Realistic travel times in muds (shade-free thread)
rmt...@my-deja.com
some
strange idea that the players have to have it easy (or that I ever care
if
my mud has any players in the end) I plan to implement realistic travel
times.
Have you ever played a mud where travelling across a vast desert was the
same number of moves or perhaps even way less than travelling through a
city? Or along the same lines, travelling through a city took about the
same number of moves as travelling from the edge of that city to a whole
nother city? Basically, muds that use playable travel times rather than
realistic ones.
My question is, has anyone actually implemented a mud where the travel
times are proportionate? Where the distance travelled in the mud world
is
directly proportional to the time it takes the player. What do your
players think? Do they like or dislike it?
All replies from Shade and replies following up those will be ignored.
Don't waste your time.
Thanks,
Richard. (Donky@Nameless Sorrows - nameless-sorrows.org 3000)
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Garett Nell
amounts from your movement based on what type of rooms
you are moving through...while this doesn't change the actual
time it takes to explore a vast desert compared to running
around in a town, it does affect the character that way.
A solution to making the time equivalent would be just making
the zones humongous for big things (arctic glaciers, deserts).
I think it would rock if it actually took your character 2
MUD months and some actual planning to explore to the north
pole of the MUD.
Garett
<rmt...@my-deja.com> wrote in message news:8rdba2$923$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
Alan Schwartz
>
>My question is, has anyone actually implemented a mud where the travel
>times are proportionate? Where the distance travelled in the mud world
>is
>directly proportional to the time it takes the player. What do your
>players think? Do they like or dislike it?
I have had experience with a few different ways of doing this,
on roleplaying MUSHes.
1. Use a dynamic room generator to actually create rooms as needed
in order to maintain a distance/room scale. You can still walk
20 miles, but you'll have to pass through a lot of rooms to do so.
Good points: you can write a system that varies speed over terrain
by causing motion north from 0,0 to take you to 0,3 if you're
on a road (and there's no one/nothing to encounter at 0,1 or 0,2)
but to take you to 0,1 if you're in the wilderness.
Bad points: if you don't have some kind of breath/fatigue system
(I didn't), players can just run very fast through the rooms.
2. Use a time delay in passing from one place to another.
I've seen this done most often when you're talking about space
ships moving between planets (or sailing ships between ports)
where the player is essentially a captive audience while they're
on the ship, and has to just wait until the ship arrives (often
with appropriate scenery passing by, etc.)
Good points: You can't run fast through the rooms. You have good
control over the time delay.
Bad points: It's difficult to keep players in limbo like this
if they're travelling by foot. You have to deal with how to handle
players who disconnect rather than wait, if the travel times are
very long.
In either case, players often get frustrated by the need to wait,
unless you're able to make timing of events an important aspect
of the game -- so that being early or late really matters --
and/or make the travel time experience useful to the players
in some way. For example, if players are using their time
learn local lore (that you can spew at the in large, time-consuming
chunks), or such a thing. Travel time can also be handy for
emphasizing status differences -- those who can afford horses,
get there faster.
Just a few thoughts. Good question. :)
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Myles L Skinner
>
> My question is, has anyone actually implemented a mud where the travel
> times are proportionate? Where the distance travelled in the mud world
> is directly proportional to the time it takes the player. What do your
> players think? Do they like or dislike it?
Ah, I like this question! We've actually worked up something like this. The
whole project came about as a result of a number of distinct threads of
planning. There were a number of issues we were trying to address here. I
don't know how accurately I can reconstruct the thought process here, but
this is roughly how the discussions evolved over, well, it must have been
over a couple of years.
First of all, we wanted a big world, but we did not want to write a million
forest rooms. This was partly a reaction against stock DIKU zones such as
Haon-Dor, which supposedly is this vast forest but takes up all of 25 rooms.
The problem we were confronting was one of scale--if our main city weighs
in at 1200 rooms, just imagine how big the surrounding forest would have to
be! Absolutely massive!
However, I don't know about you, but I don't particularly want to write all
those forest rooms. We seriously toyed with the idea of automatically
generated descriptions but weren't entirely satisfied with the effect.
Then somebody pointed out that in games such as Ultima IV, things happen on
different scales. For example, you could be wandering around on the (tiled)
world map where a city takes up a single tile, but as soon as you enter the
city, you get a "zoom in" effect where that single tile now expands and you
can walk around a city with some detail in its structure.
It was a short step from there to the idea of some kind of "overland" map.
However, I have yet to see this implemented in a way that I find entirely
satisfactory. Probably the most annoying problem is the "speedwalk" problem.
No matter how complicated a path you make, some bugger with a client is going
to program "nnnnnnnneeeeeeeeeee" (or whatever) and completely negate the
reason we'd have implemented an overland-type map in the first place.
Enter realspace. I'd been playing various Battletech MUXes on and off since,
well, since I first got on the 'net many years ago. In that model you can
move around the map in real time--the map has a certain scale, and you move
at a certain speed, and your position is updated periodically along whatever
vector you happen to be travelling. At any time during your travels you can
check the map as it updates or get some information about your surroundings.
It therefore takes you a specific amount of time to get from point A to
point B, and you can take any path you like, so if you want to travel under
cover of dense forest to avoid detection, you can do that. If you want to
speed across open plain in a direct line to get there faster, you can do
that too. The only catch being that you pretty much have to be in a vehicle;
there's not a whole heck of a lot of point in wandering around realspace on
foot in that model.
Now, what if we could combine the travelling aspect of realspace with the
normal level of interactivity you'd expect in a MUD? This, I think, is what
we've managed to do. Taking inspiration from the MUXes I have played, I had
to think very hard about how to get that kind of feature to work in a MUD.
Worse, I had to graft it onto a SMAUG MUD...and DIKUs expect *everything*
that happens to happen in normal rooms.
Our zones are built on the traditional room-based model. Once you exit a
zone, you can travel to another zone on the realspace map. You could, for
instance, head south and start walking. If you learn to ride a horse, then
you can save yourself a lot of time and energy by riding.
The nifty part is that any given point (calculated to 6 decimal places) on
the realspace map has similar sort of functionality as a room, so you can
pick up objects, drop stuff (if you drop items in water, they sink to the
bottom; if the water is too deep, you can't recover the items without diving
for them), and so on. We're adding the ability to do things like dig holes
at arbitrary locations, climb trees in forests, and so on.
The addition of this system opens up almost unlimited possibilities. Already,
riding is not just a cheap way to save movement points, but it has a real
impact on travelling. A whole range of outdoors-type skills suddenly become
meaningful in ways that they could not have been before. Movement commands
like climb and swim have greater utility beyond being a way to deal with a
limited number of situations, usually set up as special "exits"
Now, our MUD is still very much under development, so it will be a while
before we see how this plays out with an actual playerbase. But I'm quite
excited about the promise this system holds for our future.
We're all really, really busy at Covenant MUD these days, but if anyone is
interested in a tour, we could probably arrange an appointment.
Insert standard plug for recruiting builders here as well. Don't just visit;
come write with us! :)
ms
--
Covenant MUD: "Our Silent Supporters Can Beat Up Your Silent Supporters!"
Marc Bowden
>
> My question is, has anyone actually implemented a mud where the travel
> times are proportionate? Where the distance travelled in the mud world
> is
> directly proportional to the time it takes the player. What do your
> players think? Do they like or dislike it?
>
I don't know... While I'm all for having rooms or zones of rooms that
slow the kids down for story effect, I've always thought this crossed the
line between "enough" and "too much" realistic simulation. Tends to bore
the kids faster than anything.
======================================================================
Marc Bowden - Soulsinger D R E A M S H A D O W
Human Resources Director --------------------------
The Legacy of the Three
dreamer.telmaron.com 3333 or 206.246.120.2 3333 ry...@merit.edu
"We did not choose to become the guardians, but there is no one else."
======================================================================
rmt...@my-deja.com
> rmt...@my-deja.com wrote:
> > My question is, has anyone actually implemented a mud where the
travel
> > times are proportionate? Where the distance travelled in the mud
world
> > is
> > directly proportional to the time it takes the player. What do your
> > players think? Do they like or dislike it?
> >
>
> I don't know... While I'm all for having rooms or zones of rooms
that
> slow the kids down for story effect, I've always thought this crossed
the
> line between "enough" and "too much" realistic simulation. Tends to
bore
> the kids faster than anything.
I'm not exactly sure what you mean by story effect. The reason I plan
for
realistic distances is because I think its something that adds to the
believability of your mud through consistency of detail. This doesn't
mean
I plan to implement the rare nose picking with your tongue skill or
anything, I guess my line for "too much" sits at a different level to
yours
(or curves in different places perhaps :).
Is the concern that something might bore the players something which
stops
you from implementing lots of things? Have you ever considered coding
the thing and also doing it in a way that makes it easy to play?
Just as an addendum, in my implementation, I didn't plan for the player
to
sit there for a RL day while they travelled to another city. My current
thoughts were to automate the movement (although they could sit there
through it and watch the changes in terrain) and allow the players to
specify a destination, what to do when they reach that destination
(check
into an inn perhaps). Travelling in numbers would be safer of course,
if
you travelled alone you couldn't necessarily expect to get there, so
buying passage on a merchants caravan might be a good option - you could
even log in to see the caravan travelling along if you wanted.
rmt...@my-deja.com
2345
mski...@lucia.acsu.buffalo.edu (Myles L Skinner) wrote:
> <rmt...@my-deja.com> wrote:
> > My question is, has anyone actually implemented a mud where the
travel
> > times are proportionate? Where the distance travelled in the mud
world
> > is directly proportional to the time it takes the player. What do
your
> > players think? Do they like or dislike it?
>
> Ah, I like this question! We've actually worked up something like
this. The
> whole project came about as a result of a number of distinct threads
of
> planning. There were a number of issues we were trying to address
here. I
> don't know how accurately I can reconstruct the thought process here,
but
> this is roughly how the discussions evolved over, well, it must have
been
> over a couple of years.
Ours developed from our coordinate system. Going to the level of depth
we
have with that, its a copout to do anything less than realistic travel
times. And a hack.
> However, I don't know about you, but I don't particularly want to
write all
> those forest rooms. We seriously toyed with the idea of automatically
> generated descriptions but weren't entirely satisfied with the effect.
Well, I think some people have too high an expectation of what
dynamically
generated room descriptions should be able to provide. The point is
that you
are going to have lots and lots of rooms that are pretty much the same,
so
why shouldn't they look the same.
While they may look pretty much the same, there is still alot you can do
with them.
Although you never said why you weren't satisfied with them, care to
share
what you found lacking about dynamically generated room descriptions?
> It was a short step from there to the idea of some kind of "overland"
map.
> However, I have yet to see this implemented in a way that I find
entirely
> satisfactory. Probably the most annoying problem is the "speedwalk"
problem.
> No matter how complicated a path you make, some bugger with a client
is going
> to program "nnnnnnnneeeeeeeeeee" (or whatever) and completely negate
the
> reason we'd have implemented an overland-type map in the first place.
The Discworld mudlib has allotments of time for each game command, to
use the
command means that before the next one is executed that allotment of
time has
to pass first. It also has a command queue, which means that subsequent
commands get queued up of course until the first one finishes.. etc.
There is one mud based on the Discworld mudlib that limits the queue to
15-20
commands, which means that all those movement commands sent to the mud
get
ditched after the queue fills.. unless the commands are still being
sent when
the queue makes room for one more. Can't guarantee you will end up in
the
same place.
> The nifty part is that any given point (calculated to 6 decimal
places) on
> the realspace map has similar sort of functionality as a room, so you
can
> pick up objects, drop stuff (if you drop items in water, they sink to
the
> bottom; if the water is too deep, you can't recover the items without
diving
> for them), and so on. We're adding the ability to do things like dig
holes
> at arbitrary locations, climb trees in forests, and so on.
Our whole mud is done similarily to realspace, its just a 3D coordinate
system
with everything down to a room level of resolution defined in terms of
polygons. Gravity is great :) I'm looking forward to implementing
missiles
with trajectories :)
> The addition of this system opens up almost unlimited possibilities.
Already,
> riding is not just a cheap way to save movement points, but it has a
real
> impact on travelling. A whole range of outdoors-type skills suddenly
become
> meaningful in ways that they could not have been before. Movement
commands
> like climb and swim have greater utility beyond being a way to deal
with a
> limited number of situations, usually set up as special "exits"
All this sounds great, but you haven't really answered my question :)
Do you have proportionate travel times between cities and
destinations? Or do
you reduce it for playability?
> We're all really, really busy at Covenant MUD these days, but if
anyone is
> interested in a tour, we could probably arrange an appointment.
I'm doing it more for personal interest.
Would offer you a tour of my mud, but its pretty lacklustre, you can
see the
coordinate system in action and gravity, but it hasn't been prettied up
so
its not very impressive.
Richard.
rath...@tierceron.com
> All this sounds great, but you haven't really answered my question :)
> Do you have proportionate travel times between cities and
> destinations? Or do
> you reduce it for playability?
To see the system in action is to answer your question. :) However, I
can say that we spent a good amount of time considering the speed
of travel, and settled on something realistic but still very playable.
The vast size of our overland map is what brings the realism to travel.
We not only considered playability then, but also manageability. If we
made the realm much larger than it is (and it's already HUGE) then you
begin seeing diminishing returns as far as the trade off between
memory/performance, and believability/playability.
Chris
Myles L Skinner
> 012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901
>
> Ours developed from our coordinate system. Going to the level of depth
> we have with that, its a copout to do anything less than realistic travel
> times. And a hack.
I certainly won't argue with the first part of that statement. As for the
"and a hack" bit, well, it depends on the needs of the game, the vision of
the creators, and a number of other intangibles. I do believe that any
idea is potentially workable; the real craft is making it work in context.
> Well, I think some people have too high an expectation of what
> dynamically generated room descriptions should be able to provide.
> The point is that you are going to have lots and lots of rooms that
> are pretty much the same, so why shouldn't they look the same.
Quite so. That's a very pragmatic way of approaching things.
> Although you never said why you weren't satisfied with them, care to
> share what you found lacking about dynamically generated room descriptions?
Sure. There are really two things:
First is the "they all look the same" issue. Even if you write a really, really
good generator capable of introducing high degree of variety, you will still
have this problem. I imagine this is because the mind can perceive the "space"
in which the generator algorithm operates long before it has seen more than
a fraction of the output.
Queneau's Oulipo poem "Cent Mille Milliards des Poemes" is an extremem
example of this. Sure, that's a lot of potential poems, but once you play
with the algorithm a bit it gets stale very quickly.
The second point is that when I build, I'm not creating locations so much as
I am constructing narratives--telling stories. A fair number of our other
builders are the same way; they want to tell stories, so in our "real" room
descriptions you get all these quirky narrative elements. If we were to have
done the "wilderness" in the same room-based model, we would have wanted to
hold those rooms to the same standard.
The people who started this whole MUD project (and, yes, I was one of them)
liked the medium as a vehicle for creative expression. Game design elements
have to play off that: how does this or that new thing look; what effect
does it create; how does it fit (or clash) with what we've already got and
with what we still want to add, etc. We have some very interesting in-house
discussions some times. :)
> The Discworld mudlib has allotments of time for each game command, to
> use the command means that before the next one is executed that allotment of
> time has to pass first. It also has a command queue, which means that
> subsequent commands get queued up of course until the first one finishes..
> etc. There is one mud based on the Discworld mudlib that limits the queue to
> 15-20 commands, which means that all those movement commands sent to the mud
> get ditched after the queue fills.. unless the commands are still being
> sent when the queue makes room for one more. Can't guarantee you will end
> up in the same place.
It's probably easy to get around that if you can time the delay and estimate
the length of the command queue. And if you can't get around it, well, if I
have to press 'n' 200 times in a row I'm going to log off and practice some
scales. (c# minor, anybody?)
To some extent, with what we've got, you can still plot your path in advance
and pretty much go on autopilot. But what if a flash flood has wiped out a
bridge you expect to be crossing? Or a landslide has blocked a pass? Or you
are crossing a river in the winter and you suddenly go through the ice? Or
you are attacked? Or...
Things can happen out there. You want to be around to react to them.
> Our whole mud is done similarily to realspace, its just a 3D coordinate
> system with everything down to a room level of resolution defined in
> terms of polygons. Gravity is great :) I'm looking forward to implementing
> missiles with trajectories :)
Ooh! That should be fun to set up. :)
So do you have anything analogous to a "room description" or is that not a
relevant question for your MUD?
> All this sounds great, but you haven't really answered my question :)
> Do you have proportionate travel times between cities and destinations?
The short answer is yes.
> Or do you reduce it for playability?
Now the longer answer. :)
Time does pass on a 15:1 scale, so things do happen at a somewhat accelerated
pace. (The normal DIKU ratio is usually somewhere around 50:1 or 60:1)
But if it takes 5 real minutes to traverse x distance, then it takes 10 real
minutes to traverse 2x (all other things being equal).
So the travel times are *relatively* proportionate with respect to each other.
rmt...@my-deja.com
> rmt...@my-deja.com wrote:
> > Ours developed from our coordinate system. Going to the level of
depth
> > we have with that, its a copout to do anything less than realistic
travel
> > times. And a hack.
>
> I certainly won't argue with the first part of that statement. As for
the
> "and a hack" bit, well, it depends on the needs of the game, the
vision of
Agreed. I was wrong, its an easy task to scale the speed of outside
travel
if that was the required result.
> the creators, and a number of other intangibles. I do believe that any
> idea is potentially workable; the real craft is making it work in
context.
Ahah, I'll misquote you on this later on in my reply ;)
Look for [INSERT MISQUOTE] :)
> > Although you never said why you weren't satisfied with them, care to
> > share what you found lacking about dynamically generated room
descriptions?
>
> First is the "they all look the same" issue. Even if you write a
really, really
> good generator capable of introducing high degree of variety, you
will still
> have this problem. I imagine this is because the mind can perceive
the "space"
> in which the generator algorithm operates long before it has seen
more than
> a fraction of the output.
Guess its personal preferences. To me that they all look the same is
part of
the charm. An argument for my perspective is how I played graphical
adventure
games, YMMV as to how applicable it is :)
I remember playing games like Dungeon Master and Bloodwyche as a lad.
Dungeon
walls pretty much looked the same in both games. Yet I always knew
exactly
where I was and without actually looking at the screen, knowing my
starting
position and what direction I was facing, I could get myself pretty much
anywhere that didn't require use of the mouse.
I didn't find all those passages extraneous, or even boring, just
because they
looked the same. To me, they added character to the game, the fact
that I had
to go through the passages to get from A to B was expected. What
interested
me was the unique stuff I found at the other end of my journey.
Another analogy
is this is why a friend of mine liked the Batman movies, sure, they
were great,
but the story was just stuff to back up the use of the gadgets.
My world contains (will contain *cough*) vast distances of landscape
because I
like the idea of siting oases in the desert and ruins way out in the
middle of
nowhere. And please no-one say that they will never be found. [INSERT
MISQUOTE]
I think I wrote something on this in my article for Imaginary Realities:
http://imaginaryrealities.imaginary.com/volume3/issue6/roomimp.html
It also describes my coordinate system in detail (I think - been a
while since
I wrote it).
> The second point is that when I build, I'm not creating locations so
much as
> I am constructing narratives--telling stories. A fair number of our
other
> builders are the same way; they want to tell stories, so in
our "real" room
> descriptions you get all these quirky narrative elements. If we were
to have
> done the "wilderness" in the same room-based model, we would have
wanted to
> hold those rooms to the same standard.
Well, I guess thats the credo of any decent area creator. That they are
not just building bland padding, but an immersive believable
environment for
the player to involve themselves in. To me, this is what I described
above,
use the virtual world as background and colour in the interesting bits.
i.e. vast same-same desert with ruins and oases.
> with what we still want to add, etc. We have some very interesting in-
house
> discussions some times. :)
We used to :) As we came up with more advanced ideas our old ones
seemed
limited and we had to replace them. So, I recoded out mudlib, and as it
was unusable in the interim they all went elsewhere :) Feh, they were
all talentless hacks anyway, and I would put them in my CRAP repository
were it coded at this time :)
I have lots of board archives online if anyone wants to read through
them.
> > The Discworld mudlib has allotments of time for each game command,
to
> > use the command means that before the next one is executed that
allotment of
> > time has to pass first. It also has a command queue, which means
that
>
> It's probably easy to get around that if you can time the delay and
estimate
> the length of the command queue. And if you can't get around it,
well, if I
Yes, but thats not really getting around anything :)
The mudlib isn't consuming vast quantities of memory remembering a
massive
queue. And you are only travelling at the pace the game considers
proportional to other travel anyway because of the time allotments :)
> have to press 'n' 200 times in a row I'm going to log off and
practice some
> scales. (c# minor, anybody?)
Hah! You fell right into my trap by giving me a reason to rant on about
my
"what happens when players travel for long periods of time" ideas :)
About
this point I would also chuck in a [INSERT MISQUOTE] as well.
Anyway, a quick summary is that I believe long travel times like this
can
easily be made to work in context. The mudlib should as a default
support
continuing programmed actions in the game while the player logs off, at
complete risk to the player of course depending on what level of risk
they
want to put that character at while they are not around. The ideal use
of
this feature is to buy passage on a caravan that is heading to the
destination and then to have the character buy a room at an inn and
check
into it. I would also make it so that players can log on and be where
the caravan is, on a wagon or something during the journey. I would
also
allow email alerts when things occur, whether they are attacked or they
reach their destination. Another level of programmed activity is
setting
off on a journey and watching as the character moves - they would see
notable things in the distance printed to their screen as they moved in
the world, and could choose to be alerted should things approach.
(as you can tell I haven't done any of it, but I consider it to be the
fun stuff I will work on when my coord system is finally finished and
made usable in game).
Generally, my belief is that players should have ingame control of
repetitive activity so they don't have to have queues of commands they
enter to do things.
> To some extent, with what we've got, you can still plot your path in
advance
> and pretty much go on autopilot. But what if a flash flood has wiped
out a
> bridge you expect to be crossing? Or a landslide has blocked a pass?
Or you
> are crossing a river in the winter and you suddenly go through the
ice? Or
> you are attacked? Or...
In which case an email alert would go out :)
> Things can happen out there. You want to be around to react to them.
True, so hire an escort to guard you. etc. Don't take the risk of
using the
feature if you don't know what you are doing.
> So do you have anything analogous to a "room description" or is that
not a
> relevant question for your MUD?
The current version of the coordinate system does, yes, movement is in
room type described err movements. We have rooms, and rooms are
subdivided
into movement spaces depending on their size.
> > Or do you reduce it for playability?
>
> So the travel times are *relatively* proportionate with respect to
each other.
I think I was asking for it by phrasing the question that way, heres a
new way :)
Does amount of distance travelled in your mud (using the same means of
transport)
scale the same for the time it takes to travel as the distance
increases? :)
So, 1 km = 5 mins
2 km = 10 mins.
etc
Richard.
Myles L Skinner
>Myles L Skinner wrote:
>> rmt...@my-deja.com wrote:
>>
>> I do believe that any idea is potentially workable; the real craft is
>> making it work in context.
>
> Ahah, I'll misquote you on this later on in my reply ;)
> Look for [INSERT MISQUOTE] :)
Aha! I say everything works, and then contradict myself. But that's pretty
much the stance I take when I compose music, so I just live with it. I've
gotten used to ignoring any inherent contradictions.
> Guess its personal preferences. To me that they all look the same is
> part of the charm.
A different aesthetic, then. To each their own tastes...
> My world contains (will contain *cough*) vast distances of landscape
> because I like the idea of siting oases in the desert and ruins way out
> in the middle of nowhere. And please no-one say that they will never
> be found.
I'm the sort of player that would go looking for that stuff. So, yes, I assume
that eventually *somebody* will find everything.
>> If I have to press 'n' 200 times in a row I'm going to log off and
>> practice some scales. (c# minor, anybody?)
>
> Hah! You fell right into my trap by giving me a reason to rant on about
> my "what happens when players travel for long periods of time" ideas :)
Curses! Back to practising scales again...
It depends on whether they are travelling for a long time just for the sake
of being slowed down or whether you have some far more interesting set up
in mind.
> Anyway, a quick summary is that I believe long travel times like this
> can easily be made to work in context. The mudlib should as a default
> support continuing programmed actions in the game while the player logs
> off...
Sure. I've seen this done with repair times or hospital stays. I could run
up a bunch of real time tasks before going to bed, and wake up to find them
completed. That's not how we will be arranging things, but it can work.
> In which case an email alert would go out :)
That's a neat idea, but in some ways very disturbing. :)
>>> Or do you reduce [travel times] for playability?
>>
>> So the travel times are *relatively* proportionate with respect to
>> each other.
>
> I think I was asking for it by phrasing the question that way, heres a
> new way :)
> Does amount of distance travelled in your mud (using the same means of
> transport) scale the same for the time it takes to travel as the distance
> increases? :)
>
> So, 1 km = 5 mins
> 2 km = 10 mins.
Yes, I guess I didn't make that entirely clear in my last post.
However, when I say the travel times are proportionate only with respect to
each other, I mean simply that there is no precise absolute "real world"
measure that quite corresponds.
What is distance measured in at our MUD? Well, not kilometers. Not any sort
of familiar unit at all. Distance is measured in hexes. How big is a hex? Who
knows exactly. But yes, travel times increase as distance increases, and it
is linear. If one hex takes 15 seconds to cross, 2 hexes take 30 seconds.
