The purpose of the view processor is to allow many different, context sensitive views of the same underlying data. This allows the game to be modified to add new view technologies without modifying the rest of the game. It also allows the views to be modified by the current environmental, cultural, and emotional state of the player's character and the surroundings.
The view processor actually consists of several components.
- filters
- constructors
The object model of the game core is passed through a set of view filters, to apply the different effects available in the game. The output is the delivered to a view constructor that creates the representation on the screen.
For a textual view:
- The object view is passed into an environmental effects filter. This filter determines if the object can been seen applying any effects like fog or partial darkness.
- The cultural effects filter converts the internal representation of the object into a culturally dependant representation.
- The lexical filter converts the cultural representation using lexical effects. This includes the conversion from word meaning to word form.
- The syntactical view constructor creates the language based description of the view.
- The textual view constructor composes the modified object descriptions into a form that can be displayed on the screen via a textual field view port.
Links to:
- 2D view constructor
- 3D view constructor
- Audio effects generator
- Cultural effects filter
- Environmental effects filter
- Lexical effects filter
- Object view
- Syntactical View Constructor
- Textual view constructor
- Visualisation effects filter
Missing bits-->
- Syntactical View Generator
- Lexical View Generator
- Widget View Generator
- Widget Command Generator
- Command Parser (Part of command module?)
The following need to be fitted with the cultural effects filter as author configurable filters. The Game Author can then specify a set of filters, customised in number and function, for that particular game system.
- Emotional State Filter
- Physical State Filter
21/11/99