Within a game world many cultures exist. Each player may have many cultural influences. These influences change the way that a player perceives the world at many levels.
At the top level of the game, language is a major issue. The game is set up so that it can be run in many languages, using the Java localisation features.
The character that a player is playing will also have different perceptions. For example, in a medieval English world a bunch of 700 elves would look on a house in pristine condition as an evil blight on the landscape that needs to be destroyed. They would not notice the nice shade of white that it has been painted. The owner of the house would have a totally different perception of the house. The owner would think that the wooden fretwork around the windows was a nice touch.
To provide this flexibility to the authors of worlds, and to those using these worlds a set of classes and information files on cultural nuances is provided. The objects in the world and their characteristics and capabilities only provide a set of keys to allow the viewers to provide the correct view from the correct perspective.
Any number of parallel cultural perspectives can be supported using a tree structure of viewing the world and registering the player to want to see particular trees.
In this example the players are looking at a door. There are three different types of character. A locksmith, a gangster and a ghost.
The lock smith would see a door with a simple lock mechanism that would be easy to open.
The gangster, interested in escape routes, would notice that there is a door with a lock.
The ghost would not have any comprehension of items such as locks. It would see a wooden barrier that is likely to be thin and hence present less of a barrier to float through.
It is possible for a player to see the world through many different perspectives. The character's capabilities will effect what is seen and how much detail.
22/11/99