There is another complication. If you're in a major population center and
travelling a short distance, you can follow roads. If you're going somewhere
remote, then you probably have to plough through heavy forests or mountainous
terrain, so to get to remote locations will actually cost you even more time
as you take terrain penalties.
ms
--
Covenant MUD: "A Profound Sense of History and Bad Plumbing"
rmt...@my-deja.com
mski...@xena.acsu.buffalo.edu (Myles L Skinner) wrote:
> In article <8rglvh$1qb$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, <rmt...@my-deja.com>
wrote:
Regarding placing things way out in the middle of nowhere, like oases
and ruins. I'm a like to find things like this myself, but I envision
there would be other ways of finding it other than searching an
infinite waste. Maybe maps or hints in books. Leave a paper trail.
etc I don't mean obviously, I would make the players work for it and
maybe even after that they would have to hire a guide who knew their
way in the desert - not everyone can read and follow a map.
> > I think I was asking for it by phrasing the question that way,
heres a
> > new way :)
> > Does amount of distance travelled in your mud (using the same means
of
> > transport) scale the same for the time it takes to travel as the
distance
> > increases? :)
> >
> > So, 1 km = 5 mins
> > 2 km = 10 mins.
>
> Yes, I guess I didn't make that entirely clear in my last post.
>
> However, when I say the travel times are proportionate only with
respect to
> each other, I mean simply that there is no precise absolute "real
world"
> measure that quite corresponds.
>
> What is distance measured in at our MUD? Well, not kilometers. Not
any sort
> of familiar unit at all. Distance is measured in hexes. How big is a
hex? Who
> knows exactly. But yes, travel times increase as distance increases,
and it
> is linear. If one hex takes 15 seconds to cross, 2 hexes take 30
seconds.
>
> There is another complication. If you're in a major population center
and
> travelling a short distance, you can follow roads. If you're going
somewhere
> remote, then you probably have to plough through heavy forests or
mountainous
> terrain, so to get to remote locations will actually cost you even
more time
> as you take terrain penalties.
Good answer to a pointless question :)
Different movement types for different terrains is a must.
My job is so boring I sometimes get confused and write something other
than what I am thinking. As soon as I posted it, I realised I hadn't
written what I wanted to write but because I have to use Deja News, I
couldn't be bothered fixing it.
Myles L Skinner
>
> How do you deal with the disparity in time between someone in a city
> and someone in real space? In other words, if someone is in a city
> that is ten miles long, and someone else is on a road that is a
> hundred miles long, how do you make it so that the one person is
> entirely through the city and the other person is only a tenth of the
> way done at the same mud-time?
I deal with it by running away and hiding and hoping nobody asks hard
questions. :)
Most of the traditional room-based areas (or zones, or whatever you want to
call them) show up very small on the realspace map. As in a 100 room area
would show up on the map occupying 2, maybe 3 hexes. The 1200 room city
takes up a 4x5 block of hexes. So travel times aren't too out of whack,
although you'll probably always be able to move through an area faster on
the inside than on the outside.
Your question is an intriguing one. I just ran a little experiment. I walked
between two city gates from inside the city. There's a small delay moving
from room to room--it took me 20 seconds to get from one gate to the other.
I then exited the city and walked (through realspace) between those same
two gates. It took me about 25 seconds. I could have gotten there faster
by running, had I chosen to.
> Imagine someone with a movement rate of 2 mph in a 100 mile long room...
Yes, that's a very good point. We've pretty much decided (implicitly; I
don't think this issue actually came up in our discussions) that such
extremely large rooms aren't going to work for us. Mind you, I wouldn't rule
out the possibility of a clever builder finding some kind of ingenious
workaround for the kind of problem your scenario suggests.
> I know back in pen-and-paper games we handled this by saying "You get to
> the next town in a week."
Yep. There's no substitute for pen-and-paper and a group of friends you can
actually spend real time with offline. :)
ms
--
Covenant MUD: "A Profound Sense of History and Bad Plumbing"
rr...@lanminds.com
Skinner) wrote:
>
>Now, what if we could combine the travelling aspect of realspace with the
>normal level of interactivity you'd expect in a MUD? This, I think, is what
>we've managed to do. Taking inspiration from the MUXes I have played, I had
>to think very hard about how to get that kind of feature to work in a MUD.
>Worse, I had to graft it onto a SMAUG MUD...and DIKUs expect *everything*
>that happens to happen in normal rooms.
>
>Our zones are built on the traditional room-based model. Once you exit a
>zone, you can travel to another zone on the realspace map. You could, for
>instance, head south and start walking. If you learn to ride a horse, then
>you can save yourself a lot of time and energy by riding.
>
How do you deal with the disparity in time between someone in a city
and someone in real space? In other words, if someone is in a city
that is ten miles long, and someone else is on a road that is a
hundred miles long, how do you make it so that the one person is
entirely through the city and the other person is only a tenth of the
way done at the same mud-time? Although, thinking about it, I guess
you could figure out a movement rate for people, and then just figure
out how many spaces they could move in a given time frame. But that
could result in people basically not moving at all for quite long
times, depending on their movement rate and the size of the room.
Imagine someone with a movement rate of 2 mph in a 100 mile long
room.... I know back in pen-and-paper games we handled this by saying
"You get to the next town in a week."
Kira Skydancer
Scatter
Skinner) wrote:
>from room to room--it took me 20 seconds to get from one gate to the other.
>I then exited the city and walked (through realspace) between those same
>two gates. It took me about 25 seconds. I could have gotten there faster
>by running, had I chosen to.
I'm going to hijack this bit to ask a related question - how long is
that 20 seconds of real-time in your mud-time? Does it work out to an
appropriate amount?
We used to run with a timescale of 1 real hour to 1 mud day, a
mud:real ratio of 24:1. This worked pretty well for movement times,
but I wanted to have things like religious ceremonies happening at
dawn, a calendar of events and so forth - and 1 day per hour proved to
be way too fast for these events to play out. Thus I've slowed time to
a 4:1 ratio, giving 1 mud day in 6 real hours. This is much better for
events and the like, but means you can walk right across the city (and
it's a _big_ city) in 30 seconds of real time - or 2 minutes of mud
time.
I have a dilemma as to whether to ignore the discrepancy for the sake
of playability or implement a movement-point kind of system to
restrict how far you can go in a given amount of time.
--
Scatter ///\oo/\\\
David Kristola
(in message <39dd9583.1481553@localhost>):
> We used to run with a timescale of 1 real hour to 1 mud day, a mud:real
> ratio of 24:1. This worked pretty well for movement times, but I wanted to
> have things like religious ceremonies happening at dawn, a calendar of
> events and so forth - and 1 day per hour proved to be way too fast for these
> events to play out. Thus I've slowed time to a 4:1 ratio, giving 1 mud day
> in 6 real hours. This is much better for events and the like, but means you
> can walk right across the city (and it's a _big_ city) in 30 seconds of real
> time - or 2 minutes of mud time.
The solution i'm going to suggest might only apply to small MUDs or to
special cases, but...
You could have a variable time scale in the MUD. If all the players are
on the move, the time scale goes to 24:1, but if even a single one starts
doing something that requires a slower time scale, it drops down for
everyone.
--
--djk, keeper of arcane lore & trivial fluff
Home: David95036 plus 1 at america on-line
Spam: goto....@welovespam.com
tel...@xenon.triode.net.au
> How do you deal with the disparity in time between someone in a city
> and someone in real space?
You could argue that the city is harder to move through because
there are crowds, narrow streets, busy intersections and so forth.
Such an argument doesn't sound to bad but I know I most faster
walking on city streets than I do on a bush track (almost twice
as fast actually).
> that
> could result in people basically not moving at all for quite long
> times, depending on their movement rate and the size of the room.
> Imagine someone with a movement rate of 2 mph in a 100 mile long
> room.... I know back in pen-and-paper games we handled this by saying
> "You get to the next town in a week."
You can do this is a MUD too, it isn't a problem until two groups
meet up after walking different paths -- at which point their time
frames are distorted from each other's and they will both be at
the same point right now but now is two different times (argh).
You can sort this out to some extent by only allowing some limited
distortion so that the group can walk a long distance very quickly but then
they must not walk at all for a while so that the universe catches
up with them. Now that is just the same as introducing movement
points... hmmm.
How about this suggestion? Stick with movement points but don't
allow people to ever run out of movement points -- instead you gradually
increase their lag as they move with less points until they automagically
end up regenerating just as many points as they lose.
For example, start with 100 move points. Walking 100m over rough terrain
costs 20 points so from 100 points you can move 100m in an instant and
are left with 80 points. You try to walk another 100m and you get a lag penalty
of 1 second because you walked with only 80, then you lose 20 points for the
distance you walked and you also collect move 5 points for the time you
were lagged (end result 65). So then you try walking another 100m, you get
hit with 2 seconds lag, you lose 20 points for distance, pick up 10 for
lag and reach 55. Hopefully people can see the idea at this point --
it will be impossible to ever get yourself down to 0 movement points.
That is how I plan to implement it anyhow...
--
S1G: 29168052 seconds remaining - Tel
Myles L Skinner
>On 5 Oct 2000 22:55:00 -0400, mski...@lucia.acsu.buffalo.edu (Myles L
>Skinner) wrote:
>
>> from room to room--it took me 20 seconds to get from one gate to the other.
>> I then exited the city and walked (through realspace) between those same
>> two gates. It took me about 25 seconds. I could have gotten there faster
>> by running, had I chosen to.
>
> I'm going to hijack this bit to ask a related question - how long is
> that 20 seconds of real-time in your mud-time? Does it work out to an
> appropriate amount?
This had to be one of the most difficult things to resolve, and even after
lots of discussion back and forth I'm still not 100% convinced that we've
got a satisfactory resolution.
At a rough estimate, that 20 seconds translates to about 7 minutes. I think
that 7 minutes is actually too short a time to cross the distance covered.
However, we never give ANY exact measures of distance, so perhaps we can
sweep the whole problem under the carpet and forget about it.
Let's say it takes you a minute to cross our main city, Tierceron, from east
to west.
Hmmm...what would be an appropriate historical antecedent? I'd say that
Tierceron is about the size of Biedermeyer Vienna. (1820s or so) Could
you cross that city in 15 minutes? Well...
> I have a dilemma as to whether to ignore the discrepancy for the sake
> of playability or implement a movement-point kind of system to
> restrict how far you can go in a given amount of time.
What we're running into as well is the familiar tension between what is
"realistic" and what is "playable". (And, no, I really don't want to argue
the meanings of those terms. ;) Substitute your favourite dichotomy if you
don't like mine) If you put a gun to my head and forced me to decide on
how big a hex is, I'd probably say 2km from one hex center to the next. But
if we were to impose a "realistic" walking pace of somewhere between 5 and
10 kph, it feels really, really slow--frustratingly slow, in fact.
So, travel speeds are running a little high. If we want to bring them into
line, we'd really have to slow down the clock. Right now we're at 15:1.
Maybe we need to think about that one some more.
H. McDaniel
> Imagine someone with a movement rate of 2 mph in a 100 mile long
> room.... I know back in pen-and-paper games we handled this by saying
> "You get to the next town in a week."
That isn't necessarily a problem. I built a sci-fi MUD once where
space travel to distant planets could take hours of RL time. Yet players
enjoyed it because they were not *forced* to do it. There were shorter
duration hops to interesting locations also. I think that provided the
destination is really interesting the time it takes to get there isn't
that big of a problem. Assuming that players have methods to communicate
with each other besides standing in the same room together. Cause most
people play muds with the expectation of *some* social interaction. Even
if it is only a *grunt* as they slash off somebody's arm ;)
-McDaniel
H. McDaniel
question! Don't make a 100 mile long road that must be walked at 2
miles per hour. One should determine what the maximum amount of time
they want a player to have to walk is and then scale the game and it's
areas accordingly. There shouldn't be anybody just making a 100 or
1000 mile long road to nowhere on a whim. That'd be bad ;)
-McDaniel
Scatter
<David...@See-My.Sig> wrote:
>On Fri, 6 Oct 2000 2:09:10 -0700, Scatter wrote
>(in message <39dd9583.1481553@localhost>):
>> in 6 real hours. This is much better for events and the like, but means you
>> can walk right across the city (and it's a _big_ city) in 30 seconds of real
>> time - or 2 minutes of mud time.
>The solution i'm going to suggest might only apply to small MUDs or to
>special cases, but...
I think you're right there.
>You could have a variable time scale in the MUD. If all the players are
>on the move, the time scale goes to 24:1, but if even a single one starts
>doing something that requires a slower time scale, it drops down for
>everyone.
There are two main problems with this -
- npcs might also be doing things that require slower timescales
so even if all the players are out walking, a slower timescale
would be imposed on them
- Players are going to be understandably annoyed if their journey
takes 6 hours instead of 1 hour because Hannah and Fred are
playing chess somewhere =)
I think an important part of making a world feel real is making it
behave in a way that is mostly understandable and predictable - this
is not the case if how fast you move depends on what entirely
unrelated people are doing.
--
Scatter ///\oo/\\\
Nick Bryant
First off: PLAYABILITY IS EVERYTHING. The second you put *anything* in
your MUD which makes playability a secondary consideration, you are on
the road to disaster. MUDs are a game, they are designed to be played,
and giving the best possible experience to the players should be the
only goal.
If I were playing a MUD, and I entered a particular set of commands,
only to receive a message saying "Ok, now please log off and come back
in four hours time" I would be sufficiently pissed off that I would
probably never play that MUD again. Think about the players who only
have a two hour slot each day that they can log on: are you going to
deny them an entire day's play because of your precious realism
concerns?
Having said that, I actually rather like the idea of having very large
areas of wilderness (forests, deserts); so large that to find a
particular area within them you would almost certainly need a map
telling you exactly where to go. So here are my suggestions.
1) Have a random room generator that is capable of producing genuinely
interesting and different locations. Not just variations on tree
scenes, but areas that include a wide variety of small animals and
birds. Descriptions of sounds. Rivers and lakes which are several
locations wide/long so that a player could be told to follow a river to
its source as part of the directions to finding a place. Perhaps some
(random) areas could include little wood elf settlements. Others might
contain the entrance to a four or five room dragon's cave (with
different layouts). Animals you meet should have differing abilities
and descriptions. (It isn't just a leopard, but an old, mangy leopard,
its fur matted and its teeth yellow, half-blind, but still hungry - and
it would have reduced hit-points and accuracy accordingly). And so on.
It might or might not be possible to have each room become persistent
as soon as a player enters it - this would add greatly to the sense of
realism, but could get nasty if not stored compactly. It would also be
problematic to, say, make rivers follow a winding course through
randomly generated rooms if players enter the area in the "wrong"
order - but you could perhaps map out the area in outline beforehand -
this huge rectangle is all forest, the river flows through these
squares (getting slowly wider in the process), this area is hills, this
is marsh, this is mountains, and so on.
2) Introduce a *small* lag time involved in moving from room to room to
indicate speed of movement. This should never be more than two seconds.
A group of players will experience movement lag equal to that of the
slowest member. A lightly-encumbered player on horseback would
experience neglible lag. (You could perhaps add the ability to run,
which reduces lag, but which causes tiredness quicker). Then to
determine distance between any two points, simply add the requisite
number of randomly-generated locations. This allows a faster player to
run down and overtake a slower quarry.
3) Give the player a map object, which remembers interesting (non-
random) locations, and stores the routes the player has followed to
reach them. I haven't quite got the finer points of this worked out in
my head yet. For instance, the player needs to be able to update his
map if he subsequently finds a quicker route to get to somewhere. The
map then allows the player to go to any location on his map by
following the route that he specifies: "Rivendell, route B". This might
consist of two or three hundred moves, each with a two-second lag. At
any point during that route the sequence may be aborted, for example
because the player has been attacked by brigands, or because the bridge
he was expecting to be able to cross has been washed away, or because
he is too tired to continue. He might then need to invalidate the route
he was following and find a new one. The map also needs to be able to
accept pre-generated routes and coordinates, so if the player buys a
treasure map, he can copy its contents onto his own map. He also should
be able to mark the coordinates of randomly generated rooms, so he can
(say) hide something in a hole in a particular tree and find it again
later. Of course only large-scale features should appear on the map,
unless the player specifically marks them there - the name of a city,
not a location within it, the entrance to any given zone. In principle
the map idea could be extended to show detail within a zone - how to
get to the weaponsmith's from the main town square.
4) All this means, of course, that the map object has to decide
intelligently what is the shortest (or quickest, or safest) route to
get to any given point from any other given point, passing through only
the points that have been explored before.... That might be asking a
bit much, I don't know. Even storing the coordinates of every point the
player has ever visited could get nasty very quickly - you'd need to
store ranges of coordinates to keep the data size manageable.
If necessary you could make the whole process much less intelligent and
simply have the map behave like a client program recording a macro.
Activate "remember route" mode, then walk the precise path you want to
follow in future, one step at a time, then "save route". This would be
much simpler, but still allow pre-defined routes to be added to the map
as a result of studying other players' maps, quest-related treasure
maps, etc. You'd still have to cope with completing interrupted routes,
of course.
5) It does actually make sense that it would be faster to go round a
city's walls than it would be to go through it - movement from "room"
to "room" of a busy street would be much slower than charging round the
walls on horseback. So I don't think the high level of detail
(small "rooms") within a city is necessarily a problem.
6) It would be tempting to introduce the possibility of geting lost -
dependent on path-finding skills, use of a compass, etc. - but I doubt
that this would improve playability. It might, if signposted a long way
off - NPC's muttering about how easy it is to go astray in the marshes,
constant references to how disorienting the place is, easy availability
of compasses, etc.
7) This would, of course, require each location in the MUD to have a
definite set of cartesian coordinates, which could be a head-ache when
you want to attach new zones - forward planning of the world layout
would be needed.
8) Vehicles (wagons, ships) could be made to work like a player
following a map - but with a fixed route. The player would, at any
time, be able to look out and see the scenery. ("A stiff breeze is
blowing from the northwest, tearing spindrift from the crests of the
waves. In the distance a huge serpent, its body gleaming like burnished
silver, lifts its head above the salt waves and bellows a greeting...").
9) Most interesting places are likely to be connected by roads, and it
should be possible to "follow road" to its end (or the next junction)
with a single command.
rmt...@my-deja.com
> First off: PLAYABILITY IS EVERYTHING. The second you put *anything* in
> your MUD which makes playability a secondary consideration, you are on
> the road to disaster. MUDs are a game, they are designed to be played,
> and giving the best possible experience to the players should be the
> only goal.
I don't argue with this one bit, however, just as there is realism and
realism, it seems there is playability and playability. Too often it
seems to me that people take words literally when their use doesn't
imply an absolute. What interpretation people think is best depends
on their level of imagination, the target market they are aiming for
and their reasons for making their mud.
While your "first off" read nicely at first glance, rereading it
I have severe doubts about it. You're not actually saying anything
that means anything. The definition of playability is ambigious.
The definition of "best possible experience" is ambigious.
I'm reading it as:
"Hi, my names Nick and I am making a stock mud. You will find all
the familiar commands and concepts on my mud. Not only do I make
your travel on my mud expedient so you don't have to go through
tedious travel times, but I also toady to the players, giving you
the odd item to increase the enjoyment you get out of my game.
I cater to all ages, so maybe you might enjoy playing with Noddy
and Big Ears in Toyland if cavorting with the Smurfs doesn't
tickle your fancy. No thematic consistency here, just a glorious
hodge-podge of thematic mish-mash that offers the 'best possible
experience'.
If somethings too hard for you, or the muds too detailed, let me
know and I'll dumb it down for you."
No guarantees that is actually what you meant, just amusing myself
by trying to demonstrate how ambigious that statement was.
> If I were playing a MUD, and I entered a particular set of commands,
> only to receive a message saying "Ok, now please log off and come back
> in four hours time" I would be sufficiently pissed off that I would
Who said anything about that? You say ambigious things that anyone on
either side of the fence would agree to loosely, then you reveal which
side you stand on by coming up with this assumption.
Let me explain. I still don't know what you mean when _you_ say
playability.
Playability (meanings I can muster at this time):
a) To make the game playable in the sense that the selection of
commands available to the player are not difficult to use or
limited in providing simplified ways of doing complicated
tasks.
b) To make the game playable in the sense that the game contains
elements that a player would like to interact with.
Your selected situation of dislike comes under (a) in my opinion.
I consider both a must, no objections from this bench, in which case
why would I print out such a message? I would give options. The
default would be to experience the landscape on your journey. But,
lets look at how playable this makes the game.. Admittedly, not
everyone can sit there and watch while their character takes a
journey that actually takes 5 RL hours, so what options can we give
them?
1) The ability to give their character instructions and to have the
character carry out these instructions whether or not the player
is connected (at the players own risk of course).
2) If the character encounters something that requires notifying
the player. Then if the player is connected, beep and
optionally send an email. If the player is not connected,
optionally send an email.
3) The player can set the character to take various actions in the
event of different types of encounters. Run away, attack
depending on how it rates it chances..
I don't see why players can't get a summary of all events of note
on a journey by their character emailed out to them or made available
online.
> probably never play that MUD again. Think about the players who only
> have a two hour slot each day that they can log on: are you going to
> deny them an entire day's play because of your precious realism
> concerns?
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt here and assume you can
see this argument is invalid. I'm more than willing to explain how so
if you can't see it. HINT: Actually read what I wrote above and see
how it helps those with limited access times, should they wish to take
advantage of it. Open your mind and think what a game designed around
these principles would offer as a whole rather than just the part
described above.
> Having said that, I actually rather like the idea of having very large
> areas of wilderness (forests, deserts); so large that to find a
> particular area within them you would almost certainly need a map
> telling you exactly where to go. So here are my suggestions.
Theres hope for you yet ;P
> 1) Have a random room generator that is capable of producing genuinely
> interesting and different locations. Not just variations on tree
> scenes, but areas that include a wide variety of small animals and
> birds. Descriptions of sounds. Rivers and lakes which are several
Virtual terrain should be a persistent source of resources.
> locations wide/long so that a player could be told to follow a river
to
> its source as part of the directions to finding a place. Perhaps some
> (random) areas could include little wood elf settlements. Others might
Tree huggers! Evil nasty horrible short bug-eyed earless things. Thank
god we have the orcs (who regard them as a delicacy) to help us wipe
them
out. How can anyone stand their incessant chanting? And our sheep have
been walking funny, maybe those rumors about the indecent things elves
get up to are true?
> contain the entrance to a four or five room dragon's cave (with
> different layouts). Animals you meet should have differing abilities
> and descriptions. (It isn't just a leopard, but an old, mangy leopard,
> its fur matted and its teeth yellow, half-blind, but still hungry -
and
> it would have reduced hit-points and accuracy accordingly). And so on.
The advantage of virtual terrain it is a backdrop. At least in our mud
a creator can place interesting things on the backdrop. i.e. your
dragons cave. Given that virtual terrain will know its terrain type,
its not unreasonable that it might have resources relevant to that
terrain.
> 2) Introduce a *small* lag time involved in moving from room to room
to
> indicate speed of movement. This should never be more than two
seconds.
> A group of players will experience movement lag equal to that of the
Different modes of travel should influence travel time. Different
terrain
type should influence travel time. Portals placed in each city to speed
travel time in the aid of playability won't be seen in my mud.
> 3) Give the player a map object, which remembers interesting (non-
> random) locations, and stores the routes the player has followed to
> reach them. I haven't quite got the finer points of this worked out in
Clients these days do mapping. It should be done on the client side,
my muds going to be slow enough as it is. Heaven forbid anyone to use
ZMud or whatever its called though.
> he was following and find a new one. The map also needs to be able to
> accept pre-generated routes and coordinates, so if the player buys a
> treasure map, he can copy its contents onto his own map. He also
should
Thats assuming he can understand the treasure map or that the locations
it depicts are in the same area.
> be able to mark the coordinates of randomly generated rooms, so he can
> (say) hide something in a hole in a particular tree and find it again
> later. Of course only large-scale features should appear on the map,
> unless the player specifically marks them there - the name of a city,
> not a location within it, the entrance to any given zone. In principle
> the map idea could be extended to show detail within a zone - how to
> get to the weaponsmith's from the main town square.
I would let them recognise the tree, but only if they could find their
way there.
> 4) All this means, of course, that the map object has to decide
> intelligently what is the shortest (or quickest, or safest) route to
> get to any given point from any other given point, passing through
only
> the points that have been explored before.... That might be asking a
> bit much, I don't know. Even storing the coordinates of every point
the
> player has ever visited could get nasty very quickly - you'd need to
> store ranges of coordinates to keep the data size manageable.
Ok, I believe its up to a player to remember locations and paths.
Automated travel will be a must IMO, but a player would remember a path
by landmarks and waypoints.
And I wouldn't build this into an object the player carries.
> 5) It does actually make sense that it would be faster to go round a
> city's walls than it would be to go through it - movement from "room"
> to "room" of a busy street would be much slower than charging round
the
> walls on horseback. So I don't think the high level of detail
> (small "rooms") within a city is necessarily a problem.
I disagree to a degree. If the streets were empty and the layout was
straightforward, then travel in a city would be quicker. If the streets
were really packed and you took an indirect route or the layout of the
city was wierd, then it might take longer. To me, its a question of
consistency and justification.
> 6) It would be tempting to introduce the possibility of geting lost -
> dependent on path-finding skills, use of a compass, etc. - but I doubt
> that this would improve playability. It might, if signposted a long
way
I disagree. The ability to get lost is a risk the player must take.
Its a realistic concern and by leaving it out, you are leaving a hole
which takes away from the believability and immersibility.
