Re: [Tads3] knowledge / 'seen' / npc knowledge base

["steve breslin" <versim@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mike writes:

> You'd still call obj.setKnownBy(actor) and obj.isKnownBy(actor).  You could 
> refactor the interfaces so they become actor.setKnowsAbout(obj) and 
> actor.knowsAbout(obj), but this seems like exactly the same complexity and 
> almost exactly the same amount of typing to me; you're still representing a 
> relationship between an actor and an object.
Yes. I think it makes better sense for the actor object to keep track of 
what it knows, rather than the object to keep track of which actor knows of 
it; surely this makes an equal amount of sense either way. But taking 
another look at the library, the obj.setKnownBy and obj.isKnownBy seem to 
perfectly well centralize the 'knowledge' interface. So I'm not complaining 
any more about the way the interface is set up.

> The existence of the table for a given actor would have to be tested on 
> every setKnownBy/isKnownBy, though, unless you wanted to give every NPC the 
> necessary tables in preinit.
Exactly. When we call obj.setKnownBy and obj.isKnownBy, we check the table, 
if there is one; if not, we return nil. Or the game writer decides with a 
boolean flag whether or not the NPC can learn things. Then setKnownBy and 
isKnownBy checks this flag to see if the actor is capable of learning 
things.

> In the (I expect) more typical case, the extra information won't be needed, 
> so the author would prefer to omit the unnecessary extra tables.
Yes, many (most?) games don't have other actors. Those which do have much 
simpler actors than we're consdiering. I'm beginning to get the feeling that 
this would be a good 'optional module,' i.e., one which is part of the main 
library, but which is not an essential part of the main library. (One which 
can be added or removed manually without effecting the behavior of anything 
else.)

I'll think about this a bit more, and maybe come up with some code.

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