Architectural Advice

[Lars van der Aalst]

NOTICE: This post is for entertainment, relaxation purposes only. It's a post about how to design a new feature to a MUD.


This isn't a bug, nor am I asking for urgent help, just thought I'd ask some more experienced Java developers if this makes sense. I'll try to make this as logical as possible from a code architecture point of view, and try to avoid making conceptual assumptions that you might not be aware of.

I'm developing a MUD with a group of friends (we're using CoffeeMud). In this MUD are a wide variety of abilities - which all extend the StdAbility class which in turn implements the Ability interface.

Example(s):
public interface Ability...
public class StdAbility implements Ability...
public class Paladin_Defend extends StdAbility...

Now we want to add an additional property to each of these abilities so that they can fall within a "realm". Another example, all abilities that deal with stealth and stealing with go into the Subversion Realm. Magic spells go into either the Defensive Magic or the Offensive Magic realm. A realm is a general classification system for each ability.

Each realm will have multiple tiers - groups of abilities that get more powerful as the player progresses. Simply a more granular sub-classification system inside each realm.

Each ability will, therefore, be assigned to a skill Realm and a Tier within that Realm. It was suggested to simply add two properties to each ability class.

private final static String Realm = "Subversion";
private final static int RealmTier = 1;

However, I thought of a more abstract solution. I created a new interface..

public interface Realm {
/**
 * Returns the ID string of the realm 
 * @see Realm
 * @return String
 */
public String ID();

/**
 * Returns a string describing the realm 
 * @see Realm
 * @return String
 */
public String name();

/**
 * Returns a Arraylist containing all of the
 * tiers that exist within this realm. 
 * @see Realm
 * @return ArrayList
 */
public ArrayList<String> tiers();

/**
 * Returns the number of tiers in this realm. 
 * @see Realm
 * @return int
 */
public int tierCount();
}

Then create a standard Realm class...

public class StdRealm implements Realm {
 
public String ID() { return "StdRealm"; }
public String name() { return "a skill realm"; }
public ArrayList<String> tiers() { 
ArrayList<String> Tiers = new ArrayList<String>(this.tierCount());
Tiers.add("Tier One");
Tiers.add("Tier Two");
Tiers.add("Tier Three");
Tiers.add("Tier Four");
return Tiers; 
}
public int tierCount() { return 4; }
}

Then I could create all of my skill Realms...

public class SubversionRealm extends StdRealm 
{
public String ID() { return "Subversion"; }
public String name() { return "Subversion Realm"; }
}

Now that I have defined all of my Realms, and Tiers within the Realms, I could modify the abilities to have a realm() method that would return an instance of the Realm in which they exist...

public class Thief_Backstab extends StdAbility
{
public String ID() { return "Paladin_Defend"; }
public String name(){ return "All Defence";}
public StdRealm realm() { return new SubversionRealm(); }
...
...

For those of you who had the patience to read this far, just give me your thoughts on if this - to you - seems like a rational solution or am I taking it too far.

- Lars van der Aalst