> off - NPC's muttering about how easy it is to go astray in the
marshes,
> constant references to how disorienting the place is, easy
availability
> of compasses, etc.
There you go, how to take a decent concept and make it playable without
dumbing down :)
> 7) This would, of course, require each location in the MUD to have a
> definite set of cartesian coordinates, which could be a head-ache when
> you want to attach new zones - forward planning of the world layout
> would be needed.
I don't know what a cartesian coordinate is, but our coordinate system
is polygon based if that means anything. Movement at the lowest level
is in 1 meter steps.
> 8) Vehicles (wagons, ships) could be made to work like a player
> following a map - but with a fixed route. The player would, at any
> time, be able to look out and see the scenery. ("A stiff breeze is
> blowing from the northwest, tearing spindrift from the crests of the
> waves. In the distance a huge serpent, its body gleaming like
burnished
> silver, lifts its head above the salt waves and bellows a
greeting...").
Agreed. And using my active character while logged off model, players
should be able to log in and possess their character wherever they are
in
their journey.
> 9) Most interesting places are likely to be connected by roads, and it
> should be possible to "follow road" to its end (or the next junction)
> with a single command.
BAHP. Wrong. Most populated places are likely to be connected by roads.
The oases, ruins and whatnots will be located out in the wilderness and
will be extremely hard to find. This is not a bad thing. It allows
lots
of opportunities for depth to let the player find interesting places.
Old maps, partying opportunities.. etc
Richard.
mor...@niuhep.physics.niu.edu
rmt...@my-deja.com writes:
>Nick Bryant wrote:
>> If I were playing a MUD, and I entered a particular set of commands,
>> only to receive a message saying "Ok, now please log off and come back
>> in four hours time" I would be sufficiently pissed off that I would
[]
>lets look at how playable this makes the game.. Admittedly, not
>everyone can sit there and watch while their character takes a
>journey that actually takes 5 RL hours, so what options can we give
>them?
>
> 1) The ability to give their character instructions and to have the
> character carry out these instructions whether or not the player
> is connected (at the players own risk of course).
> 2) If the character encounters something that requires notifying
> the player. Then if the player is connected, beep and
> optionally send an email. If the player is not connected,
> optionally send an email.
> 3) The player can set the character to take various actions in the
> event of different types of encounters. Run away, attack
> depending on how it rates it chances..
I would set it up so that the endpoint is an inn that is
basically safe. And allow different routes that have different
levels of safety.
I am not sure how I feel about allowing a player to put his
character into limbo, while maintaining geographic position.
>I don't see why players can't get a summary of all events of note
>on a journey by their character emailed out to them or made available
>online.
nice idea, don't mind if I steal it, do you?
>> probably never play that MUD again. Think about the players who only
>> have a two hour slot each day that they can log on: are you going to
>> deny them an entire day's play because of your precious realism
>> concerns?
>
>I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt here and assume you can
>see this argument is invalid. I'm more than willing to explain how so
>if you can't see it. HINT: Actually read what I wrote above and see
>how it helps those with limited access times, should they wish to take
>advantage of it. Open your mind and think what a game designed around
>these principles would offer as a whole rather than just the part
>described above.
The problem is setting things up so that you can plan on actively playing
for 1:45 without fear of overrunning the 2:00 timeslot and not having
time to get to the jumping off spot for the journey.
[]
>> locations wide/long so that a player could be told to follow a river to
>> its source as part of the directions to finding a place. Perhaps some
>> (random) areas could include little wood elf settlements. Others might
>
>Tree huggers! Evil nasty horrible short bug-eyed earless things. Thank
>god we have the orcs (who regard them as a delicacy) to help us wipe them
>out. How can anyone stand their incessant chanting? And our sheep have
>been walking funny, maybe those rumors about the indecent things elves
>get up to are true?
Hey! some of my best friends are wood elves ...
[]
>Different modes of travel should influence travel time. Different terrain
>type should influence travel time. Portals placed in each city to speed
>travel time in the aid of playability won't be seen in my mud.
Make it expensive. And I don't mean just money-wise. It would
have to be limited in ability otherwise it would replace carts for
shipping. Hmmm, all sorts of games to play with this.
If you just put them in the major cities (which is the only place
they would be justified) it would still force travel to any outlying
areas. And coming through the portal would automatically bring the
character to the attention of the authorities.
>Ok, I believe its up to a player to remember locations and paths.
>Automated travel will be a must IMO, but a player would remember a path
>by landmarks and waypoints.
I like the idea of having a pathfinding/orienteering skill.
>> 7) This would, of course, require each location in the MUD to have a
>> definite set of cartesian coordinates, which could be a head-ache when
>> you want to attach new zones - forward planning of the world layout
>> would be needed.
>
>I don't know what a cartesian coordinate is, but our coordinate system
>is polygon based if that means anything. Movement at the lowest level
>is in 1 meter steps.
What is the resolution of hte actual map? And how big is it (both
geographically and storage wise)?
I like 5ft/1.5 meter hexagons for real minitures but mapping that to
square rooms on the computer is less than intuitively obvious to me.
Robert
rath...@tierceron.com
> 1) The ability to give their character instructions and to have the
> character carry out these instructions whether or not the player
> is connected (at the players own risk of course).
>
> 2) If the character encounters something that requires notifying
> the player. Then if the player is connected, beep and
> optionally send an email. If the player is not connected,
> optionally send an email.
>
> 3) The player can set the character to take various actions in the
> event of different types of encounters. Run away, attack
> depending on how it rates it chances..
Just an observation here, but what you are describing above sounds more
like a turn based BBS game than it does a mud. (Make your moves, log
off, ..time passes..., log on, see the results of your moves, make more
moves, log off, ... time passes...)
This thread originally was about realistic travel times in muds, what
you are suggesting has nothing to do with that at all.
rmt...@my-deja.com
rath...@tierceron.com wrote:
>
> > 1) The ability to give their character instructions and to have
the
> > character carry out these instructions whether or not the
player
> > is connected (at the players own risk of course).
> >
> > 2) If the character encounters something that requires notifying
> > the player. Then if the player is connected, beep and
> > optionally send an email. If the player is not connected,
> > optionally send an email.
> >
> > 3) The player can set the character to take various actions in the
> > event of different types of encounters. Run away, attack
> > depending on how it rates it chances..
>
more
> like a turn based BBS game than it does a mud. (Make your moves, log
> off, ..time passes..., log on, see the results of your moves, make
more
> moves, log off, ... time passes...)
>
> This thread originally was about realistic travel times in muds, what
> you are suggesting has nothing to do with that at all.
Actually, it has everything to do with it.
Ways to make realistic travel times playable.
Did I miss explaining something or not make that clear?
I do believe a major part of my previous post was about playability,
yes?
Confused,
Dave Mittner
MUDs, but there's one thing I'm surprised wasn't mentioned. Or it may have
and I just missed it. Anyway... what is a realistic travel time? Are you
comparing the time it takes to cross a city to the time it takes crossing an
ocean, or are you comparing it to real life travel time. I *think* I've come
up with a way to balance things out in the MUD world, though I don't know
how feesable it is at this point.
Most codebases that I've worked with just have the basic room number. It
then becomes a puzzle of what area goes where. Instead of this, why not
create a 'gridded' world? Imagine you have a 500x500x100 gridded box.
Basically... fit your world in that. Instead of room numbers, you'd have
room coordinates. This will make all rooms have the same general size. Just
jump into your paint program of choice and map out what you want the world
to look like using a 500x500 grid. Boom.. you have an outline for room
development. Granted room creation will be a tedious task, but outstanding
once completed. You'll have an authentic, realistically perportioned world.
This also opens the door for world events such as day/night and weather
patterns. Have the sun just run along the x-axis of the world with a
gradient light value to simulate the passing of night and day. You'd
litterally have night and day at the same time. Another routine could move
coldfronts, rain clouds, etc. along certain paths, in certain climates.
I've never tackled a coding challenge like this before and I'm sure it will
be one heck of a learning experience, assuming it's evern possible. What are
all of you guys' thoughts on this system? And if it IS possible... what
codebase could be adapted easiest in your opinions?
rmt...@my-deja.com wrote:
> I've been developing my mud for years now and not being contrained by
> some
> strange idea that the players have to have it easy (or that I ever care
> if
> my mud has any players in the end) I plan to implement realistic travel
> times.
>
> Have you ever played a mud where travelling across a vast desert was the
> same number of moves or perhaps even way less than travelling through a
> city? Or along the same lines, travelling through a city took about the
> same number of moves as travelling from the edge of that city to a whole
> nother city? Basically, muds that use playable travel times rather than
> realistic ones.
>
> My question is, has anyone actually implemented a mud where the travel
> times are proportionate? Where the distance travelled in the mud world
> is
> directly proportional to the time it takes the player. What do your
> players think? Do they like or dislike it?
>
> All replies from Shade and replies following up those will be ignored.
> Don't waste your time.
>
> Thanks,
> Richard. (Donky@Nameless Sorrows - nameless-sorrows.org 3000)
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.
--
Dave Mittner
dmit...@globalcenter.net
Technical Support Representative
Frontier Globalcenter Phoenix
"C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it
harder, but when you do, it blows away your whole leg"
- Bjarne Stroustrup
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
- Albert Einstein
Dave Mittner
I've seen. But then I've really only used Rom2.4-type codebases. What
codebases use coordinates??
rmt...@my-deja.com wrote:
> Dave Mittner wrote:
> > Well .. I've read through most of the messages regarding travel times
> in
> > MUDs, but there's one thing I'm surprised wasn't mentioned. Or it may
> have
> > and I just missed it. Anyway... what is a realistic travel time? Are
> you
>
> Realistic travel time, is where travel is believable because travelling
> any distance no matter where in the mud takes the same time (with
> modifiers
> that don't take away from the realism).
>
> Modifiers:
>
> - Terrain type - steep hills will take longer. etc.
> - Travel method - cart, ship..
>
> Muds that typically don't have realistic travel times tend to have
> common
> copouts like magical portals which you can take from interesting
> location
> to interesting location. Or it takes two minutes to walk through a
> city,
> but to walk from that city to a "far away" one takes two minutes also..
> You see, its not playable to have realistic distances..
>
> > Most codebases that I've worked with just have the basic room number.
> It
> > then becomes a puzzle of what area goes where. Instead of this, why
> not
> > create a 'gridded' world? Imagine you have a 500x500x100 gridded box.
> > Basically... fit your world in that. Instead of room numbers, you'd
> have
> > room coordinates. This will make all rooms have the same general
> size. Just
> > jump into your paint program of choice and map out what you want the
> world
> > to look like using a 500x500 grid. Boom.. you have an outline for room
> > development. Granted room creation will be a tedious task, but
> outstanding
> > once completed. You'll have an authentic, realistically perportioned
> world.
>
> Coordinate systems are quite common. Theres also different scales to
> which
> you can go in implementing your coordinate system - it takes a lot of
> effort
> to do a really comprehensive one.
>
> > This also opens the door for world events such as day/night and
> weather
> > patterns. Have the sun just run along the x-axis of the world with a
> > gradient light value to simulate the passing of night and day. You'd
> > litterally have night and day at the same time. Another routine could
> move
> > coldfronts, rain clouds, etc. along certain paths, in certain
> climates.
>
> We have a weather system where the storms move around the world.
>
> > I've never tackled a coding challenge like this before and I'm sure
> it will
> > be one heck of a learning experience, assuming it's evern possible.
> What are
> > all of you guys' thoughts on this system? And if it IS possible...
> what
> > codebase could be adapted easiest in your opinions?
>
> I think seeing its a mammoth task, its really what suits you. I prefer
> MudOS
> because I really like the LPC scripting language that comes within it.
> And,
> a release of my mudlib is available with the coordinate system I have
> mentioned - however, its not very usuable and there will be no support.
>
> Richard.
rmt...@my-deja.com
> I would set it up so that the endpoint is an inn that is
> basically safe. And allow different routes that have different
> levels of safety.
>
> I am not sure how I feel about allowing a player to put his
> character into limbo, while maintaining geographic position.
Going with a model like this and having a thing for consistency,
I plan to make characters live in the game all the time. However,
there may be slight cop-outs like checking into an inn, where we
can assume that the character is effectively like an unloaded NPC
until someone enters the room.
> >I don't see why players can't get a summary of all events of note
> >on a journey by their character emailed out to them or made available
> >online.
>
> nice idea, don't mind if I steal it, do you?
Only if you don't mind not crediting me with having the idea :P
> >if you can't see it. HINT: Actually read what I wrote above and see
> >how it helps those with limited access times, should they wish to
take
> >advantage of it. Open your mind and think what a game designed
around
> >these principles would offer as a whole rather than just the part
> >described above.
>
> The problem is setting things up so that you can plan on actively
playing
> for 1:45 without fear of overrunning the 2:00 timeslot and not having
> time to get to the jumping off spot for the journey.
Not a problem if you define it and work around it. Sounds like
something
to take into account when it does actually manifest though - as a user
friendliness addition to the system.
> >> (random) areas could include little wood elf settlements. Others
might
> >
> >Tree huggers! Evil nasty horrible short bug-eyed earless things.
Thank
> >god we have the orcs (who regard them as a delicacy) to help us wipe
them
> >out. How can anyone stand their incessant chanting? And our sheep
have
> >been walking funny, maybe those rumors about the indecent things
elves
> >get up to are true?
>
> Hey! some of my best friends are wood elves ...
As long as you don't join them in their unhealthy activities.. I feel
obliged to say, Elves are a cliche and should be avoided at all cost.
Just
listen to how players pretend to be Elves in Ultima Online when afaik
elves don't fit into UO's theme to see the mindrot they cause.
> >Different modes of travel should influence travel time. Different
terrain
> >type should influence travel time. Portals placed in each city to
speed
> >travel time in the aid of playability won't be seen in my mud.
>
> Make it expensive. And I don't mean just money-wise. It would
> have to be limited in ability otherwise it would replace carts for
> shipping. Hmmm, all sorts of games to play with this.
Well, realistically, it would be inconsistent for me to rule out long
distance travel by magic. So, I would make it really high level and
would place all sort of restrictions on how it works. A given thing
is that the less skilled at it the magic user, the more risk, after
all, what happens if he places himself inside a tree? Death of course.
But then all spells in my system cast by unskilled casters would be
risky and unpredictable.
Why don't you list some of your games? :) I like discussing this
sort of thing.
> If you just put them in the major cities (which is the only place
> they would be justified) it would still force travel to any outlying
> areas. And coming through the portal would automatically bring the
> character to the attention of the authorities.
Magic use costs, and the expense of maintaining a apparently permanent
portal would take a lot of expense in energy if not money. I doubt
someone would provide that for free.
> >Ok, I believe its up to a player to remember locations and paths.
> >Automated travel will be a must IMO, but a player would remember a
path
> >by landmarks and waypoints.
>
> I like the idea of having a pathfinding/orienteering skill.
In a virtual terrain system, I think theres a lot of opportunity for
ranger type characters :)
> What is the resolution of hte actual map? And how big is it (both
> geographically and storage wise)?
Read my article on Imaginary Realities and then come back with anything
it doesn't answer :)
http://imaginaryrealities.imaginary.com/volume3/issue6/roomimp.html
> I like 5ft/1.5 meter hexagons for real minitures but mapping that to
> square rooms on the computer is less than intuitively obvious to me.
See the MUD-Dev archives, theres a thread on that there. Not sure if
it will be of any help.
http://www.kanga.nu/archives/MUD-Dev-L/1998Q4/msg00899.php
http://www.kanga.nu/archives/MUD-Dev-L/1998Q4/msg00900.php
rmt...@my-deja.com
Modifiers:
Richard.
H. McDaniel
[Summaraizing an adventure]
> Only if you don't mind not crediting me with having the idea :P
Hmm. This is done on certain RPGs. But the summary is written by
or edited by the game master / moderator. Some games post the
developing narrative to websites so that those who weren't playing
can experience it later. Reminds me somewhat of the "good" ole days
when you could play a game by SNAIL MAIL (gasp). Not that I ever
did. People complain about paying a buck a month to play a MUD
now. Imagine if you had to buy a postal stamp for each move.
-McDaniel
KaVir
the
> > character carry out these instructions whether or not the
player
> > is connected (at the players own risk of course).
> >
> > 2) If the character encounters something that requires notifying
> > the player. Then if the player is connected, beep and
> > optionally send an email. If the player is not connected,
> > optionally send an email.
> >
> > 3) The player can set the character to take various actions in the
> > event of different types of encounters. Run away, attack
> > depending on how it rates it chances..
>
more
> like a turn based BBS game than it does a mud. (Make your moves, log
> off, ..time passes..., log on, see the results of your moves, make
more
> moves, log off, ... time passes...)
>
> This thread originally was about realistic travel times in muds, what
> you are suggesting has nothing to do with that at all.
Right above the part you quoted, you snipped out "Admittedly, not
everyone can sit there and watch while their character takes a journey
that actually takes 5 RL hours, so what options can we give them?".
The parts you quoted were the options, and have EVERYTHING to do with
realistic travel times.
A RL 5-hour journey across the ocean isn't much fun to play, so why not
let the character do it while the player is offline? Unless the
character is little more than a puppet which flops uselessly on the
ground the second the player types "quit", I see absolutely no reason
why the player can't leave instructions.
My biggest problem with such an approach is how to deal with PK -
particularly if you're using the more realistic approach of permanent
death. It's bad enough being killed by another player at the best of
times, but imagine how you'd feel if you logged on after a week-long
vacation and it said "Sorry, your character got in a drunken brawl
while you were away and someone stabbed him. He was in intensive care
for 3 days and seemed to be recovering - but last night he had a
relapse, and passed away in his sleep. Please create a new character."
About the best thing you can do is what Scatter suggested - allow the
player to specify how their character should react (if there's a brawl,
RUN AWAY!), and allow them to choose if they want email/etc
notification of anything serious which happens to their character (so
that they can log on, without having to sit there for 5 hours watching
the landscape roll by).
KaVir.
Nick Bryant
Given that you know perfectly well that isn't what I meant, why bring
it up? It's easy enough to respond to this, though: would *you* enjoy
playing on a MUD where all of this went on? Presumably the answer
is "no". I probably wouldn't either. And therefore (assuming neither
one of us is excessively eccentric) it's reasonable to extrapolate and
say that most other MUD players wouldn't want to play on a MUD like
that. Therefore designing a MUD like this would NOT please the players,
and hence would NOT improve the playability of the MUD.
Playability is easy to define, although trickier to measure: it's the
extent to which the people who play the MUD enjoy playing it. If a
feature contributes towards increasing the general pleasure of the
playing experience, it's a good feature. If not, it's a bad one. End of
story. Thus, "realism" is NOT a sufficient justification for ANYTHING.
It *may* be that making the MUD behave more like "the real world" helps
to make the playing experience more believable and immersive. If so,
it's probably a good feature. But it's a good feature because it makes
it more FUN, *not* for any other reason. As soon as you start
implementing features purely because they improve realism without
thinking about whether or not they are actually FUN, you're headed
straight to Hell.
As far as your specific suggestions are concerned:
- I would have no desire to make a pure stock MUD: there are enough out
there already.
- I see nothing wrong with having the basic command structure and world-
type being familiar. MUDs are about the gaming experience - the
mechanics necessary to produce the gaming experience should be as
simple and intuitive as possible. If, in order to play a MUD, it is
essential to learn how to issue commands in Latin then this will reduce
the MUD's appeal. If the MUD responds as a new player would expect to
commands like "n", "s", "get dagger", "wield dagger", "kill dragon"
then this doesn't seem to me to be a bad thing. I actually have a major
problem with MUD areas where you are expected to magically deduce the
existence of a particular command. If there's a button, I expect
whatever effect it controls to be triggered when I "push button". If,
in fact, I need to "twist button" and there is no hint in either the
description of the room or the description of the button that it can be
twisted, that will irritate me a great deal. The question should always
be "what do I want to do?" and not "what do I have to type in order to
achieve what I want to do?"
Similarly, if the MUD contains elements that the player recognises,
this will make him feel at home. If a room description tells you "There
are several habityglabityglibbets here" you're going to ask "what?" If,
instead, it says "There are several sheep here" then you know
immediately what I am talking about. To some extent one can get around
this by being careful - rather than saying "There are several
habityglabityglibbets here" one should say "There are several
habityglabityglibbets here, thoughtfully chewing long, green grass
stems Their expressions are somehow both thoughtful and stupid. Their
twin humps are covered by ragged, green fur." But you need to provide
at least a certain amount of familiarity for a player to be able to
understand the strangeness.
- If I ever do run a MUD I will encourage a highly interventionist
policy on the part of immortals - but not as immortals. Instead, they
will (for example) issue quests while disguised as NPC's ("I need you
to deliver this to so-and-so in the next village"), or organise
assaults on the main player base while "possessing" large numbers of
some evil, barbaric creature, thus requiring the players to put aside
their differences and unite to defend their way of life. Anything that
favours one player over another won't be a good idea, because it will
annoy more players than it appeases. I would hope that any MUD I ever
run would be balanced enough that there are areas a newbie can explore
and enjoy without assistance - but the issuing of a "starter pack" is
not necessarily a problem.
- I don't have any difficulty with areas dedicated to young players, or
(copyright permitting) entire MUDs dedicated to children's book or TV
characters. I do value thematic consistency, but I probably would have
at least one area which would function as a chat-room where players
were allowed to be out-of-character. So long as such an area doesn't
impinge in any way on any other aspect of the MUD, it shouldn't be an
issue.
- I don't approve of dumbing down as such; but if someone doesn't
understand something then it is quite likely to be evidence of poor
design or poor explanation on my part, so I would probably want to
correct whatever was causing the problem, or at least provide more
resources to aid in understanding.
> > If I were playing a MUD, and I entered a particular set of commands,
> > only to receive a message saying "Ok, now please log off
> and come back
> > in four hours time" I would be sufficiently pissed off that I would
>
> Who said anything about that?
If, to reach a given location, you require to spend 4 real-life hours
of non-interactive travelling, where's the distinction? That's the sort
of timescale people on this thread seem to be talking about. Why would
I want to sit staring at the screen doing nothing for four hours?
Where's the fun in that?
[cut]
> Playability (meanings I can muster at this time):
>
> a) To make the game playable in the sense that the
> selection of commands available to the player are not
> difficult to use or limited in providing simplified ways
> of doing complicated tasks.
That is certainly one aspect of playability.
> b) To make the game playable in the sense that the game
> contains elements that a player would like to interact with.
Surely (a) is a subset of (b)? Having the game easy to use is necessary
to make it enjoyable.
> Your selected situation of dislike comes under (a) in my
> opinion.
You consider sitting watching a non-interactive screen for four hours
fun?
> I consider both a must, no objections from this
> bench, in which case why would I print out such a message? I
> would give options. The default would be to experience the
> landscape on your journey. But, lets look at how playable
> this makes the game.. Admittedly, not everyone can sit there
> and watch while their character takes a
> journey that actually takes 5 RL hours, so what options can
> we give them?
An excellent question.
> 1) The ability to give their character instructions and to
> have the character carry out these instructions whether
> or not the player is connected (at the players own risk
> of course).
>
> 2) If the character encounters something that requires
> notifying the player. Then if the player is connected, beep and
> optionally send an email. If the player is not connected,
> optionally send an email.
>
> 3) The player can set the character to take various actions
> in the event of different types of encounters. Run away, attack
> depending on how it rates it chances..
>
> I don't see why players can't get a summary of all events of
> note on a journey by their character emailed out to them or
> made available online.
The problem with (1) is, what if something happens to your character
that you didn't anticipate? How would you feel if you logged on and
found that, while following your instructions, your character had died?
Would that be fun and make you think "what a cool MUD this is!"?
Hardly. You'd be furious.
(2) is even worse. Either it requires the player to remain on-line (but
not actually playing) so that they can react immediately to being
emailed (in which case they might just as well be staring at a non-
interactive MUD screen for the same length of time) or alternatively
the action has to be frozen at the point that something interesting
happens until after the player has received the email and logged back
on again. But that could potentially take days. How do you handle the
action surrounding the frozen character in the mean time?
(3) is superficially better, but ultimately you run into the same
problems as you do with (1): it's all very well saying "if character
gets into a fight, run away"; but what if, in running away, the
character ends up cornered? How does the MUD then handle the fight?
Does it force the fight to proceed (thereby again risking that when the
player next logs on he will be told "sorry, you've been killed in the
meantime") or does it freeze the action (which renders the idea of
trying to be realistic about travel time pointless anyway)? You can't
possibly control a character as precisely with pre-set instructions as
you can by working in real-time.
Why not have a fourth option: simply don't make the journey take 5
hours in the first place. Let me put it this way: if, as a player, you
had a choice between spending 5 hours of non-interactive time and
spending 5 hours actually playing the MUD, which would you prefer? If
the player doesn't want to play the MUD for a bit, fine, but that
should be his decision: you shouldn't force it on him.
> > probably never play that MUD again. Think about the players who only
> > have a two hour slot each day that they can log on: are you going to
> > deny them an entire day's play because of your precious realism
> > concerns?
>
> I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt here and
> assume you can see this argument is invalid. I'm more than
> willing to explain how so if you can't see it. HINT:
> Actually read what I wrote above and see how it helps those
> with limited access times, should they wish to take advantage
> of it. Open your mind and think what a game designed around
> these principles would offer as a whole rather than just the
> part described above.
