature, similar to hunger and thirst.
Add new equipment modifiers for resisting cold - similar to +STR etc.
In the tick add a check for cold exposure versus players resist cold and apply debufs as desired, similar to hunger and thirst.

Happy to share the code if you're interested

@Rumble, I totally agree. I used to like playing on a mud (that has now since died) that had some features I really liked: item durability and learning points. Sure, you could have the heavy suit of full plate mail... but after a tough fight you ended up spending a LOT to get it repaired. The learning points system on there was somewhat broken, but replaced practices: the higher your mental stats, the more LP you learned and less was spent when raising skills. However, when it came to finding adventure/something to do on there, it was pretty bad. Lots of empty rooms, as they tried making a grid that you would travel on. I'm not really against this, unless they don't add much content or stuff to find (which was the case on there). I've become a fan, over time, of throwing situations at players that don't require mindless fighting; to be fair, in the case of the Frostfall Mountains, just about every NPC in the starting village will warn them about how cold it is and wearing metal armor is a terrible idea.

Actually, that's similar to what I had in mind, Whiskey! Adding another stat, and it starts at 0; depending on whether a player is in a hot room (desert, humid swamp perhaps) or a cold one (arctic, Frostfall Mountains), the value goes up and down.

For the mountains, as an example, let's say the base value that Temperature drops by is 20. From there, each piece of leather would decrease that by 1 while hide and fur would decrease it by 2 (wearing 5 pieces of fur armor would cut it down to 10, for example). Each piece of metal gear would increase that rate of Temperature drop by 2. Once it hits 100, damage is applied: GET_HIT(ch) = Temperature - 100; That might not seem like much, but given that characters start around with around 11-20hp with no endurance bonuses...

That would mean you'd have 5 ticks to get through the mountains before taking damage (and likely dying). That seems a bit too easy, except in combination with encumbrance. Mountains already eat up a lot of movement points (default is something like 3-5? I can't remember offhand), but if the character is encumbered by lots of armor or other goods, it's going to take him longer to get through those mountains (and having to rest to get movement back is going to be fatal).

I might make the point in which a player takes damage depend on the endurance stat: for every 1 point in endurance, the character can handle +-10 points in the Temperature stat. It severely punishes those with low endurance, but then again I can't think of many players that would treat it like a dump stat.

On the matter of recovery: rate would be 5, plus 1 for each piece of leather and 2 for each piece of hide/fur. In the case of that area I'm working on, I will need to leave a cave or two to allow players to rest and warm up.

Come to think of it... I'm going to have to find out how to not get typical weather messages while in these mountains. "It starts to rain." "Uhhhh it's raining AND snowing?!?!"

Anyways, I appreciate the feedback and the interest. I look forward to moving past the brainstorming stage and coding it all in.