[Haskell-cafe] How to model outer space for a MUD

[wren romano]

On Fri, Aug 14, 2015 at 4:34 PM, Michael Litchard <michael at schmong.org> wrote:
> Star Wars MUD has a 3-D coordinate system such that (0,0,0) is some planet.
> I'm curious as to how one might model this system that could simulate a
> ship's movement through a 3-D grid. Matrix, 3-D array, graph. None of these?
> Ideas?

The octtree suggestions are good for if you need to keep track of
nearest-neighbors information.

If you're going to be keeping track of orientation as well as
position, note that that means you have six dimensions (three for
location; and three for orientation). Moreover, for the orientation
I'd suggest using quaternions instead of Euler angles (aka: roll,
pitch, yaw). Euler angles have a number of problems including
non-uniqueness of representation and loosing degrees of freedom due to
gimbal lock[1]— whereas quaternions avoid those problems.

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimbal_lock#Gimbal_lock_in_applied_mathematics>


-- 
Live well,
~wren