It would no longer be a MUD in any meaningful sense of the phrase. If
you want to design an off-line game in which control is handled in a
turn-based fashion with all input by email, and the consequences
emailed back to the players, fine. But any type of system that runs
primarily in real-time (i.e. you see the results of your actions in a
matter of a couple of seconds) will fall apart if you try to make it
operate in a non real-time fashion. (For reasons I've just explained).
[cut]
> > 1) Have a random room generator that is capable of
> producing genuinely
> > interesting and different locations. Not just variations on tree
> > scenes, but areas that include a wide variety of small animals and
> > birds. Descriptions of sounds. Rivers and lakes which are several
>
> Virtual terrain should be a persistent source of resources.
Pardon?
[cut]
> > (random) areas could include little wood elf settlements.
>
> Tree huggers! Evil nasty horrible short bug-eyed earless
> things. Thank god we have the orcs (who regard them as a
> delicacy) to help us wipe them
> out. How can anyone stand their incessant chanting? And our
> sheep have been walking funny, maybe those rumors about the
> indecent things elves get up to are true?
Maybe you should re-read "The Hobbit" - the elves in Mirkwood were
rough-living, hard-drinking types who would throw you in jail to rot as
soon as look at you. Then there are the elves in Terry
Pratchett's "Lords and Ladies" - whose main aim in life is to find
humans to play with. That's in the same way as cats play with mice....
> > contain the entrance to a four or five room dragon's cave (with
> > different layouts). Animals you meet should have differing abilities
> > and descriptions. (It isn't just a leopard, but an old,
> mangy leopard,
> > its fur matted and its teeth yellow, half-blind, but still hungry -
> and
> > it would have reduced hit-points and accuracy accordingly).
> And so on.
>
> The advantage of virtual terrain it is a backdrop. At least
> in our mud a creator can place interesting things on the
> backdrop. i.e. your dragons cave. Given that virtual
> terrain will know its terrain type, its not unreasonable that
> it might have resources relevant to that terrain.
Yeah, but I'm saying that a creator shouldn't have to place the
dargon's layer manually - the terrain generator should be sophisticated
enough to do that for him. A random terrain generator should be
sophisticated enough that, if you were dropped into a room without
knowing it was randomly generated, you wouldn't be able to tell that it
hadn't been hand-crafted. I'm not saying this is easy to achieve - but
it's what should be aimed at.
> > 2) Introduce a *small* lag time involved in moving from room to room
> to
> > indicate speed of movement. This should never be more than two
> seconds.
> > A group of players will experience movement lag equal to that of the
>
> Different modes of travel should influence travel time.
> Different terrain type should influence travel time.
I'm not totally sure about that.... Again, it may be more realistic,
but is it more fun? The main reason for suggesting my "small-lag"
system is not to enhance realism, it's to reward strategy: to make it
possible to hunt down a man on foot if you have the foresight to obtain
a fast horse. Assuming you have some form of movement point system that
requires you to stop and rest when exhausted, simply deducting more
points for climbing mountains than for following a road will likely
suffice. (Of course horses can't climb cliff faces, so again, this
rewards strategy - a player on foot being pursued by horsemen might be
able to escape if he can reach a steep, high cliff before they catch
him, and if he has climbing skills. But if the horsemen know what
they're doing, they can take the long way round and reach the top
before he does). But in any case, you can easily achieve the same
effect by balancing the number of "rooms" a player has to go through in
order to get to a particular point, using randomly generated terrain to
fill in the gaps as necessary. It seems to me to be inifinitely much
better to make a person cross ten locations at 2 seconds per location
than it does to introduce a 20-second lag moving across a single
location.
> Portals placed in each
> city to speed travel time in the aid of playability won't be
> seen in my mud.
I wasn't suggesting that. Although (so long as their use is carefully
controlled) such things could contribute positively to the game. Maybe
their owners would charge heavy tolls for their use.
I'd also like to give teleportation ability to spell-casters - but
again, controlled. It should be relatively easy to teleport to a place
you have been to and studied. (Make studying a location take a real
life minute). But it would be much harder to teleport blind to a
specified set of coordinates that you hadn't visited before.
Teleporting would probably take a lot of mana, too.
> > 3) Give the player a map object, which remembers interesting (non-
> > random) locations, and stores the routes the player has followed to
> > reach them. I haven't quite got the finer points of this
> worked out in
>
> Clients these days do mapping. It should be done on the
> client side, my muds going to be slow enough as it is.
> Heaven forbid anyone to use ZMud or whatever its called though.
I've always felt that, where possible, MUDs should be designed in such
a way that players using sophisticated client programs should have as
little advantage as possible over those using plain telnet. (That's
another good reason for introducing a small amount of deliberate lag
between commands, of course). If I were running a MUD I would include
at least basic client functions in the server code - both aliases, and
triggered actions, for example.
> > he was following and find a new one. The map also needs to
> be able to
> > accept pre-generated routes and coordinates, so if the player buys a
> > treasure map, he can copy its contents onto his own map. He also
> should
>
> Thats assuming he can understand the treasure map or that the
> locations it depicts are in the same area.
Of course.
[cut]
> > 4) All this means, of course, that the map object has to decide
> > intelligently what is the shortest (or quickest, or safest) route to
> > get to any given point from any other given point, passing through
> only
> > the points that have been explored before.... That might be asking a
> > bit much, I don't know. Even storing the coordinates of every point
> the
> > player has ever visited could get nasty very quickly - you'd need to
> > store ranges of coordinates to keep the data size manageable.
>
> Ok, I believe its up to a player to remember locations and
> paths. Automated travel will be a must IMO, but a player
> would remember a path by landmarks and waypoints.
How about letting the map guide him to the waypoints?
> And I wouldn't build this into an object the player carries.
Coward. ;-P
> > 5) It does actually make sense that it would be faster to go round a
> > city's walls than it would be to go through it - movement
> from "room"
> > to "room" of a busy street would be much slower than charging round
> the
> > walls on horseback. So I don't think the high level of detail
> > (small "rooms") within a city is necessarily a problem.
>
> I disagree to a degree. If the streets were empty and the
> layout was straightforward, then travel in a city would be
> quicker. If the streets were really packed and you took an
> indirect route or the layout of the city was wierd, then it
> might take longer. To me, its a question of consistency and
> justification.
That depends on the layout of the city - if there happens to be a big,
wide road running from the East Gate to the West Gate, then maybe - but
if you're working to a mediaeval theme, then the towns will probably be
full of little winding lanes that slow you down even if there's no one
blocking the way.
While we're on the subject of cities and realism: how many locations
does a typical MUD "city" contain? And how does this compare to the
size of a real-life city?
> > 6) It would be tempting to introduce the possibility of
> geting lost -
> > dependent on path-finding skills, use of a compass, etc. -
> but I doubt
> > that this would improve playability. It might, if signposted a long
> way
>
> I disagree. The ability to get lost is a risk the player
> must take. Its a realistic concern and by leaving it out, you
> are leaving a hole which takes away from the believability
> and immersibility.
I'm undecided on this point. On the one hand it could reward strategy,
but on the other it is going to piss a lot of people off. It would
also, of course, create major problems with any mapping algorithm you
were using.
> > off - NPC's muttering about how easy it is to go astray in the
> marshes,
> > constant references to how disorienting the place is, easy
> availability
> > of compasses, etc.
>
> There you go, how to take a decent concept and make it
> playable without dumbing down :)
Possibly. But at the very least you would need to have large areas of
the MUD that one *can't* get seriously lost in so that players who
haven't yet invested in path-finding skills still have something
enjoyable to do. Perhaps the best way to handle this is to have
specific areas that are likely to cause a player to get lost - the
Great Desert, the Southern Mire, the Eastern Forests - with all sorts
of dire warnings about not venturing in there unless you have high
pathsmanship and wilderness survival skills.
> > 7) This would, of course, require each location in the MUD to have a
> > definite set of cartesian coordinates, which could be a
> head-ache when
> > you want to attach new zones - forward planning of the world layout
> > would be needed.
>
> I don't know what a cartesian coordinate is, but our
> coordinate system is polygon based if that means anything.
> Movement at the lowest level is in 1 meter steps.
Cartesian coordinates are coordinates based on a 2D square grid (or, in
principle, a 3D cubic grid). So if your coordinate system is based on
squares (or rectangles, actually), it's cartesian. If it's based on
hexagons it isn't.
> > 8) Vehicles (wagons, ships) could be made to work like a player
> > following a map - but with a fixed route. The player would, at any
> > time, be able to look out and see the scenery. ("A stiff breeze is
> > blowing from the northwest, tearing spindrift from the crests of the
> > waves. In the distance a huge serpent, its body gleaming like
> burnished
> > silver, lifts its head above the salt waves and bellows a
> greeting...").
>
> Agreed. And using my active character while logged off
> model, players should be able to log in and possess their
> character wherever they are in
> their journey.
Yes, but it would be more fun if there were actually things going on on-
board that required the character's attention - gambling below decks,
battles with giant squids, passing rafts full of castaways, pirates....
I think your logged-off model is just a sign that you are too lazy to
think of ways of filling out the time with something interesting.
> > 9) Most interesting places are likely to be connected by
> roads, and it
> > should be possible to "follow road" to its end (or the next
> junction)
> > with a single command.
>
> BAHP. Wrong. Most populated places are likely to be
> connected by roads. The oases, ruins and whatnots will be
> located out in the wilderness and will be extremely hard to
> find. This is not a bad thing. It allows lots
> of opportunities for depth to let the player find interesting
> places. Old maps, partying opportunities.. etc
Fair enough. But the world is likely to have more towns than isolated
oases and ruins. Anyway, that wasn't the point: the point was that
there should be roads, and that following those roads should work the
same way as following a route on a map.
mor...@niuhep.physics.niu.edu
>morphis wrote:
>> I would set it up so that the endpoint is an inn that is
>> basically safe. And allow different routes that have different
>> levels of safety.
>>
>> I am not sure how I feel about allowing a player to put his
>> character into limbo, while maintaining geographic position.
>
>Going with a model like this and having a thing for consistency,
>I plan to make characters live in the game all the time. However,
>there may be slight cop-outs like checking into an inn, where we
>can assume that the character is effectively like an unloaded NPC
>until someone enters the room.
I think that if there is combat or active pursuit the person
can not go into Limbo. I'm still not totally decided about
other situations, though emailing the results of travel would
deal with some of the problems (not following up interesting leads).
In my plans Inns are safehouses.
>> >I don't see why players can't get a summary of all events of note
>> >on a journey by their character emailed out to them or made available
>> >online.
>>
>> nice idea, don't mind if I steal it, do you?
>
>Only if you don't mind not crediting me with having the idea :P
You afraid my players will hunt you down in anger if they find out?
>> >Different modes of travel should influence travel time. Different
>> >terrain type should influence travel time. Portals placed in each
>> >city to speed travel time in the aid of playability won't be seen
>> >in my mud.
Actually what I am playing with is rather AD&Dish, make uneventful
outdoor travel 3 times faster.
>> Make it expensive. And I don't mean just money-wise. It would
>> have to be limited in ability otherwise it would replace carts for
>> shipping. Hmmm, all sorts of games to play with this.
>Well, realistically, it would be inconsistent for me to rule out long
>distance travel by magic. So, I would make it really high level and
>would place all sort of restrictions on how it works. A given thing
>is that the less skilled at it the magic user, the more risk, after
>all, what happens if he places himself inside a tree? Death of course.
>But then all spells in my system cast by unskilled casters would be
>risky and unpredictable.
>
>Why don't you list some of your games? :) I like discussing this
>sort of thing.
Only living matter can go through.
No metals can go through.
Iron can not go through. (in my world at least this makes sense)
What to do about invasions.
Is it a pure one to one connection or can anybody connect from
anywhere or any other portal?
It is relatively easy to set up and defences must be created
to protect cities.
It is difficult to set up, easy to maintain but can not be easily closed
once open (or reopened once closed) so it is in a small well guarded
room to prevent invasion. But usage costs are more a matter of
taxation (or 20 years of support for payment of the mage who set it up)
than of actual maintenance costs.
Only mages can use the portal, alternatively a mage must accompany
anybody who does use it.
You have to be asleep to go through.
Given the history of my world there are three kinds of portals,
one into the realm of magic, one into the realm of recently dead souls
and godly power and one that would go from place to place.
That is in ascending order of difficulty. The first two require
travel in the other realms which may or may not be faster, presumably
an experienced mage/cleric could guide others across a quick path.
The third is forbidden and quite difficult (i.e. maybe half a dozen
mages can manage it, Player Characters will never master it).
Hmmm, the second is forbidden too, but it probably isn't all that
difficult and for an appropriately "holy" purpose a sufficiently
powerful cleric could be convinced to help out. But getting out
somewhere else would require some advance planning.
>> If you just put them in the major cities (which is the only place
>> they would be justified) it would still force travel to any outlying
>> areas. And coming through the portal would automatically bring the
>> character to the attention of the authorities.
>Magic use costs, and the expense of maintaining a apparently permanent
>portal would take a lot of expense in energy if not money. I doubt
>someone would provide that for free.
yup
[]
>> What is the resolution of hte actual map? And how big is it (both
>> geographically and storage wise)?
>
>Read my article on Imaginary Realities and then come back with anything
>it doesn't answer :)
>
>http://imaginaryrealities.imaginary.com/volume3/issue6/roomimp.html
Interesting. Mirrors a lot of my own thoughts. I guess you're right.
I will have to provide a graphical method for creation of buildings, I
can't expect builders to hand-enter all the numbers and get it right.
My biggest bugaboo is my projected storage requirements for the full
world. I am storing the wilderness in 1km by 1km chunks, for my
projected beta world of 40km by 80 km or so that isn't so bad, but
for a single continent and minimal ocean of roughly 3000 km by 5000 km
things get a bit hairy.
Robert
rmt...@my-deja.com
> My biggest problem with such an approach is how to deal with PK -
> particularly if you're using the more realistic approach of permanent
> death. It's bad enough being killed by another player at the best of
> times, but imagine how you'd feel if you logged on after a week-long
> vacation and it said "Sorry, your character got in a drunken brawl
> while you were away and someone stabbed him. He was in intensive care
I really disagree with you here. I don't see this as a problem at all.
If you are going to be away on a week long vacation, the risks you get
your character to take are your own fault. There are safe things
characters will be able to do in my world, certain cities will prohibit
weapons in the cities, a character could take a job in a mine or
something where they are out of the way. A recognition system would
help prevent enemies from recognising them, and as far as most people
would know, their character would seem to be a npc.
If it became a real concern, then I would consider other measures which
don't necessarily water down the game. I'm not saying these are
definitive solutions, just what comes off the top of my head:
- Have a monitoring system for automated characters. Players who are
going to be away for extended periods of time and have no use for
alerts could submit their character to the monitoring system.
Alternative monitoring methods:
o Fairness:
If a character is in a dangerous situation, any active creators
with access to the monitoring system might influence the
characters situation on the side of reason.
o Intervening:
Might have a pool of trusted players who don't mind taking having
someone elses character assigned to them for the away period.
They
would get any alerts and complete summaries would be kept for the
character owner. At owners risk.
- Assign your character to a friend for a period of time, so that they
get the alerts.
Of course, I am not sure whether I would go for any of the assigning
options because to me they defeat the purpose of a recognition system.
And it would reveal too much of the players character.
> for 3 days and seemed to be recovering - but last night he had a
> relapse, and passed away in his sleep. Please create a new
character."
Shit happens, nappies aren't in theme in my mud.
> About the best thing you can do is what Scatter suggested - allow the
> player to specify how their character should react (if there's a
brawl,
> RUN AWAY!), and allow them to choose if they want email/etc
> notification of anything serious which happens to their character (so
> that they can log on, without having to sit there for 5 hours watching
> the landscape roll by).
Didn't see Scatter say this, thought it was me, but then, he's always
stealing my ideas - the parasite! :)
rmt...@my-deja.com
> Given that you know perfectly well that isn't what I meant, why bring
> it up? It's easy enough to respond to this, though: would *you* enjoy
Because I am illustrating a point. That what you said was completely
ambiguous and the meaning would shift depending on the readers
interpretation. You still don't seem to grasp (and, yes, I have read
the rest of your post) that the fact you interpret certain terms
certain ways doesn't make for a good response, given that ambiguity.
Heres your two favourite words:
o Fun.
o Playable.
The main problem that I have with answering this post is that you
don't seem to possibly consider that I see my ideal mud as both
playable and fun. So, its not your idea of fun, well.. given a few
of your suggestions, I would say if you expect me to even consider
implementing them, I doubt you are anywhere near my target market.
Another problem with your comments is that you make limited statements
based on your mental barriers of what can and can't be work within a
mud. I've been developing my mud (as a hobby and an interest) for
near on five years now at the least and I discussed these ideas in
depth with the creators on my mud along the way - they brought up
their concerns about how the changes would affect the game in negative
ways and something this made me realise is that you can nearly always
find ways to address those concerns without compromising the goals
of the mud.
> playing on a MUD where all of this went on? Presumably the answer
> is "no". I probably wouldn't either. And therefore (assuming neither
Do I really need to answer this? Well, no, but it might be a good
idea considering how you responded the last time I wrote that.
Yet again its answered in my preceding section. I consider this fun.
I consider it playable. The sole reason I am designing it is because
I want to be able to play my ideal mud. You'll find that most of the
more gifted mud developers out there do their own mud for the same
reason. But, I would say that most of their work never gets finished,
because to create a deep mud takes a lot of work and this explains
why most of the open muds are so limited and tend to conform to the
same ideals of playability and fun. Perhaps this is where you take
your definitions from? Who knows.
Most if not all of the advanced muds out there start off limited and
conformed - then when they realise that they want more advanced
features, they modify the relevant bits of their mud to give each
advanced feature. This is the way to start a mud and to know that you
will have a fair chance of opening, but it is not a way to create a
mud like mine. If the base of your mud is dynamic and it automatically
provides the backdrop to the topping, how can it help but be better?
(ignoring incompetence and lack of vision on the part of the designer).
> one of us is excessively eccentric) it's reasonable to extrapolate and
> say that most other MUD players wouldn't want to play on a MUD like
Your argument here fails now of course. However, it doesn't necessarily
mean that to some extent you aren't right. Most players may not want to
play my mud. But who says that they are my target market? I've run
into
a lot of players and creators in my time and the ones who I respected
the
most all liked my ideals and appreciated them. IMHO good creators and
good players are few and far between, but YMMV. (and no, I don't define
good creators and players by whether they like my ideas). I'm not
aimimg for most players, I don't like most players and I'm not greedy, I
would be happy for a 20 player online level average if I was concerned
about it. Thats not an unreasonable expectation. And lets throw in
that muds that meet your qualifications of fun and playable have trouble
getting players, at least I'm a stand out from the crowd.
> that. Therefore designing a MUD like this would NOT please the
players,
> and hence would NOT improve the playability of the MUD.
From most players to the players. Some of your arguments are very
shakey, but I addressed that at the top of the post.
> As far as your specific suggestions are concerned:
>
> - I would have no desire to make a pure stock MUD: there are enough
out
> there already.
Any sort of stock is bad, not just pure. Muds like these probably scare
away half the players with taste who might have otherwise contributed
positively to the mudding community had they had the good fortune to
log into a decent mud.
> If, to reach a given location, you require to spend 4 real-life hours
> of non-interactive travelling, where's the distinction? That's the
sort
> of timescale people on this thread seem to be talking about. Why would
> I want to sit staring at the screen doing nothing for four hours?
> Where's the fun in that?
I wrote about half a page in reply to this, but when it comes down to
it,
you're just completely missing the point. Since its bad argument on my
part to leave it there, lets just say its related to _your_ idea of fun.
> > a) To make the game playable in the sense that the
> > selection of commands available to the player are not
> > difficult to use or limited in providing simplified ways
> > of doing complicated tasks.
>
> That is certainly one aspect of playability.
>
> > b) To make the game playable in the sense that the game
> > contains elements that a player would like to interact with.
>
> Surely (a) is a subset of (b)? Having the game easy to use is
necessary
> to make it enjoyable.
No. (a) is the OOC aspect. (b) is the IC aspect.
That you see them as not being mutually exclusive says it all.
> > Your selected situation of dislike comes under (a) in my
> > opinion.
>
> You consider sitting watching a non-interactive screen for four hours
> fun?
Why ask this? Isn't the point of the offline stuff to get around
that necessity?
> > this makes the game.. Admittedly, not everyone can sit there
> > and watch while their character takes a
> > journey that actually takes 5 RL hours, so what options can
> > we give them?
>
> An excellent question.
The three options I gave were not alternatives, they could have been
employed together. What your response fails to understand is that in
my model, risk is as much an implicit part of the game as realistic
travel times and distances. You seem to say, the player must be
molly-coddled and handled with kid-gloves, but offline or online, risk
adds to the value of the reward of an endeavour.
> > of it. Open your mind and think what a game designed around
> > these principles would offer as a whole rather than just the
> > part described above.
>
> It would no longer be a MUD in any meaningful sense of the phrase. If
> you want to design an off-line game in which control is handled in a
> turn-based fashion with all input by email, and the consequences
> emailed back to the players, fine. But any type of system that runs
> primarily in real-time (i.e. you see the results of your actions in a
> matter of a couple of seconds) will fall apart if you try to make it
> operate in a non real-time fashion. (For reasons I've just explained).
Your ideas are too limited to understand. I feel like a complete
bastard for responding with that, but I can't argue with you, you just
don't see the big picture.
> > Virtual terrain should be a persistent source of resources.
>
> Pardon?
Whats the point of doing virtual terrain if you don't take it as
far as it can be taken? You know the terrain type, you can provide
the appropriate resources for that terrain type. If players
interact with that terrain, the effect of that interaction should
also be permanent - persistent past reboots.
[ elves ]
> Maybe you should re-read "The Hobbit" - the elves in Mirkwood were
> rough-living, hard-drinking types who would throw you in jail to rot
as
> soon as look at you. Then there are the elves in Terry
> Pratchett's "Lords and Ladies" - whose main aim in life is to find
> humans to play with. That's in the same way as cats play with mice....
My world isn't Terry's world (or Tezza as he likes me to call him) and
it certainly isn't Tolkiens. I have to say that I admire Tolkien for
the depth and detail he put into his books, and its a thing I hold
high when I consider how comprehensive I want mine to be.
Elves are possbily the worst thing that could have happened to the
fantasy world, look at the loser faction on UO that decided they
wanted to be elves - never mind the fact that it didn't fit into
the game world. Its just one example of the mindrot they cause.
Another is the fasination with drow that the hack and slash muds
that I have seen have. Although thats probably more symptomatic
of the lack of imagination present what with an existing, fleshed
out object being easier to recreate than it is to create something
of the same detail that is original.
> Yeah, but I'm saying that a creator shouldn't have to place the
> dargon's layer manually - the terrain generator should be
sophisticated
> enough to do that for him. A random terrain generator should be
> sophisticated enough that, if you were dropped into a room without
> knowing it was randomly generated, you wouldn't be able to tell that
it
> hadn't been hand-crafted. I'm not saying this is easy to achieve - but
> it's what should be aimed at.
What is a good room description is as subjective. I'm not convinced
yours is a good goal to aim for.
> > > 2) Introduce a *small* lag time involved in moving from room to
room
> > to
> > > indicate speed of movement. This should never be more than two
> > seconds.
> > > A group of players will experience movement lag equal to that of
the
> >
> > Different modes of travel should influence travel time.
> > Different terrain type should influence travel time.
>
> I'm not totally sure about that.... Again, it may be more realistic,
> but is it more fun? The main reason for suggesting my "small-lag"
> system is not to enhance realism, it's to reward strategy: to make it
> possible to hunt down a man on foot if you have the foresight to
obtain
> ..
Firstly, your stripped down system is just a limited version of mine.
Except where yours limits to what its designed for, mine give what yours
is designed for as emergent properties. Secondly, mine being realistic
means that its easier and more straightforward to work out strategies
due to the consistency of the world. You can do all you describe within
mine - and hell, the horse will practically slide back down the hill
when
the slope turns out too much for him as well. Lets say the rider
catches
the chased party at the top and pushes him off the cliff - the body will
be waiting at the bottom.
And enhancing realism is also a phrase thats open to the reader.
> > Portals placed in each
> > city to speed travel time in the aid of playability won't be
> > seen in my mud.
>
> I wasn't suggesting that. Although (so long as their use is carefully
> controlled) such things could contribute positively to the game. Maybe
> their owners would charge heavy tolls for their use.
> ...
This really depends on your magic system. I have several designs for
the magic systems that will be in mine.
> > Clients these days do mapping. It should be done on the
> > client side, my muds going to be slow enough as it is.
> > Heaven forbid anyone to use ZMud or whatever its called though.
>
> I've always felt that, where possible, MUDs should be designed in such
> a way that players using sophisticated client programs should have as
> little advantage as possible over those using plain telnet. (That's
> another good reason for introducing a small amount of deliberate lag
> between commands, of course). If I were running a MUD I would include
> at least basic client functions in the server code - both aliases, and
> triggered actions, for example.
There are cases that can be made for custom clients. I have several
ideas that add to the game through the use of client side features.
Ever seen Tolkiens runes? What if when you saw and didn't understand
dwarven speech, it came up in a font composed of his runes rather than
a dwarven sounding mish-mash? One advantage is that its easier to
pick it out with the eye and move onto the next text. Another is that
it adds to the atmosphere.
Have you seen the tools that are used for MMORPG's like UO and EQ?
The clients are unusable so third parties provide hacks to add
functionality to them that make the game so much easier to play.
The EQ one puts maps over the client display and throws in a waypoint
based routing ability. etc. This proves that clients can be made
that add to the game.
> > Ok, I believe its up to a player to remember locations and
> > paths. Automated travel will be a must IMO, but a player
> > would remember a path by landmarks and waypoints.
>
> How about letting the map guide him to the waypoints?
*gasp* But what if someone steals the map?! Thats no fun.
We can't possibly have risk ;P
Besides, its bad design tying knowledge to a physical object IMO.
> While we're on the subject of cities and realism: how many locations
> does a typical MUD "city" contain? And how does this compare to the
> size of a real-life city?
In my case, whatever you consider a location to be, it will have
scads of them. Mansions, hovels, shops, etc.. A real life city
isn't a valid comparison, I go with what seems to fit into my
medieval fantasy world. A couple of token houses and some shops
and maybe a palace isn't it.
> > I disagree. The ability to get lost is a risk the player
> > must take. Its a realistic concern and by leaving it out, you
> > are leaving a hole which takes away from the believability
> > and immersibility.
>
> I'm undecided on this point. On the one hand it could reward strategy,
> but on the other it is going to piss a lot of people off. It would
> also, of course, create major problems with any mapping algorithm you
> were using.
What player knowing as they will what my mud is like, would expect
to go wandering off in the wilderness for the heck of it and not
get lost? There will be a short essential reading with links off
to other resources for new players as well as online facilities.
> enjoyable to do. Perhaps the best way to handle this is to have
> specific areas that are likely to cause a player to get lost - the
> Great Desert, the Southern Mire, the Eastern Forests - with all sorts
> of dire warnings about not venturing in there unless you have high
> pathsmanship and wilderness survival skills.
Too tacky.
> > Agreed. And using my active character while logged off
> > model, players should be able to log in and possess their
> > character wherever they are in
> > their journey.
>
> Yes, but it would be more fun if there were actually things going on
on-
> board that required the character's attention - gambling below decks,
> battles with giant squids, passing rafts full of castaways,
pirates....
> I think your logged-off model is just a sign that you are too lazy to
> think of ways of filling out the time with something interesting.
Or that this is a prime example of you just not getting the picture?
Who says that my model wasn't designed to more capably handle the
type of thing that you mention anyway? Player owned ships.. a
whole ocean to explore, above and below it. Thats a prime example
of why some people do this sort of thing. And a limited selection
to say the least.
> Fair enough. But the world is likely to have more towns than isolated
> oases and ruins. Anyway, that wasn't the point: the point was that
> there should be roads, and that following those roads should work the
> same way as following a route on a map.
I was completely wrong there, misinterpreted in a wierd way what you
meant. Apologies.
Anyway, thats it.
Richard.
Scatter
<nicolas...@mswtech.com> wrote:
>Playability is easy to define, although trickier to measure: it's the
>extent to which the people who play the MUD enjoy playing it. If a
>feature contributes towards increasing the general pleasure of the
>playing experience, it's a good feature. If not, it's a bad one. End of
>story.
The problem with this is that it is self-defeating - different players
enjoy playing in different ways. A feature that player A enjoys a lot
may really irritate player B - so has your playability gone up or
down? Is it a good feature or a bad one?
Richard is trying to design and build the sort of mud that he will
enjoy playing - just as I am building the mud that I want to play. I
think he'd agree with me when I say that I don't particularly care
whether you enjoy playing it - I'm sure there are enough people who
share my own tastes, and if not - well I'll have a whole world to
myself. =)
>Thus, "realism" is NOT a sufficient justification for ANYTHING.
>It *may* be that making the MUD behave more like "the real world" helps
>to make the playing experience more believable and immersive.
The definition of "realism" which I think is the important one is
"making the mud world feel real" - not so much making it like real
life as just making sure that it is itself internally consistent.
Walking across a city in 2 minutes and then walking across the empire
to another city also taking 2 minutes is not internally consistent.
>If so, it's probably a good feature. But it's a good feature
>because it makes it more FUN, *not* for any other reason.
Fun for who? Fun for the hack'n'slasher who wants to get to the meaty
monsters ASAP, or fun for the explorer who wants the challenge of
finding the ancient ruined city in the forest?
>- If I ever do run a MUD I will encourage a highly interventionist
>policy on the part of immortals - but not as immortals. Instead, they
>will (for example) issue quests while disguised as NPC's ("I need you
>to deliver this to so-and-so in the next village"), or organise
>assaults on the main player base while "possessing" large numbers of
>some evil, barbaric creature, thus requiring the players to put aside
>their differences and unite to defend their way of life.
Whilst this may be fun, it puts a very large burden of work on your
staff to keep on coming up with more things for the players to do. I
think it would be far better to design the game in such a way that it
generates things to do itself.
>Anything that
>favours one player over another won't be a good idea, because it will
>annoy more players than it appeases.
I defy you to find any change to a mud that doesn't favour one player
over another. =)
>If, to reach a given location, you require to spend 4 real-life hours
>of non-interactive travelling, where's the distinction? That's the sort
>of timescale people on this thread seem to be talking about. Why would
>I want to sit staring at the screen doing nothing for four hours?
>Where's the fun in that?
What makes you think it would be non-interactive? You might meet
someone interesting or see something you want to investigate - in that
kind of timescale, many interactive events can occur. Richard's point
was more that if you don't want to sit there and wait, you can log off
and do something else, coming back when your character has arrived.
(And getting feedback of those interesting events you might want to go
back and investigate...)
>The problem with (1) is, what if something happens to your character
>that you didn't anticipate? How would you feel if you logged on and
>found that, while following your instructions, your character had died?
>Would that be fun and make you think "what a cool MUD this is!"?
>Hardly. You'd be furious.
You logged out of a persistant world based game, leaving your
character wandering across the desert and you're furious because he
died of thirst whilst you were offline? You were playing the wrong
game. =)
>(2) is even worse. Either it requires the player to remain on-line (but
>not actually playing) so that they can react immediately to being
>emailed (in which case they might just as well be staring at a non-
>interactive MUD screen for the same length of time) or alternatively
>the action has to be frozen at the point that something interesting
>happens until after the player has received the email and logged back
>on again. But that could potentially take days. How do you handle the
>action surrounding the frozen character in the mean time?
The idea is that the action doesn't get frozen, it just carries on
whether you are connected or not. If you don't want dangerous things
to happen to your character whilst you are offline, don't leave your
character in a potentially dangerous place when you log off.
Alternatively, perhaps you prefer to take some risks in return for
potential gains, such as, say, not having to sit there and watch for 4
hours of travelling. =)
>Why not have a fourth option: simply don't make the journey take 5
>hours in the first place. Let me put it this way: if, as a player, you
>had a choice between spending 5 hours of non-interactive time and
>spending 5 hours actually playing the MUD, which would you prefer? If
>the player doesn't want to play the MUD for a bit, fine, but that
>should be his decision: you shouldn't force it on him.
Perhaps I'd prefer to spend 5 hours of playing time sailing to an
interesting island reputedly full of strange and exotic wonders than
to spend another 5 hours slaughtering wuzzies in the forest near the
city.
To put that another way, if the player doesn't want to spend 5 hours
of playing time travelling then they can either not travel, or find a
faster method of travelling.
>I'm not totally sure about that.... Again, it may be more realistic,
>but is it more fun? The main reason for suggesting my "small-lag"
>system is not to enhance realism, it's to reward strategy: to make it
>possible to hunt down a man on foot if you have the foresight to obtain
>a fast horse. Assuming you have some form of movement point system that
>requires you to stop and rest when exhausted, simply deducting more
>points for climbing mountains than for following a road will likely
>suffice. (Of course horses can't climb cliff faces, so again, this
>rewards strategy - a player on foot being pursued by horsemen might be
>able to escape if he can reach a steep, high cliff before they catch
>him, and if he has climbing skills. But if the horsemen know what
>they're doing, they can take the long way round and reach the top
>before he does).
Yet to make those strategies possible, you're enhancing realism and
making the world feel like a more real place. The more of this kind of
realism you have, the more such tactics and strategies become
possible.
>But in any case, you can easily achieve the same
>effect by balancing the number of "rooms" a player has to go through in
>order to get to a particular point, using randomly generated terrain to
>fill in the gaps as necessary.
I'm not sure this is a disagreement with the proposal of realistic
travel times - by putting in more rooms, you make the travel time
longer so that time taken is proportional to the distance travelled.
>It seems to me to be inifinitely much
>better to make a person cross ten locations at 2 seconds per location
>than it does to introduce a 20-second lag moving across a single
>location.
I don't think anyone has suggested the latter.
>> > 4) All this means, of course, that the map object has to decide
>> > intelligently what is the shortest (or quickest, or safest) route to
>> > get to any given point from any other given point, passing through
>> only
>> > the points that have been explored before.... That might be asking a
>> > bit much, I don't know. Even storing the coordinates of every point
>> the
>> > player has ever visited could get nasty very quickly - you'd need to
>> > store ranges of coordinates to keep the data size manageable.
>>
>> Ok, I believe its up to a player to remember locations and
>> paths. Automated travel will be a must IMO, but a player
>> would remember a path by landmarks and waypoints.
>
>How about letting the map guide him to the waypoints?
>
>> And I wouldn't build this into an object the player carries.
>
>Coward. ;-P
This is a logical design decision. Intelligent behaviour controlling
how a player moves belongs in the player object, not in an external
map object. Knowledge known to the player, including such things as
landmarks and remembered routes also belongs in the player object.
This doesn't exclude a map being made and used as a memory aid or
instructions for routes the player doesn't know, but the map shouldn't
be controlling the player.
And consider what happens if the player's map is stolen or destroyed -
he'd magically forget everywhere he'd ever been. Unless your proprosal
also suggests this item is somehow unstealable and indestructable.
>While we're on the subject of cities and realism: how many locations
>does a typical MUD "city" contain? And how does this compare to the
>size of a real-life city?
Can't speak for other muds, but our main city is f*cking huge. =) It
also does contain lots of meandering streets and similar. The size and
layout is based on medieval English cities, and if anything it's
larger than most cities would have been around the sort of time I'm
aiming at.
>> I disagree. The ability to get lost is a risk the player
>> must take. Its a realistic concern and by leaving it out, you
>> are leaving a hole which takes away from the believability
>> and immersibility.
>I'm undecided on this point. On the one hand it could reward strategy,
>but on the other it is going to piss a lot of people off.
It'll piss off the players who want to get from A to B because they've
heard about cool things to kill at B. Shame. =) On the other hand,
perhaps explorers will have a lot more fun setting up their
expeditions with precautions and skills needed to avoid getting lost
and if they do, they'll enjoy the challenge of finding their way out
again.
There is a good reason the original adventure had "a maze of twisty
turny passages, all alike."
>It would
>also, of course, create major problems with any mapping algorithm you
>were using.
Only if your algorithm was designed in isolation and didn't take the
rest of the game into account.
>> > 8) Vehicles (wagons, ships) could be made to work like a player
>> Agreed. And using my active character while logged off
>> model, players should be able to log in and possess their
>> character wherever they are in
>> their journey.
>Yes, but it would be more fun if there were actually things going on on-
>board that required the character's attention - gambling below decks,
>battles with giant squids, passing rafts full of castaways, pirates....
>I think your logged-off model is just a sign that you are too lazy to
>think of ways of filling out the time with something interesting.
Without the character continuing with the player logged off, how could
you handle this in any kind of sensible fashion?
If the player logs off, does the ship continue off without him? If it
does, what happens when he logs back in - he's swimming in the ocean?
Or should the entire ship freeze where it is until he comes back? If
so, what if there was another player on board too? Does that player
get frozen and booted off? Or does that player continue with the ship
and when the first player logs back in he gets a magical second copy
of the ship, complete with all the treasure it was carrying in the
cargo hold?
All of these things are nasty 'reality-slips' that serve as a constant
jolt to knock players from IC to OOC.
--
Scatter ///\oo/\\\
Scatter
>Any sort of stock is bad, not just pure.
I feel compelled to point out at this point that Sorrows mudlibs are
the second most popular on the intermud-3 network. =) (Lima coming
first and Discworld third.)
--
Scatter ///\oo/\\\
KaVir
rmt...@my-deja.com wrote:
> In article KaVir <ka...@my-deja.com> wrote:
> > My biggest problem with such an approach is how to deal with PK -
> > particularly if you're using the more realistic approach of
> > permanent death. It's bad enough being killed by another player at
> > after a week-long vacation and it said "Sorry, your character got
> > in a drunken brawl while you were away and someone stabbed him. He
> > was in intensive care
>
> I really disagree with you here. I don't see this as a problem at
> all. If you are going to be away on a week long vacation, the risks
> you get your character to take are your own fault. There are safe
> things characters will be able to do in my world, certain cities will
> prohibit weapons in the cities, a character could take a job in a
> mine or something where they are out of the way. A recognition
> system would help prevent enemies from recognising them, and as far
> as most people would know, their character would seem to be a npc.
If there are "safe zones" then fair enough. I've been playing around
with a similar idea for a while now (players are always online) but
dislike the idea of a "safe" option - thus the major concern I've
always had was players being killed while not in control. Making a
player look like an NPC won't help much, as players are even MORE
likely to kill NPCs than other players.
> If it became a real concern, then I would consider other measures
> which don't necessarily water down the game. I'm not saying these are
> definitive solutions, just what comes off the top of my head:
[snip solutions]
> Of course, I am not sure whether I would go for any of the assigning
> options because to me they defeat the purpose of a recognition system.
> And it would reveal too much of the players character.
I prefer to see a character being fully controlled by one player,
either in real-time or with predefined scripts.
> > for 3 days and seemed to be recovering - but last night he had a
> > relapse, and passed away in his sleep. Please create a new
> > character."
>
> Shit happens, nappies aren't in theme in my mud.
Getting permanently killed when you weren't even online is going to
REALLY piss players off. Most players like to be in control of their
characters. Personally I don't like giving players as much control as
they're used to, but something as permanent as death is a little
excessive. I wrote a post about this a while ago, but I can't remember
if it was on usenet, MUD-DEV or TMC...basically describing the scenario
of an alcoholic character who's player tried to keep him sober - but
who had to remain online because as soon as he quit, his character
would wander off down the pub and get drunk. That scenario is
annoying, but not permanent. If your character is particularly violent
and gets in fights when not being controlled, he's going to have a very
short life - even worse, he might end up getting in fights with OTHER
characters who are also not being controlled. Imagine logging in and
finding yourself with your head on the executioners block - all those
mobs you'd been killing had turned your character into a psychopath,
and after you logged off he went on a murderous rampage around town!
Even if you limit characters to non-violent activities when not being
played, you still have the problem of characters being killed by things
outside of their control.
> > About the best thing you can do is what Scatter suggested - allow
> > the player to specify how their character should react (if there's a
> > brawl, RUN AWAY!), and allow them to choose if they want email/etc
> > notification of anything serious which happens to their character
> > (so that they can log on, without having to sit there for 5 hours
> > watching the landscape roll by).
>
> Didn't see Scatter say this, thought it was me, but then, he's always
> stealing my ideas - the parasite! :)
Sorry - you said "Read my article on Imaginary Realities", and when I
clicked on the link I saw Scatter's name. I only saw your name on
there as well when I looked back just now.
KaVir.
KaVir
links:
-> http://www.kanga.nu/archives/MUD-Dev-L/1998Q2/msg00494.php
---> http://www.kanga.nu/archives/MUD-Dev-L/1998Q2/msg00502.php
-----> http://www.kanga.nu/archives/MUD-Dev-L/1998Q2/msg00594.php
-------> http://www.kanga.nu/archives/MUD-Dev-L/1998Q2/msg00601.php
-----> http://www.kanga.nu/archives/MUD-Dev-L/1998Q2/msg00517.php
-------> http://www.kanga.nu/archives/MUD-Dev-L/1998Q2/msg00536.php
-----> http://www.kanga.nu/archives/MUD-Dev-L/1998Q2/msg00514.php
KaVir.
Nick Bryant
> >Playability is easy to define, although trickier to measure: it's the
> >extent to which the people who play the MUD enjoy playing it. If a
> >feature contributes towards increasing the general pleasure of the
> >playing experience, it's a good feature. If not, it's a bad one. End
of
> >story.
>
> The problem with this is that it is self-defeating - different players
> enjoy playing in different ways. A feature that player A enjoys a lot
> may really irritate player B - so has your playability gone up or
> down? Is it a good feature or a bad one?
That's not self-defeating at all. Most decisions in life are about
balance and compromise. And a high level of player enjoyment remains
the goal, regardless of any hiccoughs that may occur on the way to
achieving it. Besides, merely because there is a grey area that doesn't
mean everything has to fall within it. If a decision upsets 10% of your
player base and pleases no one then it's probably wrong. If a decision
makes 99.7% of MUD players less likely to want to play your MUD, then
it's very wrong.
Or at least that's what I think. You clearly don't.
> Richard is trying to design and build the sort of mud that he will
> enjoy playing - just as I am building the mud that I want to play. I
> think he'd agree with me when I say that I don't particularly care
> whether you enjoy playing it - I'm sure there are enough people who
> share my own tastes, and if not - well I'll have a whole world to
> myself. =)
Yes, and therein lies the fundamental problem. When I look at this sort
of attitude from my own perspective I cannot even begin to comprehend
how anyone could be capable of that level of selfish narrow-mindedness.
But to you and Richard it's clearly not only perfectly acceptable
behaviour, but actually *desirable* behaviour. To me a MUD's primary
reason for existence is to bring pleasure to its players. To you, the
primary reason for its existence is to bring pleasure to *you*. We are
*never* going to see eye to eye on this one, I don't think. Richard's
attitude is basically "I will do what I want on my own MUD, I will have
only creators who agree with me, and I want only players who agree with
me. And if I end up with a MUD that has no players any of the time
because everyone who has ever played it hates it, I don't care at all:
my own vision is what matters." My attitude is that I should use what
technical and artistic talents I possess to create an enjoyable
experience for a large number of people: my own needs and desires are
secondary to that. If I ended up with a MUD no one wanted to play I
would regard that as a personal failiure on my part, no matter how
grand my vision might have been.
Of course you can't hope to appeal to *all* players, nor should you
try, or you end up with an amorphous mess. And of course your initial
guide to what a player would or wouldn't enjoy is going to be what
*you* would enjoy. But to simply dismiss the opinions of *any* player
as being irrelevant when compared to your own grand design - that I am
never going to understand.
Given this vast gulf between us, I'm not sure how much point there is
in continuing this discussion.... Well, let's see....
> >Thus, "realism" is NOT a sufficient justification for ANYTHING.
> >It *may* be that making the MUD behave more like "the real world"
helps
> >to make the playing experience more believable and immersive.
>
> The definition of "realism" which I think is the important one is
> "making the mud world feel real" - not so much making it like real
> life as just making sure that it is itself internally consistent.
> Walking across a city in 2 minutes and then walking across the empire
> to another city also taking 2 minutes is not internally consistent.
See, I don't have any problem with that. To me the experience of
playing any computer game is sufficiently far removed from reality that
I have to make a huge effort to suspend disbelief anyway. If I can do
that to the extent that I can take seriously the notion that I am
actually a sorceror interacting with a landscape inhabited by knights,
priests and the occasional dragon, or if I can accept that actually
dying is merely going to slow me down a little, then accepting the
notion that two seconds in real life corresponds to different amounts
of pretend time is really pretty trivial in comparison. What does
matter is whether I can have a fun experience or not - and if it takes
me four hours of boring, non-interactive travelling time to get to the
place where I can actually do something interactive and fun then,
regardless of whether the time is spent on- or off-line, it's going to
annoy me far more that it immerses me. If you can find a way to make
the journey as enjoyable and interactive as the experience that I'm
going to get at the far end of it, then fine - but that isn't what
we're talking about. To achieve that you'd simply need to vastly
increase the size of the MUD to the point that every point along the
journey was a hand-crafted location. If we assume that for logistical
reasons this just isn't possible, then what is the benefit of making
the player hang around and forcing him to spend the majority of his
time in the boring bits? And if it is possible then this entire thread
just dissappears.
> >If so, it's probably a good feature. But it's a good feature
> >because it makes it more FUN, *not* for any other reason.
>
> Fun for who? Fun for the hack'n'slasher who wants to get to the meaty
> monsters ASAP, or fun for the explorer who wants the challenge of
> finding the ancient ruined city in the forest?
Making someone hang around doing nothing for four hours isn't going to
appeal to either of them, is it?
> >- If I ever do run a MUD I will encourage a highly interventionist
> >policy on the part of immortals - but not as immortals. Instead, they
> >will (for example) issue quests while disguised as NPC's ("I need you
> >to deliver this to so-and-so in the next village"), or organise
> >assaults on the main player base while "possessing" large numbers of
> >some evil, barbaric creature, thus requiring the players to put aside
> >their differences and unite to defend their way of life.
>
> Whilst this may be fun, it puts a very large burden of work on your
> staff to keep on coming up with more things for the players to do. I
> think it would be far better to design the game in such a way that it
> generates things to do itself.
Of course it would: but unless you personally have created a MUD-based
AI that passes the Turing test, it isn't technically feasible. Until
artificial intelligence becomes comparable with human intelligence
there will always be things that a human-controlled NPC will do better
than a computer-controlled one.
> >Anything that
> >favours one player over another won't be a good idea, because it will
> >annoy more players than it appeases.
>
> I defy you to find any change to a mud that doesn't favour one player
> over another. =)
Well, most decisions will favour one group of players over another -
but so long as the ultimate overall effect of many decisions is
approximately balanced, that's not necessarily an issue. And it
certainly isn't an issue if a decision upsets no one. Besides, as I
said, it's all about balance and compromise. If my MUD is working out
in such a way that only people who play warriors are actually capable
of advancing, then something needs to be done about that: spell-casting
classes could be buttressed a bit, for example. That favours people who
play spell-casters - but will the warriors have a problem? No reason
why they should. If, instead, in the interests of balanceI decided to
make warriors less powerful then that would be a less popular decision.
It could be justified under circumstances, but it's more likely that
empowering the other classes would be the better solution. If playing a
mage was already far harder than playing a warrior and I then started
systematically eliminating the few remaining advancement strategies for
mages, this would be dead wrong.
> >If, to reach a given location, you require to spend 4 real-life hours
> >of non-interactive travelling, where's the distinction? That's the
sort
> >of timescale people on this thread seem to be talking about. Why
would
> >I want to sit staring at the screen doing nothing for four hours?
> >Where's the fun in that?
>
> What makes you think it would be non-interactive? You might meet
> someone interesting or see something you want to investigate - in that
> kind of timescale, many interactive events can occur. Richard's point
> was more that if you don't want to sit there and wait, you can log off
> and do something else, coming back when your character has arrived.
> (And getting feedback of those interesting events you might want to go
> back and investigate...)
Yeah, but wouldn't it be better not to force the player into a position
where the next four hours is going to be so boring that he might as
well log off in the first place? I'm sorry, but I just don't get it:
either the experience of travelling is as rich and enjoyable as
exploring the eventual destination, or it isn't. If it isn't, why force
the player to put up with it for hours instead of letting him do
something more interesting? And if it is, then what the hell are we
discussing? Why would logging off be an issue?
> >The problem with (1) is, what if something happens to your character
> >that you didn't anticipate? How would you feel if you logged on and
> >found that, while following your instructions, your character had
died?
> >Would that be fun and make you think "what a cool MUD this is!"?
> >Hardly. You'd be furious.
>
> You logged out of a persistant world based game, leaving your
> character wandering across the desert and you're furious because he
> died of thirst whilst you were offline? You were playing the wrong
> game. =)
No, the game designer created the game wrong.
> >(2) is even worse. Either it requires the player to remain on-line
(but
> >not actually playing) so that they can react immediately to being
> >emailed (in which case they might just as well be staring at a non-
> >interactive MUD screen for the same length of time) or alternatively
> >the action has to be frozen at the point that something interesting
> >happens until after the player has received the email and logged back
> >on again. But that could potentially take days. How do you handle the
> >action surrounding the frozen character in the mean time?
>
> The idea is that the action doesn't get frozen, it just carries on
> whether you are connected or not. If you don't want dangerous things
> to happen to your character whilst you are offline, don't leave your
> character in a potentially dangerous place when you log off.
> Alternatively, perhaps you prefer to take some risks in return for
> potential gains, such as, say, not having to sit there and watch for 4
> hours of travelling. =)
Yes, but WHY?! Why should the player be forced into making that kind of
compromise instead of being able to play an enjoyable section of the
game instead? Besides, *any* location can be dangerous if an assassin
is after you.
> >Why not have a fourth option: simply don't make the journey take 5
> >hours in the first place. Let me put it this way: if, as a player,
you
> >had a choice between spending 5 hours of non-interactive time and
> >spending 5 hours actually playing the MUD, which would you prefer? If
> >the player doesn't want to play the MUD for a bit, fine, but that
> >should be his decision: you shouldn't force it on him.
>
> Perhaps I'd prefer to spend 5 hours of playing time sailing to an
> interesting island reputedly full of strange and exotic wonders than
> to spend another 5 hours slaughtering wuzzies in the forest near the
> city.
Perhaps, but the point remains that you shouldn't be forced into making
that decision. Suppose you had a third choice of getting straight to
the interesting island *without* having to wait 5 hours, wouldn't you
choose that? Why shouldn't you be given that option?
> To put that another way, if the player doesn't want to spend 5 hours
> of playing time travelling then they can either not travel, or find a
> faster method of travelling.
Well, if there is a faster method of travelling that is universally
available, fine. But then (again) this thread becomes irrelevant,
because everyone would simply take it. And if the method of travel
isn't universally available, then, yet again, why should the player be
forced to be bored for five hours?
> >I'm not totally sure about that.... Again, it may be more realistic,
> >but is it more fun? The main reason for suggesting my "small-lag"
> >system is not to enhance realism, it's to reward strategy: to make it
> >possible to hunt down a man on foot if you have the foresight to
obtain
> >a fast horse. Assuming you have some form of movement point system
that
> >requires you to stop and rest when exhausted, simply deducting more
> >points for climbing mountains than for following a road will likely
> >suffice. (Of course horses can't climb cliff faces, so again, this
> >rewards strategy - a player on foot being pursued by horsemen might
be
> >able to escape if he can reach a steep, high cliff before they catch
> >him, and if he has climbing skills. But if the horsemen know what
> >they're doing, they can take the long way round and reach the top
> >before he does).
>
> Yet to make those strategies possible, you're enhancing realism and
> making the world feel like a more real place. The more of this kind of
> realism you have, the more such tactics and strategies become
> possible.
Not necessarily. For example, far more strategy is possible in a turn-
based combat system than one that functions in real time. (I'm not
necessarily advocating that, of course). Besides, as I've said before,
realism is fine so long as it does actually improve immersiveness. The
two things aren't the same: realism is a more objective measure,
immersiveness is entirely subjective. To me, making me sit around for
five hours not doing a hell of a lot makes the game far *less*
immersive.
> >But in any case, you can easily achieve the same
> >effect by balancing the number of "rooms" a player has to go through
in
> >order to get to a particular point, using randomly generated terrain
to
> >fill in the gaps as necessary.
>
> I'm not sure this is a disagreement with the proposal of realistic
> travel times - by putting in more rooms, you make the travel time
> longer so that time taken is proportional to the distance travelled.
That depends on how interesting the rooms are.
> >It seems to me to be inifinitely much
> >better to make a person cross ten locations at 2 seconds per location
> >than it does to introduce a 20-second lag moving across a single
> >location.
>
> I don't think anyone has suggested the latter.
I'm fairly sure they have.
[cut]
> This is a logical design decision. Intelligent behaviour controlling
> how a player moves belongs in the player object, not in an external
> map object.
Yes, of course, but this is just splitting hairs. What matters is the
capability of storing routes which can be followed - or preferably
calculating routes based on locations that have been visited. It
doesn't matter *where* this is implemented.
[cut]
> >> I disagree. The ability to get lost is a risk the player
> >> must take. Its a realistic concern and by leaving it out, you
> >> are leaving a hole which takes away from the believability
> >> and immersibility.
> >I'm undecided on this point. On the one hand it could reward
strategy,
> >but on the other it is going to piss a lot of people off.
>
> It'll piss off the players who want to get from A to B because they've
> heard about cool things to kill at B. Shame. =)
As far as I'm concerned, that is indeed a shame.
> On the other hand,
> perhaps explorers will have a lot more fun setting up their
> expeditions with precautions and skills needed to avoid getting lost
> and if they do, they'll enjoy the challenge of finding their way out
> again.
*nod*
But this is not something I would expect a MUD newbie to be able to
take on. I'd expect someone to be of at least mid-level before mounting
a major expedition into the wilderness like this. And it has to be
circumventable: few MUD features piss me off more than Diku-
style "random exits".
> There is a good reason the original adventure had "a maze of twisty
> turny passages, all alike."
Well, to some extent that's a logic puzzle. You needed to work out the
drop-and-map method for finding your way around, and then take the time
to map the area. That's not the same thing as the game forcing you to
end up somewhere other than where you thought you were going to be in a
way that is inherently unpredictable and uncontrollable.
> >It would
> >also, of course, create major problems with any mapping algorithm you
> >were using.
>
> Only if your algorithm was designed in isolation and didn't take the
> rest of the game into account.
How could you create an algorithm to memorise a route if the game
introduces uncontrollable deviations form the route you think you're
taking? Or would you actually want players to end up with an invalid
map?
> >> > 8) Vehicles (wagons, ships) could be made to work like a player
> >> Agreed. And using my active character while logged off
> >> model, players should be able to log in and possess their
> >> character wherever they are in
> >> their journey.
> >Yes, but it would be more fun if there were actually things going on
on-
> >board that required the character's attention - gambling below decks,
> >battles with giant squids, passing rafts full of castaways,
pirates....
> >I think your logged-off model is just a sign that you are too lazy to
> >think of ways of filling out the time with something interesting.
>
> Without the character continuing with the player logged off, how could
> you handle this in any kind of sensible fashion?
>
> If the player logs off, does the ship continue off without him? If it
> does, what happens when he logs back in - he's swimming in the ocean?
> Or should the entire ship freeze where it is until he comes back? If
> so, what if there was another player on board too? Does that player
> get frozen and booted off? Or does that player continue with the ship
> and when the first player logs back in he gets a magical second copy
> of the ship, complete with all the treasure it was carrying in the
> cargo hold?
>
> All of these things are nasty 'reality-slips' that serve as a constant
> jolt to knock players from IC to OOC.
Don't think we need any of those. How in general terms do you handle
players logging off the MUD? I've no problem with the basic quit/rent
system, i.e. you can either quit, in which case you vanish in a puff of
smoke and lose all your gear, and come back to the MUD in the same
location the next time you log on, or you have to find a pre-defined
safe haven in which case you can store all your gear, and (again)
reappear in the same place the next time you log on. In this case
the "location" would be the ship, not a point in the ocean. The
simplest solution would be to allow the ship (or a location within it)
to be an inn-like safe haven where the player can rent. But even if he
has to quit he would still reappear again on the ship the next time he
logs in. It's entirely possible that the ship would have moved in the
intervening time. If, in the mean time, another player has robbed the
cargo hold, it will stay robbed. This does, of course, create problems
in extreme cases, e.g. if the ship actually sinks in the intervening
time. But in a case like that an unrealistic solution (player is
returned to his home port safe and sound) is preferable to a realistic
but annoying one (player logs on to be told that he has drowned because
the ship was attacked by pirates and scuttled while he was logged out
and unable to fight to protect it).
KaVir
Nick Bryant <nicolas...@mswtech.com> wrote:
>
>
> > >Playability is easy to define, although trickier to measure: it's
> > >the extent to which the people who play the MUD enjoy playing it.
> > >If a feature contributes towards increasing the general pleasure
> > >of the playing experience, it's a good feature. If not, it's a bad
> > >one. End of story.
> >
> > The problem with this is that it is self-defeating - different
> > players enjoy playing in different ways. A feature that player A
> > enjoys a lot may really irritate player B - so has your playability
> > gone up or down? Is it a good feature or a bad one?
>
> That's not self-defeating at all. Most decisions in life are about
> balance and compromise. And a high level of player enjoyment remains
> the goal, regardless of any hiccoughs that may occur on the way to
> achieving it.
Hmmm no, my goal is MY enjoyment. Sound selfish? Certainly is! But
at the end of the day, I'm the one doing all the work, so I figure I
deserve it. I'm creating my mud the way I want it - if other people
like that then great, they're welcome to play too. If not, then
there's plenty of other muds out there for them to try. As I've always
said: You can't please everyone, so please the one that counts - please
yourself.
> Besides, merely because there is a grey area that doesn't
> mean everything has to fall within it. If a decision upsets 10% of
> your player base and pleases no one then it's probably wrong.
So when I removed the buggy overpowered item from my mud back in 1996
and pissed off most of the players, it was a wrong decision?
> If a decision makes 99.7% of MUD players less likely to want to play
> your MUD, then it's very wrong.
So if your scratch-written mud goes commercial, that's very wrong?
> Or at least that's what I think. You clearly don't.
Nor do I.
> > Richard is trying to design and build the sort of mud that he will
> > enjoy playing - just as I am building the mud that I want to play. I
> > think he'd agree with me when I say that I don't particularly care
> > whether you enjoy playing it - I'm sure there are enough people who
> > share my own tastes, and if not - well I'll have a whole world to
> > myself. =)
>
> Yes, and therein lies the fundamental problem. When I look at this
> sort of attitude from my own perspective I cannot even begin to
> comprehend how anyone could be capable of that level of selfish
> narrow-mindedness.
Okay, let me try and explain.
I am a professional software engineer. I earn real money for working
on real projects. I also have a hobby - writing my mud - and I do it
for free. I've created a vision for my mud and have stuck to that
vision, regardless of whether other people like it or not. The vast
majority of the work was done by myself, the rest done by other people
who share my vision.
If I start coding things I don't like, to cater to the masses, I will
no longer enjoy my coding. If I no longer enjoy it, it becomes a
chore - and if I'm not being paid for it, why should I even bother?
I've tried catering to the players in the past and it didn't work. By
pleasing some people, I'd piss off others - and the resulting mud had
such a mix-matched theme that I lost interest in it completely.
Now don't get me wrong, I welcome suggestions from the players, and
often put them into code - but ONLY when they coincide with MY vision
of the mud.
> But to you and Richard it's clearly not only perfectly acceptable
> behaviour, but actually *desirable* behaviour. To me a MUD's primary
> reason for existence is to bring pleasure to its players. To you, the
> primary reason for its existence is to bring pleasure to *you*. We are
> *never* going to see eye to eye on this one, I don't think. Richard's
> attitude is basically "I will do what I want on my own MUD, I will
> have only creators who agree with me, and I want only players who
> agree with me. And if I end up with a MUD that has no players any of
> the time because everyone who has ever played it hates it, I don't
> care at all:
Very reasonable, in my opinion, and better than an ego-feeder mud (more
players=better, sacrifice quality for quantity). He wants to build a
specialist restaurant rather than another McDonalds. With thousands of
muds out there, I wish more people followed the same approach.
> my own vision is what matters." My attitude is that I should use what
> technical and artistic talents I possess to create an enjoyable
> experience for a large number of people: my own needs and desires are
> secondary to that. If I ended up with a MUD no one wanted to play I
> would regard that as a personal failiure on my part, no matter how
> grand my vision might have been.
But it's not YOUR vision if you're catering to the players.
> Of course you can't hope to appeal to *all* players, nor should you
> try, or you end up with an amorphous mess. And of course your initial
> guide to what a player would or wouldn't enjoy is going to be what
> *you* would enjoy. But to simply dismiss the opinions of *any* player
> as being irrelevant when compared to your own grand design - that I am
> never going to understand.
I never dismiss ideas. I consider them, and either accept or reject
them depending on whether they fit in with my vision of the mud. I
will ONLY add them if *I* feel they would improve the overall game.
[snip]
> > The definition of "realism" which I think is the important one is
> > "making the mud world feel real" - not so much making it like real
> > life as just making sure that it is itself internally consistent.
> > Walking across a city in 2 minutes and then walking across the
> > empire to another city also taking 2 minutes is not internally
> > consistent.
>
> See, I don't have any problem with that. To me the experience of
> playing any computer game is sufficiently far removed from reality
> that I have to make a huge effort to suspend disbelief anyway. If I
> can do that to the extent that I can take seriously the notion that I
> am actually a sorceror interacting with a landscape inhabited by
> knights, priests and the occasional dragon, or if I can accept that
> actually dying is merely going to slow me down a little, then
> accepting the notion that two seconds in real life corresponds to
> different amounts of pretend time is really pretty trivial in
> comparison.
It is not about reality ("dragons don't exist, so who cares if my mud
has marshmellow swords and smurf assassins?") it's about consistancy
within the laws of reality of the given theme.
It is acceptable to see a dragon within a fantasy world, because within
the laws of that reality such beasts exist. It is also acceptable to
see people using magic, or even recovering from death (although not in
the way portrayed by most muds).
However when you have people who are able to walk hundreds of miles in
a matter of minutes without any supernatural powers, it is generally
NOT consistant within the reality of that theme.
Now obviously there is a matter of how far you want to take realism
within the mud - but that is purely a matter of personal preferance and
something that everyone seems to have a different opinion about.
> What does matter is whether I can have a fun experience or not - and
> if it takes me four hours of boring, non-interactive travelling time
> to get to the place where I can actually do something interactive and
> fun then, regardless of whether the time is spent on- or off-line,
> it's going to annoy me far more that it immerses me.
Personally it annoys me when people run from one side of the game world
to the other in mere minutes. In the above scenario, simply wait until
you want to go offline anyway, and set your character walking - then
when you come back, you'll be at your destination. If you want to
travel faster, go find a wizard to teleport you.
> If you can find a way to make the journey as enjoyable and
> interactive as the experience that I'm going to get at the far end of
> it, then fine - but that isn't what we're talking about. To achieve
> that you'd simply need to vastly increase the size of the MUD to the
> point that every point along the journey was a hand-crafted location.
> If we assume that for logistical reasons this just isn't possible,
It IS possible in the case of a dynamically generated world - however,
I don't think that was the purpose of this suggestion.
> then what is the benefit of making the player hang around and forcing
> him to spend the majority of his time in the boring bits?
Perhaps some sort of trading system is in place, with several cities
which players can trade goods between. Allowing players to travel back
and forth every few minutes would completely disrupt the balance - thus
a limit needs to be put in place. Now I can see two obvious ways to do
this:
1) Give players a "day's travel" point every hour. If a player wishes
to travel to another city and they have enough travel points, they go
there - and their travel points are reset to 0.
2) Use the approach previously mentioned, where it takes real time to
travel but the player doesn't need to be logged on.
Now the first approach would mean players wouldn't have to log off,
while still preventing them from hopping around too much - but
unfortunately you'd have people being able to travel instantly to a
location - and you couldn't have people meeting up on the road, or
catching up with someone who left an hour earlier. I'd say that either
of the above would be fine depending on your game - I'd favour the
former in the case of my mud (because it's designed to be part
simulation, part game).
> > >If so, it's probably a good feature. But it's a good feature
> > >because it makes it more FUN, *not* for any other reason.
> >
> > Fun for who? Fun for the hack'n'slasher who wants to get to the
> > meaty monsters ASAP, or fun for the explorer who wants the
> > challenge of finding the ancient ruined city in the forest?
>
> Making someone hang around doing nothing for four hours isn't going to
> appeal to either of them, is it?
That's the whole point - you DON'T have to hang around. You can wait
until you've finished mudding for the day, then set your character
walking to the next destination.
> > >- If I ever do run a MUD I will encourage a highly interventionist
> > >policy on the part of immortals - but not as immortals. Instead,
> > >they will (for example) issue quests while disguised as NPC's ("I
> > >need you to deliver this to so-and-so in the next village"), or
> > >organise assaults on the main player base while "possessing" large
> > >numbers of some evil, barbaric creature, thus requiring the
> > >players to put aside their differences and unite to defend their
> > >way of life.
> >
> > Whilst this may be fun, it puts a very large burden of work on your
> > staff to keep on coming up with more things for the players to do. I
> > think it would be far better to design the game in such a way that
> > it generates things to do itself.
>
> Of course it would: but unless you personally have created a MUD-based
> AI that passes the Turing test, it isn't technically feasible.
The mud has to run simple quests, not hold convincing five-minute
conversations. I already know of at least one person who's implemented
what has been described, and I've put together rough designs for doing
it myself.
> Until artificial intelligence becomes comparable with human
> intelligence there will always be things that a human-controlled NPC
> will do better than a computer-controlled one.
And until you have an unlimited number of staff who can work 24/7 in a
fair and consistant manner, there will always be advantages of having
computer-controlled NPCs.
[snip]
> > >The problem with (1) is, what if something happens to your
> > >character that you didn't anticipate? How would you feel if you
> > >logged on and found that, while following your instructions, your
> > >character had died?
> > >Would that be fun and make you think "what a cool MUD this is!"?
> > >Hardly. You'd be furious.
> >
> > You logged out of a persistant world based game, leaving your
> > character wandering across the desert and you're furious because he
> > died of thirst whilst you were offline? You were playing the wrong
> > game. =)
>
> No, the game designer created the game wrong.
If the player wants to travel through the desert and his/her character
doesn't have sufficient water or enough skills to survive, then I think
they SHOULD get a warning first. Perhaps a "common sense" attribute
might come in handy here...
> > >> > 8) Vehicles (wagons, ships) could be made to work like a player
> > >> Agreed. And using my active character while logged off
> > >> model, players should be able to log in and possess their
> > >> character wherever they are in
> > >> their journey.
> > >Yes, but it would be more fun if there were actually things going
> > >on on-board that required the character's attention - gambling
> > >below decks, battles with giant squids, passing rafts full of
> > >castaways, pirates....
> > >I think your logged-off model is just a sign that you are too lazy
> > >to think of ways of filling out the time with something
> > >interesting.
> >
> > Without the character continuing with the player logged off, how
> > could you handle this in any kind of sensible fashion?
> >
> > If the player logs off, does the ship continue off without him? If
> > it does, what happens when he logs back in - he's swimming in the
> > ocean? Or should the entire ship freeze where it is until he comes
> > back? If so, what if there was another player on board too? Does
> > that player get frozen and booted off? Or does that player continue
> > with the ship and when the first player logs back in he gets a
> > magical second copy of the ship, complete with all the treasure it
> > was carrying in the cargo hold?
> >
> > All of these things are nasty 'reality-slips' that serve as a
> > constant jolt to knock players from IC to OOC.
>
> Don't think we need any of those. How in general terms do you handle
> players logging off the MUD? I've no problem with the basic quit/rent
> system, i.e. you can either quit, in which case you vanish in a puff
> of smoke and lose all your gear, and come back to the MUD in the same
> location the next time you log on, or you have to find a pre-defined
> safe haven in which case you can store all your gear, and (again)
> reappear in the same place the next time you log on.
What is your IC explanation for players stripping naked and dropping
all their valuable belongings on the floor before vanishing from
existance in a puff of smoke?
> In this case the "location" would be the ship, not a point in the
> ocean. The simplest solution would be to allow the ship (or a
> location within it) to be an inn-like safe haven where the player can
> rent.
Please, don't use the four-letter "r" word in public. I do agree that
the best way would be to have the ship as a separate location though.
> But even if he has to quit he would still reappear again on the
> ship the next time he logs in. It's entirely possible that the ship
> would have moved in the intervening time. If, in the mean time,
> another player has robbed the cargo hold, it will stay robbed. This
> does, of course, create problems in extreme cases, e.g. if the ship
> actually sinks in the intervening time. But in a case like that an
> unrealistic solution (player is returned to his home port safe and
> sound) is preferable to a realistic but annoying one (player logs on
> to be told that he has drowned because the ship was attacked by
> pirates and scuttled while he was logged out and unable to fight to
> protect it).
Try and keep it SOMEWHAT realistic though - have the player's log show
that he leapt overboard, and got washed ashore clutching to be a piece
of driftwood. I'd probably only drown the character if s/he didn't
have any swimming ability - but even survivors would probably lose a
few items, and anything metal might well rust...
KaVir.
rr...@lanminds.com
What to do with off-line characters is a problem, because IRL there is
someone to make decisions about what the character does. No computer
can make the same kind of complex choices. So, when a player goes off
for a week, technically the character that he is playing doesn't, and
thus should be able to react to situations in some sort of realistic
way. Which he can't without an intelligence behind him. So it's
really a very catch-22 thing.
Having safe zones is a good thing, but you are still going to
frustrate your players if those zones are 8 hours real-time travel
apart. It seems to me that a system like the one being proposed is
going to appeal to mud addicts, but not so much to anyone else. And I
am not even sure about the mud addicts, since they may not enjoy
spending large amounts of time just watching the scenery go by. There
is a reason that cut-aways are used in books and movies... as much as
I love scenery, can you imagine watching a movie about Columbus where
it took a month real-time to get across the ocean?
Also, if you are going for realism, keep in mind that in the times in
which most muds are set, most people never went more than 20 miles or
so from home. And that's because that took a couple of days to do!
So, how realistic do you want to make it? Someone on foot is highly
unlikely to set out for another town 100 miles away. On the other
hand, how much exciting stuff can you cram into a small area?
Kira Skydancer
Myles L Skinner
>
> If you are going to be away on a week long vacation, the risks you get
> your character to take are your own fault.
Hmmm...well, all I can really say here is that leading a *very* full life
offline (as I try to do!) I wouldn't be as likely to play a game that required
such a time commitment. This is just my personal preference; I'm well aware
that there are people who live online. ;)
> There are safe things characters will be able to do in my world, certain
> cities will prohibit weapons in the cities, a character could take a job
> in a mine...
Oooh! Now *there's* a safe activity. :P
ms
--
Covenant MUD: "Under Development for Fewer than One Hundred Years!"
Jp Calderone
> >> > My biggest problem with such an approach is how to deal with PK -
> >> > particularly if you're using the more realistic approach of
> >> > permanent death. It's bad enough being killed by another player at
> >> > the best of times, but imagine how you'd feel if you logged on
> >> > after a week-long vacation and it said "Sorry, your character got
> >> > in a drunken brawl while you were away and someone stabbed him. He
> >> > was in intensive care
> >>
> >
> >If there are "safe zones" then fair enough. I've been playing around
> >with a similar idea for a while now (players are always online) but
> >dislike the idea of a "safe" option - thus the major concern I've
> >always had was players being killed while not in control. Making a
> >player look like an NPC won't help much, as players are even MORE
> >likely to kill NPCs than other players.
> >
> What to do with off-line characters is a problem, because IRL there is
> someone to make decisions about what the character does. No computer
> can make the same kind of complex choices. So, when a player goes off
> for a week, technically the character that he is playing doesn't, and
> thus should be able to react to situations in some sort of realistic
> way. Which he can't without an intelligence behind him. So it's
> really a very catch-22 thing.
Well... It really depends on the player, doesn't it? Given an hour or
so I could write up a MOB AI that, aside from speech (Eliza, anyone?) was
more or less indistinguisable from half the players I know. It might even
be better, because it would never get that "just one more round" feeling
in combat, you know, the one that always gets you killed.
Or, I've just realized, the "AI" talker Jane could probably be set up to
interact conversationally fairly well. Jane's main strength, imho, is the
easy with which one can give her a knowledge base. Plug in sufficient
details about the MUD, your character, and your aquantances, turn on a
logger and take off for a week. Maybe you wouldn't get the highest quality
RP out of it, but you'd be at least marginally active instead of completely
invisible. Whether or not the game admin is willing to give you the CPU
time to run such a bot is more in question though.
Going back to the barfight above, I think that situation is more
indicative of the real problem behind "non-player player actions"
(for lack of a better term). Who says I'm the kind of guy who'd get
in a barfight? Who says I'm even the kind of guy who would be in a
bar? To keep things reasonable one would have to build a kind of profile
for each character, a task that I think is prohibitive to the entire
concept.
>
> [snip distance safe zones]
>
> Also, if you are going for realism, keep in mind that in the times in
> which most muds are set, most people never went more than 20 miles or
> so from home. And that's because that took a couple of days to do!
> So, how realistic do you want to make it? Someone on foot is highly
> unlikely to set out for another town 100 miles away. On the other
> hand, how much exciting stuff can you cram into a small area?
For the peons, perhaps. But in most MUDs, everyone is basically a hero,
right? I'm reminded of the trek of Gimli, Legolas, and Aragorn across the
Wold of Rohan (first several chapters of The Two Towers). A distance of
45 leagues (1 league = 3 miles. 45 leagues = 135 miles) in 4 days. On foot.
Granted, they had elf cakes and were pretty damn good heros, but even at
only half their speed one could cover about 17 miles a day. And that's still
on foot. Horses make things even more fun. That is 24 minutes of travel,
given the time ratio though which is sort of excessive, and it comes to more
if you have to wait for movement points to regen, so maybe even a whole day of
travel is too much on a MUD.
I think one /can/ cram a lot of stuff into a relatively small area though.
I like the "blowup" effect - doing things like splitting a single room into
4 corners which are each seperate rooms as far as the MUD knows. Take a
hundred rooms and make a single inn, or the wing of a castle, or something
similar with them, instead of using the same hundred to build a castle, the
surrounding forest, a goblin camp, some mountains, and an inn. Same amount
of work, basically, but signifigantly higher quality, and, for myself at
least,
I'd much rather wander around a big, well written castle than speedwalk
through
10 rooms of forest.
So, for distance travel I see two pretty good alternatives - put your stuff
close together, or let your characters travel pretty quickly. With my MUD
(Star Wars) and others that have a technologically advanced setting, making
stuff go faster is easier (Hyperdrive across the galaxy in 2 RL minutes.
Tee-hee). For fantasy and midieval settings, a combination of pushing stuff
together and, if it fits, magical travel, seems to be the optimal solution.
>
> Kira Skydancer
Jp Calderone
--
12:44pm up 84 days, 21:26, 3 users, load average: 0.00, 0.02, 0.01
Myles L Skinner
>Nick Bryant wrote:
>> Given that you know perfectly well that isn't what I meant, why bring
>> it up? It's easy enough to respond to this, though: would *you* enjoy
>
> Because I am illustrating a point. That what you said was completely
> ambiguous and the meaning would shift depending on the readers
> interpretation.
I think we *cough* need to look up *cough* the meaning of the word ambiguous
*cough* at dictionary.com...
Sorry, sorry.
Anyway, the meaning of ambiguous is not clear.
> Another problem with your comments is that you make limited statements
> based on your mental barriers of what can and can't be work within a mud.
(hmmm...must remember to edit for tone...)
>> As far as your specific suggestions are concerned:
>> - I would have no desire to make a pure stock MUD: there are enough
>> out there already.
>
> Any sort of stock is bad, not just pure.
Okay, now we're drifting off-topic...but at least it's off-topic about MUDs,
which is somewhat novel as far as rgma goes.
I was, at one point not too long ago, working on a code base completely from
scratch--from the socket routines on up. I made some good progress early on,
but it was a time-consuming project. I'm not even entirely sure why I was
doing this; I think I held "100% original" up as an ideal (which is good!)
but then totally misunderstood what that should mean.
In short, I was at that time "reinventing the wheel"...after some serious
thought I arrived at the conclusion that my time would be better served
elsewhere. (Anyway, I'm a musician, not a programmer. I need to be in the
practice studio!) So we have, at the core, a stock codebase. (actually SMAUG
1.4) Mind you, I had to trim out what I thought to be about 2 Megs of totally
useless junk, but I like to trim. :)
So there are stock elements, sure. You can walk into a coffee shop and type
"list" and maybe "buy coffee" and those commands act pretty much they way
they always have in any Diku.
It's the set of innovations that we've made within the form that are
interesting, not the form itself. I see the same argument made when I write
music--that somehow "100% original" means constant novelty. But if I *want*
to sound like Mozart on a bad acid trip, or borrow jazz idioms, or whatever,
why not? If I manage to write a tune that people get annoyed by because they
are humming it for weeks after the concert, have I succeeded as a composer
or sold out?
>>> a) To make the game playable in the sense that the
>>> selection of commands available to the player are not
>>> difficult to use or limited in providing simplified ways
>>> of doing complicated tasks.
>>
>> That is certainly one aspect of playability.
>>
>>> b) To make the game playable in the sense that the game
>>> contains elements that a player would like to interact with.
>>
>> Surely (a) is a subset of (b)? Having the game easy to use is
>> necessary to make it enjoyable.
>
> No. (a) is the OOC aspect. (b) is the IC aspect.
> That you see them as not being mutually exclusive says it all.
Well, the levels get tangled up; OOC and IC aren't always as much divided
as we sometimes like to believe. Here's a paraphrase of something I posted
in a review not too long ago:
% look
>There is a gate to the south.
% open gate
>There is no gate here.
% look gate
>You do not see any gate here.
% look south
>The door is closed.
% open door
>There is no door here.
This is not so easy to untangle. The problem is largely a result of (a), but
there are elements of (b) here as well.
Myles L Skinner
Or, even better, additionally provides a rich enough backdrop against which
players can generate a few of their own things to do--things which are often
surprising and rarely intended.
When I first got the realspace model going for the first time, we were
basically just riding (on horseback) around a test map of mixed terrain.
At one point, feeling inspired (and maybe a bit silly) I "tagged" the other
guy who was logged in and then galloped away. So for what may have been the
first time ever, we played real time tag in a Diku MUD!
Did I write the whole system so we could play tag? No, I wrote it to provide
some means of travelling between remote locations. But it turned out that we
could use what we'd created to play--not in any goal-directed game sense, but
for the sheer fun of it.
It occurs to me that a good MUD is not just a game, but it is also a software
"toy". If you've got elements of both, you've probably got something good.
> You logged out of a persistant world based game, leaving your
> character wandering across the desert and you're furious because he
> died of thirst whilst you were offline? You were playing the wrong
> game. =)
A good point.
Such a game is not to my taste; when I do play (which I rarely do these days)
I like a bit of a diversion for a little while, and then when I log off, I
like to be able to put my toys away until next time. :)
>> While we're on the subject of cities and realism: how many locations
>> does a typical MUD "city" contain? And how does this compare to the
>> size of a real-life city?
>
> Can't speak for other muds, but our main city is f*cking huge. =)
While we're at it, could you define "huge" in this context? :)
I honestly don't remember what MUD you'd be speaking of here.
Discworld MUD's Ankh-Morpork is certainly huge, although I don't know the
exact size.
Our own main city, Tierceron, is 1200 rooms in size--900 of which are finished
and online right now. We consider that huge although it may not be by some
standards.
A typical "huge" MUD city is, of course, rather a disappointment. I remember
seeing a web site describing the stock Diku city of New Thalos as huge when
it can't be more than 100 rooms total.
Myles L Skinner
> of attitude from my own perspective I cannot even begin to comprehend
> how anyone could be capable of that level of selfish narrow-mindedness.
> But to you and Richard it's clearly not only perfectly acceptable
> behaviour, but actually *desirable* behaviour. To me a MUD's primary
> reason for existence is to bring pleasure to its players.
Well, from the player's perspective, this is quite true.
I regard creating a MUD as an artistic endeavour. When I compose music, I
write what I want to hear. Whether or not a listener is going to enjoy the
end result doesn't even enter into the process. Now, I think that I have
enough confidence in my artisic vision, enough technique to pull it off
convincingly, and enough of a sense of humour not to take myself so seriously
that the end result actually *does* appeal to listeners.
Same deal with the MUD. I'm writing the game I want to play. Now I admit that
I do experience the constant tension between "realism" and "playability", but
when I have to pick one way or the other, I tend to pick playability.
Actually, "realism" is a very peculiar term. I think Scatter's got the right
idea by calling it "internal consistency" instead.
In the end, the people who have dropped by and taken me up on my offer of
a tour have pronounced the end result "really cool", which is tremendously
gratifying.
So I'm not altogether convinced that such a stance is "selfish". Well, maybe
it is selfish, but it's not necessarily a Bad Thing in this context. So you
and I probably won't agree here.
And yet:
> Yeah, but wouldn't it be better not to force the player into a position
> where the next four hours is going to be so boring that he might as
> well log off in the first place? I'm sorry, but I just don't get it:
> either the experience of travelling is as rich and enjoyable as
> exploring the eventual destination, or it isn't. If it isn't, why force
> the player to put up with it for hours instead of letting him do
> something more interesting? And if it is, then what the hell are we
> discussing? Why would logging off be an issue?
This is very well said, and I agree with all of it.
But this discussion so far has been pretty abstract; I've never seen Richard's
system in action, so who knows? He may be on to something after all.
Myles L Skinner
>
> If I start coding things I don't like, to cater to the masses, I will
> no longer enjoy my coding. If I no longer enjoy it, it becomes a
> chore - and if I'm not being paid for it, why should I even bother?
More to the point, if you don't enjoy what you're doing, I think it's
probably going to be very much apparent in the end result.
rmt...@my-deja.com
> > you get your character to take are your own fault. There are safe
> > things characters will be able to do in my world, certain cities
will
> > prohibit weapons in the cities, a character could take a job in a
> > system would help prevent enemies from recognising them, and as far
> > as most people would know, their character would seem to be a npc.
>
> with a similar idea for a while now (players are always online) but
> dislike the idea of a "safe" option - thus the major concern I've
As do I.
> always had was players being killed while not in control. Making a
> player look like an NPC won't help much, as players are even MORE
> likely to kill NPCs than other players.
Not in my world. NPC's in populated areas will be protected by law.
Of course, this only any good if there are witnesses. Outside of the
populated areas, of course its a free for all :)
Thinking about this now, maybe I am unrealistic in how I see my
world. It seems to me I have this vision of a world where there is
stuff for everyone to do that doesn't involve killing everything that
moves. But really, who is going to go out of their way to kill
things unless the reward is worth it - will have to wait and see I
guess. And I doubt it takes much work to modify any system into
a kill anything that moves one.
> Even if you limit characters to non-violent activities when not being
> played, you still have the problem of characters being killed by
things
> outside of their control.
Theres nothing I can really add to this, its more an issue to be
addressed when the code support is there. And thats still a long way
off.
I'm not going code in any safety nets though.
Richard.
rmt...@my-deja.com
> Having safe zones is a good thing, but you are still going to
They are tacky. They spoil the consistency of the game, chances are
if you are making a mud as detailed as mine, you'll scorn the thought.
> frustrate your players if those zones are 8 hours real-time travel
> apart. It seems to me that a system like the one being proposed is
> going to appeal to mud addicts, but not so much to anyone else. And I
> am not even sure about the mud addicts, since they may not enjoy
> spending large amounts of time just watching the scenery go by. There
> is a reason that cut-aways are used in books and movies... as much as
Because they're frickin' books and movies, not an interactive forum.
Jesus christ. JRR Tolkien did it my way, haven't you seen the fighting
fantasy version of The Lord of the Rings? You're not the first person
to bring up that bad analogy.
<cut and paste from my MUD-Dev post>
I'll insert an excerpt here from my "Fighting Fantasy" edition of
The Lord of the Rings (note that its from memory and its been a long
time since I have read the book.
Ahem.. please open your copies to page 1369, move 24596:
"Frodo is standing amongst the generous grassy mounds at the edge
of Hobbiton. Sam appears anxious to be on his way. Do you:
- Start walking in 1 metre movements, if so, go to move 24597.
- Go back and buy or steal some horses, if so, go to move
10704693.
- Buy passage on a horse drawn cart and have a comfortable snooze
and a fun time arguing who has the largest feet with Sam on some
cushy hay along the way, if so, go to move 10704694."
While not really 100% in theme or in line with how The Lord of the
Rings goes, it does show that there are alternatives to speed up travel.
</cut and paste>
> I love scenery, can you imagine watching a movie about Columbus where
> it took a month real-time to get across the ocean?
I believe in consistent depth to enhance believability and
immersibility.
What you can take from this is that the one city in my mud will be
extremely detailed. It will sit near a port. Sea travel will be
extremely detailed. They won't have to go far to find interesting
things. But if they are prepared to do so they will find other new
and interesting things. And what the heck has scenery got to do with
anything, the terrain provides resources, animal, vegetable and
mineral.
Read the article in Imaginary Realities, it tries to justify the use
of these features.
> Also, if you are going for realism, keep in mind that in the times in
> which most muds are set, most people never went more than 20 miles or
> so from home. And that's because that took a couple of days to do!
*sigh* Putting realistic features in a mud HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH
REALISM. Just because two words have the same four letter word in them
doesn't mean the usage of one implies the goal of achieving the other.
And who would want to base their mud on plain medieval times, how
incredibly boring and uninteresting would that be.
> till field.
You move the till back and forwards and try to ignore the mind-
numbing pain in your back, that darn priest said the bleedings
would cure it!
> l west
You see your lord's guards standing outside you hovel while hes
giving it to your wife inside.
> l sheep
Well, if you're not getting it from your wife, its the least the
sheep can do. [based on FHM statistics that 30-40% of boys who
grow up on farms have sexual experiences with farm animals :P]
Medieval times are only good for research material to enhance the
feeling
of depth. How were tools made in those times? What sort of tools were
available in those times? How is armour made? With this sort of
information
you can make a believable and interesting profession system to say the
least.
The worst bit is actually doing the research, boring as..
> So, how realistic do you want to make it? Someone on foot is highly
> unlikely to set out for another town 100 miles away. On the other
> hand, how much exciting stuff can you cram into a small area?
Who says a city is a small area? You're thinking in terms of the stuff
thats currently out there. I wish I could get away with just reading
some
of these posts and saying, "Your view is limited. You don't see the big
picture" - because thats exactly the case! But all that proves is that
I can look like a twat by just dismissing people, but from my point of
view, you're making issues out of things that aren't issues.
Let me state for the record:
- There are ways for people who don't want to sit through it all to get
to distant destinations, safe ways if they are willing to pay.
Which makes your problem with it non-existant. I have said this at
least
three times in this thread so far in different ways, yet every nay-sayer
who pops out of the woodwork starts off at ground zero. The "I have to
walk there and sit through it" level. I've addressed this, read the
posts.
rmt...@my-deja.com
frustrating to deal with someone who doesn't see what I see.
Nick Bryant <nicolas...@mswtech.com> wrote:
> Scatter wrote:
> > Richard is trying to design and build the sort of mud that he will
> > enjoy playing - just as I am building the mud that I want to play. I
> > think he'd agree with me when I say that I don't particularly care
> > whether you enjoy playing it - I'm sure there are enough people who
> > share my own tastes, and if not - well I'll have a whole world to
> > myself. =)
>
> Yes, and therein lies the fundamental problem. When I look at this
sort
> of attitude from my own perspective I cannot even begin to comprehend
> how anyone could be capable of that level of selfish narrow-
mindedness.
Well, this is debatable. It could be argued that by expecting every
mud to cater for your interests, you're the one being selfish. Why
should every mud conform to your ideals of fun and playability?
> But to you and Richard it's clearly not only perfectly acceptable
> behaviour, but actually *desirable* behaviour. To me a MUD's primary
> reason for existence is to bring pleasure to its players. To you, the
But a muds never going to bring pleasure to all the players, so why is
it wrong that we aim for the players that have similar interests and
ideas of what constitutes fun?
> primary reason for its existence is to bring pleasure to *you*. We are
> *never* going to see eye to eye on this one, I don't think. Richard's
> attitude is basically "I will do what I want on my own MUD, I will
have
> only creators who agree with me, and I want only players who agree
with
> me. And if I end up with a MUD that has no players any of the time
Up to this point you are correct. But its not that cut and dry.
Keep in mind that my goal is a consistent world. It has a theme and it
has a history.
creators:
Why would I hire a creator that doesn't have the same goals as me?
Would you recommend that a sci-fi mud hire a creator that is only
interested in recreating medieval times exactly?
Can you say it doesn't make sense for me to only hire people that
like the mud and want to create stuff that fits in?
players:
I don't want the ones who decide they want to be known under the
names of popular book characters. I don't want the ones that insist
on interpreting the game to fit their own fantasy ideals, ones that
don't fit within the theme I have defined.
If a player comes to the game with no intention of following the
rules and concepts it was designed around, why should I welcome him?
And I have had creators that vehemently disagreed with me, I refused to
consider what they suggested. And do you know what? When they left,
they didn't do so because I insisted that everything inside the game
fit in, they left for completely different reasons. And they even said
to me before they left that I was the only person they respected because
I was consistent. And thats all I want, consistency.
Richard.
rath...@tierceron.com
> Our own main city, Tierceron, is 1200 rooms in size--900 of which are
finished
> and online right now. We consider that huge although it may not be by
some
> standards.
And might I just add that it was the single hardest building job I've
ever been a part of! Not that it wasn't enjoyable, but coming up with
interesting street descriptions after about the first 200 was rather
difficult. When I stroll through our streets, I think we did a rather
fine job and I've never heard otherwise from any of our visitors. Fact
is, most visitors have only seen about 25% of the city before they
become fasinated with a particular section of the city and sort of make
that there "home".
Chris Smith
--
tierceron.com 1685
www.tierceron.com
"Is this going to be a good day? Is this going to be a good day? Is
this going to be a good day?"
Jon A. Lambert
> On Wed, 11 Oct 2000 10:25:51 GMT, KaVir <ka...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
> >In article <8rvvoc$p48$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
> >> I really disagree with you here. I don't see this as a problem at
> >> all. If you are going to be away on a week long vacation, the risks
> >> you get your character to take are your own fault. There are safe
> >> things characters will be able to do in my world, certain cities will
> >> prohibit weapons in the cities, a character could take a job in a
> >> mine or something where they are out of the way. A recognition
> >> system would help prevent enemies from recognising them, and as far
> >> as most people would know, their character would seem to be a npc.
> >
> >If there are "safe zones" then fair enough. I've been playing around
> >with a similar idea for a while now (players are always online) but
> >dislike the idea of a "safe" option - thus the major concern I've
> >player look like an NPC won't help much, as players are even MORE
> >likely to kill NPCs than other players.
> >
> someone to make decisions about what the character does. No computer
> can make the same kind of complex choices. So, when a player goes off
> for a week, technically the character that he is playing doesn't, and
> thus should be able to react to situations in some sort of realistic
> way. Which he can't without an intelligence behind him. So it's
> really a very catch-22 thing.
>
> apart. It seems to me that a system like the one being proposed is
> going to appeal to mud addicts, but not so much to anyone else. And I
> am not even sure about the mud addicts, since they may not enjoy
> spending large amounts of time just watching the scenery go by. There
> is a reason that cut-aways are used in books and movies... as much as
> it took a month real-time to get across the ocean?
>
If a player has other characters to run then that would mitigate
the problem of travel times. Allow the player to enjoy the mud
while his other characters are "unavailable". Otherwise they'll
get bored, log into another better mud (mine?), and that will be
the last you'll see of them. ;-)
Of course in a world where all characters are persistent, players
with multiple characters would always be mulitplaying. I've always
been in favor of allowing mutliplaying myself. But to some,
multiplaying constitutes "cheating" and cannot be tolerated. I
guess it depends on your game type.
> Also, if you are going for realism, keep in mind that in the times in
> which most muds are set, most people never went more than 20 miles or
> so from home. And that's because that took a couple of days to do!
> So, how realistic do you want to make it? Someone on foot is highly
> unlikely to set out for another town 100 miles away. On the other
> hand, how much exciting stuff can you cram into a small area?
There are two schools to the "realism" issue. One school believes in
mechanical consistency. Specifically operations performed on the world
should result in "expected" behavior. Expected behavior is entirely
dependent upon theme and its consistent application.
The other school on "realism" believes in player consistency. They
maintain that completely convincing utterly immersive "reality" can
only be achieved by 2 or more persons in a single room with nothing
but an full featured communication system between them. The
mechanical realist's clever constructs are just clumsy props.
I agree with the latter in theory and principle. However for many
people it does not constitute "fun".
Now in reading the discussion on portals. It was interesting to note
that there was some nodding of heads all around that portals should be
expensive in terms of energy and cost, rare and high level in a fantasy
environment. I'd maintain that concept is as "unoriginal" as "elves".
What's more important about the notion of "portals" and "teleport" is
that they undermine and render meaningless a long travel time system.
It's not surprising that supporters of such a system must minimize such
magical constructs and mechanisms in order to maintain their own
particular fantasy reality. :-)
--
--* Jon A. Lambert - TychoMUD Email:jlsy...@NOSPAM.ix.netcom.com *--
--* Mud Server Developer's Page <http://tychomud.home.netcom.com> *--
--* If I had known it was harmless, I would have killed it myself.*--
rmt...@my-deja.com
> Now in reading the discussion on portals. It was interesting to note
> that there was some nodding of heads all around that portals should be
> expensive in terms of energy and cost, rare and high level in a
fantasy
> environment. I'd maintain that concept is as "unoriginal" as "elves".
Maybe so, but unoriginality is probably all they have in common. Costly
portals are a solution. Elves don't solve anything except perhaps to
stop
people pretending to be elves because elves aren't otherwise in your
theme.
> What's more important about the notion of "portals" and "teleport" is
> that they undermine and render meaningless a long travel time system.
> It's not surprising that supporters of such a system must minimize
such
> magical constructs and mechanisms in order to maintain their own
> particular fantasy reality. :-)
I'd like to say here that in my particular fantasy reality, the fact
that
I agree that insta-travel portals undermine realistic travel is only a
secondary reason why I don't believe in them. A realistic magic system
to me is one thats arcane, its not on common display and its certainly
not in common use. A core part of my design in this area is to make
your
magic valuable, so that you don't share your spells with others. Along
the same line as unique unrepeatable quests. I have ideals for the
design
of all parts of my mud and I have yet to knowingly dumb one down just to
justify another part.
Richard.
rmt...@my-deja.com
> I feel compelled to point out at this point that Sorrows mudlibs are
> the second most popular on the intermud-3 network. =) (Lima coming
> first and Discworld third.)
And I feel compelled to point out that this means nothing. We have
been distributing our limited old mudlib from way back when we were
constricted in vision to what it limited us to. And we stopped
distributing it actively way back also, one of the muds that uses it
took over the distribution.
I'd also like to note that I have yet to see a mud open using it.
At least not one that stuck around for a while. Most have been fly
by night ego jobs I suspect.
And this would be a good point to suggest that the MAB should
proactively shut down bad muds :)
Jon A. Lambert
> "Jon A. Lambert" wrote:
> > Now in reading the discussion on portals. It was interesting to note
> > that there was some nodding of heads all around that portals should be
> > expensive in terms of energy and cost, rare and high level in a
> fantasy
> > environment. I'd maintain that concept is as "unoriginal" as "elves".
>
> Maybe so, but unoriginality is probably all they have in common. Costly
> portals are a solution.
To what problem though? What you seem to be suggesting is that it is
a problem that players can reach their destinations without extensively
long travel times. Of course half of the muds I play on have nicely
solved the travel time problem. To cross a desert it takes weeks of
real time and that time passes on the mud in but a few minutes.
The gladiator fight in the arena which takes 1-2 minutes in real time
in the mud takes maybe 10 to 20 minutes. Yes Kira is right. Many
muds take the exact same liberties that movies and books do, and cut
away from scenes, make some scenes longer, and leap forward in time
all just to provide the player with a realistic, immersive, and
compellingly interesting detailed experience. And its very playable.
Acutally I was more interested in your comments on the possible
problems and solutions regarding the earlier points I made about
character persistency and multiplaying.
Elves don't solve anything except perhaps to
> stop
> people pretending to be elves because elves aren't otherwise in your
> theme.
Elves are solutions to problems involving story and theme.
Like Nick Bryant mentioned, familiarity adds to immersion and suspension
of belief. I think he made some excellent points with his
"habityglabityglibbets". Tolkein did not invent elves and dwarves,
he simply rediscovered them and represented them in a new and original
light. That slight familiarity the reader already had with elves
and dwarves allowed his work to be much more immersive and believable.
And I might add so compellingly interesting that dozens, maybe hundreds
of authors have followed, borrowed and built on that new found
familiarity. Thus Tolkein is know part of the body of myth, legend,
and memory that players bring to your game. That is not to say that
elves are a solution to all problems of theme.
Elves are symbolic shorthand. For what...is a much longer post.
> A realistic magic system
> to me is one thats arcane, its not on common display and its certainly
> not in common use. A core part of my design in this area is to make
> your
> magic valuable, so that you don't share your spells with others.
I would note that magic being arcane and rare is certainly a staple
of fantasy literature. No disagreement. I would also note that in
terms of muds this is also reinforced and implemented. How!? ;-)
You see in fanstasy literature while magic is often rare and arcane,
in spite of that fact, the leading characters contact with it is
most often the centerpiece of the story. Stock Diku excellently
captures the same sense, feel and attention to magic as the heros
of the fantasy story. So while the reader of fantasy is just looking
over the shoulder of the hero, in Diku they ARE the hero and their
frequent interaction with magic is similar. No wonder it's widely
popular. It's because its a damn good game design.
Now if magic is arcane and rare in your fantasy enviroment, what
sort of character would one play? Do you put a limit on the
number of magic using characters then or require special request
to play one? Because I have seen this done with some success.
> Along
> the same line as unique unrepeatable quests.
Don't most muds have unique unrepeatble queests. I quest all the
time and I also love playing on questy muds. Is code really necessary
at all or even worth doing for this?
>I have ideals for the
> design
> of all parts of my mud and I have yet to knowingly dumb one down just to
> justify another part.
You must mean compromise, because I can't quite figure out what do
you mean by "dumb down". Are you talking about an interface or
something like that?
Scatter
L Skinner) wrote:
>In article <39e42a9d.3189928@localhost>, Scatter <sca...@thevortex.com> wrote:
>> I think it would be far better to design the game in such a way that
>> it generates things to do itself.
>Or, even better, additionally provides a rich enough backdrop against which
>players can generate a few of their own things to do--things which are often
>surprising and rarely intended.
Yes, even better. This is a great advantage of adding depth to the
game.
>When I first got the realspace model going for the first time, we were
>basically just riding (on horseback) around a test map of mixed terrain.
>At one point, feeling inspired (and maybe a bit silly) I "tagged" the other
>guy who was logged in and then galloped away. So for what may have been the
>first time ever, we played real time tag in a Diku MUD!
That does sound really cool. This kind of thing almost makes me regret
sticking to a more traditional discrete-rooms model.
>Did I write the whole system so we could play tag? No, I wrote it to provide
>some means of travelling between remote locations. But it turned out that we
>could use what we'd created to play--not in any goal-directed game sense, but
>for the sheer fun of it.
Can you describe a little of how it works? Is it in combination with a
'rooms' model of some kind? How do you define and describe areas, etc?
>>> While we're on the subject of cities and realism: how many locations
>>> does a typical MUD "city" contain? And how does this compare to the
>>> size of a real-life city?
>> Can't speak for other muds, but our main city is f*cking huge. =)
>While we're at it, could you define "huge" in this context? :)
>
>I honestly don't remember what MUD you'd be speaking of here.
I doubt you've heard of it since we aren't open yet. I'm speaking of
Dawn Whispers, hopefully opening for some initial playtesting before
the end of this year.
>Discworld MUD's Ankh-Morpork is certainly huge, although I don't know the
>exact size.
Judging from the maps I've seen of A-M, I think our main city,
Karathnor, is bigger in layout - no idea of their room count.
>Our own main city, Tierceron, is 1200 rooms in size--900 of which are finished
>and online right now. We consider that huge although it may not be by some
>standards.
I'll log in and do some counting...
Right now we have the road network complete at 636 rooms. There are a
further 374 rooms which form the city walls, turrets, some shops and
warehouses, taverns and a temple, for a current "in-play" total of
1010. There's a number of further buildings which aren't yet in-play,
which probably number another 100 rooms or so. There's a large amount
of buildings which haven't yet been begun (including major ones like
the Palace). I wouldn't be surprised if the city ends up pushing
2000-2500 rooms.
We've also yet to add the peasant sprawl outside the city gates,
though I'm not sure if you'd count that as part of the city or not. =)
So far, all that exists of the world is the city though I have a
prototype terrain generator that generates some pretty good forests.
>A typical "huge" MUD city is, of course, rather a disappointment. I remember
>seeing a web site describing the stock Diku city of New Thalos as huge when
>it can't be more than 100 rooms total.
Ah but on your typical Diku-deriv, you make a huge city by writing
descriptions like 'You are wandering through a huge city..."
--
Scatter ///\oo/\\\
KaVir
[snip]
> A typical "huge" MUD city is, of course, rather a disappointment. I
> remember seeing a web site describing the stock Diku city of New
> Thalos as huge when it can't be more than 100 rooms total.
Hmmm my city is currently only 132 rooms big, comprising of 47
buildings - but then it's not had much chance to grow yet. I started
the mud with one building that took up one room, with plenty of grassy
plains around it, and left the rest up to the players :)
KaVir.
Scatter
<nicolas...@mswtech.com> wrote:
[recreating missing attributions...]
>Scatter wrote:
>>Nick Bryant wrote:
>> >Playability is easy to define, although trickier to measure: it's the
>> >extent to which the people who play the MUD enjoy playing it. If a
>> >feature contributes towards increasing the general pleasure of the
>> >playing experience, it's a good feature. If not, it's a bad one.
>>
>> The problem with this is that it is self-defeating - different players
>> enjoy playing in different ways. A feature that player A enjoys a lot
>> may really irritate player B - so has your playability gone up or
>> down? Is it a good feature or a bad one?
>
>That's not self-defeating at all. Most decisions in life are about
>balance and compromise.
Perhaps self-defeating is not the right term. But you are basing your
design requirements on a fluid base - you're building on sand. Player
attitude and opinion may shift at any time, making a previous 'good'
decision into a 'bad' one you need to undo. Perhaps a university bans
mudding and a chunk of your playerbase disappears. Perhaps another mud
closing leads to a whole bunch of new players migrating to your mud -
and maybe they outnumber your existing players and want different
things. Your principle of majority player satisfaction says you should
cater to improving the game for these new players, at the expense of
your original playerbase.
>And a high level of player enjoyment remains
>the goal, regardless of any hiccoughs that may occur on the way to
>achieving it. Besides, merely because there is a grey area that doesn't
>mean everything has to fall within it. If a decision upsets 10% of your
>player base and pleases no one then it's probably wrong.
What if a decision pleases 10% of your players and annoys 90%. Is it
wrong then? Even if the 10% are roleplayers whom you want to
encourage, and the 90% are 'kewl dudes' you'd love to see the back of?
>If a decision makes 99.7% of MUD players less likely to want to play
>your MUD, then it's very wrong.
My point is, who are the 99.7% and are they the players you want?
Chances are, if they don't like the way I'm making my game work, then
they probably aren't my target audience.
>Or at least that's what I think. You clearly don't.
Variety is the spice of life. =)
>> Richard is trying to design and build the sort of mud that he will
>> enjoy playing - just as I am building the mud that I want to play. I
>> think he'd agree with me when I say that I don't particularly care
>> whether you enjoy playing it - I'm sure there are enough people who
>> share my own tastes, and if not - well I'll have a whole world to
>> myself. =)
>Yes, and therein lies the fundamental problem. When I look at this sort
>of attitude from my own perspective I cannot even begin to comprehend
>how anyone could be capable of that level of selfish narrow-mindedness.
>But to you and Richard it's clearly not only perfectly acceptable
>behaviour, but actually *desirable* behaviour. To me a MUD's primary
>reason for existence is to bring pleasure to its players. To you, the
>primary reason for its existence is to bring pleasure to *you*. We are
>*never* going to see eye to eye on this one, I don't think.
So far I've spent three years worth of spare time building my game.
You're damn right I'm doing it for me, not for anyone else. I'm doing
it because the kind of game I want to play doesn't seem to exist and
because I enjoy programming and design. I enjoy the creative process
as an end in itself, and I won't consider my time wasted if no one
else ever plays the game.
Is it selfish? Yes - it's my hobby, why shouldn't I do it the way I
enjoy most? Narrow-minded? I don't think so. How can it be
narrow-minded to bring into existence a game that is fundamentally
different from the existing ones? Surely it's more narrow-minded to
blindly follow the customs and traditions of what has already been
done.
I'm reinventing the wheel over and over on my mud because I won't use
other people's code. I may not end up with wheels that work better,
but I will end up with wheels that work the way I want and I will have
enjoyed making them.
The primary reason for my mud's existence is not to bring pleasure to
players. In fact, the sole reason for my mud's existence is because I
wanted to build something different from what's out there already -
something that works the way I want it to work. It's sole goal is to
produce the game that I will enjoy playing.
That said, I'm fairly sure that I can't be the only person in the
world who shares my particular playing style and I'm fairly sure we
will get other players who enjoy the world. And that's the fundamental
difference to your point of view perhaps - I want players who will
enjoy my world the way it is, whereas you're happy to change the world
to please the players.
>Richard's
>attitude is basically "I will do what I want on my own MUD, I will have
>only creators who agree with me, and I want only players who agree with
>me. And if I end up with a MUD that has no players any of the time
>because everyone who has ever played it hates it, I don't care at all:
>my own vision is what matters."
Yes, I agree with that. It's probably part of the reason why virtually
all new staff who join us are gone within a few weeks.
>My attitude is that I should use what
>technical and artistic talents I possess to create an enjoyable
>experience for a large number of people: my own needs and desires are
>secondary to that. If I ended up with a MUD no one wanted to play I
>would regard that as a personal failiure on my part, no matter how
>grand my vision might have been.
You have a different goal. You're in the service industry, I'm more
like a craftsman. You're trying to entertain other people, I'm
producing a product to my own design where staying true to my own
ideals is paramount rather than selling out to what the masses want.
>Of course you can't hope to appeal to *all* players, nor should you
>try, or you end up with an amorphous mess. And of course your initial
>guide to what a player would or wouldn't enjoy is going to be what
>*you* would enjoy. But to simply dismiss the opinions of *any* player
>as being irrelevant when compared to your own grand design - that I am
>never going to understand.
I don't dismiss the opinions of *any* player. I very rarely dismiss
any opinions at all. However, I'm only going to implement other
peoples ideas where they agree with my own goals. Sometimes other
people make suggestions that improve my grand design.
>Given this vast gulf between us, I'm not sure how much point there is
>in continuing this discussion.... Well, let's see....
If nothing else, it'll serve to illustrate the many facets of mud
design...
>> The definition of "realism" which I think is the important one is
>> "making the mud world feel real" - not so much making it like real
>> life as just making sure that it is itself internally consistent.
>> Walking across a city in 2 minutes and then walking across the empire
>> to another city also taking 2 minutes is not internally consistent.
>See, I don't have any problem with that. To me the experience of
>playing any computer game is sufficiently far removed from reality that
>I have to make a huge effort to suspend disbelief anyway.
I, on the other hand, suspend disbelief really easily - but equally, I
can be jolted back to reality easily too. When you can immerse
yourself in a world and really experience it, the last thing you want
is to be smacked back into reality.
I'm the player who you'll see having conversations with NPCs. I'm the
one who'll be saying "Hey Kortlan, is there anything new you could
teach me today?" when other players are wandering up and saying
"teach" because they know that's the keyword the npc responds to.
I wrote an npc for a mud once that was intended to provide information
to players about a specific guild and encourage them to join it if
they were suitable. It had over 50k of information to impart. No one
ever seemed to get this information though. They were the wrong sort
of player - they tried a few random keywords and got no response and
gave up. I had written the npc to pick up on combinations like "where
& college" or "what & college" or "tell & about & college" so that it
would answer questions like "where is the college?" and "Tell me more
about the college" and players wandered up and said "college" and that
was that.
Anyway, I'm digressing. If you're just sitting there all the time
thinking I'm in a game, what else will this game let me do, what is
the goal in this game - then my kind of realism will only impede you.
If you're suspending disbelief and becoming a part of the world, then
the kind of feature that glaringly points out "this is a game" is
very, very annoying.
>that to the extent that I can take seriously the notion that I am
>actually a sorceror interacting with a landscape inhabited by knights,
>priests and the occasional dragon, or if I can accept that actually
>dying is merely going to slow me down a little, then accepting the
>notion that two seconds in real life corresponds to different amounts
>of pretend time is really pretty trivial in comparison.
This is just one tiny aspect of what realistic travel times is.
Suppose you have two different cultures, seperated by large distance.
One common example is a 'western' culture and a 'far-east' culture.
They have very different ways of life, very different styles of dress,
combat - very different equipment. In the 'western' culture, an
'eastern' weapon is rare, exotic and valuable. In the 'eastern'
culture, it's ordinary.
A believable, internally-consistent world says these cultures are far
apart, so there will be little interaction between them - in fact, for
them to remain distinct cultures there must be little interaction
between them. Yet if player's can easily zap between the two, then
suddenly 'eastern' items are commonplace in the 'western' culture and
players are wandering around with bizarre combinations of east and
west equipment, picking the best of each.
Not to mention your economy collapses into chaotic inflation as
players start buying up eastern goods cheaply in the east, zapping to
the west and selling for massive profit.
You just can't have realistic, believable seperation of these cultures
unless the distance between them does act as a barrier.
Back to the point at issue, it's a wake-up call when the world says
'these places are far apart and have distinct identities' and yet you
wander into a shop and find rack after rack of "exotic" eastern items
for sale.
>What does
>matter is whether I can have a fun experience or not - and if it takes
>me four hours of boring, non-interactive travelling time to get to the
>place where I can actually do something interactive and fun then,
>regardless of whether the time is spent on- or off-line, it's going to
>annoy me far more that it immerses me.
It doesn't sound like we are talking about the same thing when we say
'immerse' or 'immersive.' I'm talking about how involved you become in
the game world, you're talking about involved you get in the game. To
you, the game is all, to me the game world is all.
You're saying you can get immersed in doing activity X (killing
monsters perhaps, or whatever) and activity X is catered for in city
Y, then you want to be at city Y asap to start doing it.
I get immersed in playing a part in the world. Thus if I want to do
activity X which requires me to be in city Y then I want to travel to
city Y in a way that's part of (and consistent with) the way the world
works. If the city is 400 miles away then I want to spend a long time
travelling if I try to go on foot - because if it doesn't take a long
time (comparitively) then it's no longer believable that the city is
that far away.
>If you can find a way to make
>the journey as enjoyable and interactive as the experience that I'm
>going to get at the far end of it, then fine - but that isn't what
>we're talking about.
Isn't it? Why wouldn't it be?
>To achieve that you'd simply need to vastly
>increase the size of the MUD to the point that every point along the
>journey was a hand-crafted location.
At worst, yes. At best, it means you have a system that can generate
landscape at a quality approaching that of hand-crafted locations. I
have a prototype that can already do this for deciduous forest. In
fact, if anything it generates landscape of superior quality to the
average mud's hand-crafted locations. It includes descriptions that
vary depending on time of day, time of year and weather, it includes
interactive resources such as trees you can climb, animal populations,
realistic plant life, collectable herbs and so on.
Of course, making the intervening terrain have quality and depth
doesn't mean everyone will want to spend time there. If what you want
to do is in the city, then the forest is just basically in your way.
>If we assume that for logistical reasons this just isn't possible,
>then what is the benefit of making the player hang around and
>forcing him to spend the majority of his time in the boring bits?
I agree with you - if I thought it wasn't possible for the world to be
of consistent quality throughout, I wouldn't be arguing for realistic
travel.
>And if it is possible then this entire thread
>just dissappears.
Well I don't think it does - there's still the issue of whether you
would like being forced to spend a large amount travelling to the city
you want to get to so that you can do what you want to do. This thread
would only disappear if you could do whatever you wanted to wherever
you wanted - so that it wouldn't matter you were travelling between A
and B rather than being at B when you want.
>> >because it makes it more FUN, *not* for any other reason.
>> Fun for who? Fun for the hack'n'slasher who wants to get to the meaty
>> monsters ASAP, or fun for the explorer who wants the challenge of
>> finding the ancient ruined city in the forest?
>Making someone hang around doing nothing for four hours isn't going to
>appeal to either of them, is it?
If they aren't interested in doing anything or looking at anything
on-route and just want to get where they are going, it taking hours to
get there isn't going to appeal. Which is why Richard is suggesting
let them log off and come back later.
>> >- If I ever do run a MUD I will encourage a highly interventionist
>> >policy on the part of immortals - but not as immortals. Instead, they
>> >will (for example) issue quests while disguised as NPC's ("I need you
>> >to deliver this to so-and-so in the next village"), or organise
[snip]
>> Whilst this may be fun, it puts a very large burden of work on your
>> staff to keep on coming up with more things for the players to do. I
>> think it would be far better to design the game in such a way that it
>> generates things to do itself.
>Of course it would: but unless you personally have created a MUD-based
>AI that passes the Turing test, it isn't technically feasible.
You don't need to do that. You just need a capable quest generator
with a sufficient database of plotlines and world information. A
generated quest as simple as "give item X to npc Y" can produce an
epic scale adventure if item X is in the Misram's lair and npc Y is a
secret thieves' leader in Yak Mototh on the other side of the world.
Especially if you have to actually travel the world to these places
rather than 'teleport to misram's lair, teleport to Yak Mototh.'
>Until
>artificial intelligence becomes comparable with human intelligence
>there will always be things that a human-controlled NPC will do better
>than a computer-controlled one.
Your humans will burn out, get fed up, get abused by players.
Consider, 30 players online. How many staff members will you need
online to keep them busy? How many new quest/activity ideas will they
have to be coming up with every day, every week, every month? How long
will it be before they repeat things they've done before?
Repetitive activities given out by a human are no more enjoyable than
ones assigned by a poor quest generator. =)
[snip]
>Well, most decisions will favour one group of players over another -
>but so long as the ultimate overall effect of many decisions is
>approximately balanced, that's not necessarily an issue. And it
>certainly isn't an issue if a decision upsets no one.
You'd need a very small, or a very supportive playerbase for that to
happen. Or a very tiny decision.
>Besides, as I
>said, it's all about balance and compromise. If my MUD is working out
>in such a way that only people who play warriors are actually capable
>of advancing, then something needs to be done about that: spell-casting
>classes could be buttressed a bit, for example. That favours people who
>play spell-casters - but will the warriors have a problem? No reason
>why they should. If, instead, in the interests of balanceI decided to
>make warriors less powerful then that would be a less popular decision.
>It could be justified under circumstances, but it's more likely that
>empowering the other classes would be the better solution.
This is a policy that results in everything being overpowered.
Warriors are too powerful and have the edge, so you boost the mages a
little. Later on, the mages have a new spell added and now they are
too powerful, so you have to boost them up a bit. You can't reduce
anything, because that would upset players, god forbid.
Your players slowly get more and more powerful, and now your npcs are
in trouble because they were designed and balanced for your original
power levels - so now you have to go through and boost your whole
world or do you leave stupidly underpowered npcs because making them
harder to kill would upset the players?
Once you're stuck in this trap, you've had it - you're now twink-mud
and your players are used to getting everything their way. You daren't
downscale anything now, because doing so will create uproar and if
your current players leave you'll have great difficulty attracting new
ones with the twin reputation problems of being a twink-mud and
instituting dramatic "player wimping."
>If playing a
>mage was already far harder than playing a warrior and I then started
>systematically eliminating the few remaining advancement strategies for
>mages, this would be dead wrong.
Yes it would. This example is in contradiction to what you said
before.
>Yeah, but wouldn't it be better not to force the player into a position
>where the next four hours is going to be so boring that he might as
>well log off in the first place? I'm sorry, but I just don't get it:
>either the experience of travelling is as rich and enjoyable as
>exploring the eventual destination, or it isn't. If it isn't, why force
>the player to put up with it for hours instead of letting him do
>something more interesting? And if it is, then what the hell are we
>discussing? Why would logging off be an issue?
I don't know where you got the idea that the travelling has to be
boring. =)
>> You logged out of a persistant world based game, leaving your
>> character wandering across the desert and you're furious because he
>> died of thirst whilst you were offline? You were playing the wrong
>> game. =)
>No, the game designer created the game wrong.
There are probably over a thousand muds out there. You're saying they
should all cater to the particular game that _you_ want to play. If
that's not "selfish and narrow-minded" I don't know what is.
If you agree that there's no reason different games should work
different ways, then you can't argue that it's not up to you to choose
the sort of game that you want to play.
>> Perhaps I'd prefer to spend 5 hours of playing time sailing to an
>> interesting island reputedly full of strange and exotic wonders than
>> to spend another 5 hours slaughtering wuzzies in the forest near the
>> city.
>Perhaps, but the point remains that you shouldn't be forced into making
>that decision.
I should be forced to make that decision because that's the way the
world (game-world) works.
>Suppose you had a third choice of getting straight to
>the interesting island *without* having to wait 5 hours, wouldn't you
>choose that? Why shouldn't you be given that option?
I'm not sure what you are saying. If it takes 5 hours to sail to the
island on boat X, maybe I can take a faster boat and get there in 2 -
if I can afford the higher fee.
If the world has a magic system that permits teleportation and I'm a
mage, then maybe I can cast my spell and appear on the island - but if
this were possible, then it's likely all the strange and exotic
wonders of the island have already been looted since there's no
barrier to travelling there.
A believable world cannot have no barriers to travel and yet also have
distinct "remote" locations.
>> To put that another way, if the player doesn't want to spend 5 hours
>> of playing time travelling then they can either not travel, or find a
>> faster method of travelling.
>Well, if there is a faster method of travelling that is universally
>available, fine. But then (again) this thread becomes irrelevant,
>because everyone would simply take it. And if the method of travel
>isn't universally available, then, yet again, why should the player be
>forced to be bored for five hours?
There might be a fast carriage you can take to the next city, avoiding
4 hours (real-time) of walking there. There's unlikely to be a fast
carriage to the ruined city deep in the forest of Goth. Why should
there be? There's no challenge to getting there then.
[snip]
>> >able to escape if he can reach a steep, high cliff before they catch
>> >him, and if he has climbing skills. But if the horsemen know what
>> >they're doing, they can take the long way round and reach the top
>> >before he does).
>> Yet to make those strategies possible, you're enhancing realism and
>> making the world feel like a more real place. The more of this kind of
>> realism you have, the more such tactics and strategies become
>> possible.
>Not necessarily. For example, far more strategy is possible in a turn-
>based combat system than one that functions in real time.
Rubbish, it just means you can take your time to think about things as
you go along rather than having to plan in advance. It doesn't make
any difference to what things it is possible to do - what strategies
are possible to implement. This is entirely dependent upon the depth
of your game - how "real" you've made your world.
>> >But in any case, you can easily achieve the same
>> >effect by balancing the number of "rooms" a player has to go through
>> >in order to get to a particular point, using randomly generated
>> >terrain to fill in the gaps as necessary.
>> I'm not sure this is a disagreement with the proposal of realistic
>> travel times - by putting in more rooms, you make the travel time
>> longer so that time taken is proportional to the distance travelled.
>That depends on how interesting the rooms are.
But if the travel time isn't proportional then your example of the
horse rider pursuing the man becomes unworkable - how the world
behaves becomes a function how interesting the rooms you're in are.
The horse travelling the 'boring' long path to the clifftop gets there
much quicker than the man can climb up the interesting cliff face, for
example.
>> >better to make a person cross ten locations at 2 seconds per location
>> >than it does to introduce a 20-second lag moving across a single
>> >location.
>> I don't think anyone has suggested the latter.
>I'm fairly sure they have.
My own current preference is for a movement points/fatigue system,
such that different methods of travel allow you to move further in the
same amount of time.
>> This is a logical design decision. Intelligent behaviour controlling
>> how a player moves belongs in the player object, not in an external
>> map object.
>Yes, of course, but this is just splitting hairs.
Actually, that was just addressing your 'coward' call after Richard
said he wouldn't put such code into a map object. What did you think
he was refering to when he said that?
[snip]
>> >I'm undecided on this point. On the one hand it could reward
>> >strategy, but on the other it is going to piss a lot of people off.
>> It'll piss off the players who want to get from A to B because they've
>> heard about cool things to kill at B. Shame. =)
>
>As far as I'm concerned, that is indeed a shame.
Whereas as far as I'm concerned, it's a benefit - because these are
exactly the kind of people I don't want in my game. They wouldn't
enjoy it and as a result would generate a negative impact on everyone
else. I specifically chose "cool things to kill" as implying the sort
of hack'n'slash advance-by-killing-the-mobs mentallity that rules the
worst kind of diku-derivative.
>> On the other hand, perhaps explorers will have a lot more fun
>> setting up their expeditions with precautions and skills needed
>> to avoid getting lost and if they do, they'll enjoy the challenge
>> of finding their way out again.
>*nod*
>But this is not something I would expect a MUD newbie to be able to
>take on.
What do you mean by 'MUD newbie'? Someone new to mudding? I agree, but
they'll learn and grow into the game and learn what needs to be done
to cope with the game world.
A "low level" character? No reason they shouldn't be able to take it
on. In their case, suitable precautions might include securing maps,
or a guide who knows the way.
>I'd expect someone to be of at least mid-level before mounting
>a major expedition into the wilderness like this. And it has to be
>circumventable: few MUD features piss me off more than Diku-
>style "random exits".
The facility to become lost can be implemented without having to
resort to unpredictable room exits. For example, simply take away
compass-point exits and give forward, back, left and right. Now it's
much easier to get turned around and lose your way. Even auto-mapping
clients are of limited aid here, if the player doesn't realise they
have gotten turned around.
>> >It would also, of course, create major problems with any mapping
>> >algorithm you were using.
>> Only if your algorithm was designed in isolation and didn't take the
>> rest of the game into account.
>How could you create an algorithm to memorise a route if the game
>introduces uncontrollable deviations form the route you think you're
>taking?
The memory of the route is the memory of the route you thought you
took, not the one you actually took. If you got turned around without
noticing, then it won't be a 'valid' route and you'll likely become
lost if you try and follow it again.
>Or would you actually want players to end up with an invalid
>map?
It isn't possible for a player to make a valid map whilst getting lost
- if he's made a valid map, he knows the way back. If he's got lost,
then his map can't be valid anymore. If the map was made by someone
else, then you can get lost by following it incorrectly - in which
case, valid or not the map is not much use because you no longer know
where you are on it.
[snip]
>> If the player logs off, does the ship continue off without him? If it
>> does, what happens when he logs back in - he's swimming in the ocean?
>> Or should the entire ship freeze where it is until he comes back? If
>> so, what if there was another player on board too? Does that player
>> get frozen and booted off? Or does that player continue with the ship
>> and when the first player logs back in he gets a magical second copy
>> of the ship, complete with all the treasure it was carrying in the
>> cargo hold?
[snip]
>Don't think we need any of those. How in general terms do you handle
>players logging off the MUD?
On my mud? When players log off, the character is removed from the
game world and saved (complete with inventory). When they return, they
are placed back in the same room there were in before, providing it
still exists. If not, they are automatically moved to the nearest room
that does exist.
In the example above, they'd return to the ship - at whatever location
it happened to be at at the time. Effectively, as if they had
travelled with the ship wherever it went for all the time they were
logged off. If that ship had sunk in the meantime, he'd appear on the
nearest convenient location to his position when he left - be it
another nearby ship, or perhaps the shore of an island. Potentially
even a rocky outcrop in the middle of the sea. =) I should add that as
yet, seas, boats, islands and sailing are unimplemented.
>I've no problem with the basic quit/rent
>system, i.e. you can either quit, in which case you vanish in a puff of
>smoke and lose all your gear, and come back to the MUD in the same
>location the next time you log on, or you have to find a pre-defined
>safe haven in which case you can store all your gear, and (again)
>reappear in the same place the next time you log on.
Sounds utterly dreadful. So if you have to go in a hurry because your
dog has just thrown up on the new carpet, you lose that artifact you
just spent hours completing a complicated quest for? And you consider
this playable?
If you're happy with this kind of thing then no wonder you aren't sold
on the benefits of a "realistic" world.
[snip]
>in extreme cases, e.g. if the ship actually sinks in the intervening
>time. But in a case like that an unrealistic solution (player is
>returned to his home port safe and sound) is preferable to a realistic
>but annoying one (player logs on to be told that he has drowned because
>the ship was attacked by pirates and scuttled while he was logged out
>and unable to fight to protect it).
I wouldn't do this because I don't really have a concept of the
character persisting whilst the player is logged off. The most
advanced scripting system in the world is not going to let my
character behave as it would if I was logged on, and since roleplay is
important to me I want my character behaving in a consistent way. I
don't want to cede control of my character to the computer just
because real-life has intervened.
Richard has a different goal - he wants a completely persistent world
and so he wants player characters to stay when players log off. In
that case, it's more "realistic" (consistent within the world) if they
are subject to the same rules and risks regardless of whether the
player is online or not.
--
Scatter ///\oo/\\\
KaVir
sca...@thevortex.com (Scatter) wrote:
>
[snip most - just wanted to reply to this part]
> I wrote an npc for a mud once that was intended to provide information
> to players about a specific guild and encourage them to join it if
> they were suitable. It had over 50k of information to impart. No one
> ever seemed to get this information though. They were the wrong sort
> of player - they tried a few random keywords and got no response and
> gave up. I had written the npc to pick up on combinations like "where
> & college" or "what & college" or "tell & about & college" so that it
> would answer questions like "where is the college?" and "Tell me more
> about the college" and players wandered up and said "college" and that
> was that.
I've encountered similar people. The best way to get around the above
would be to have the mob responding to single words as well - if the
player just says "college" the mob should say "What about the
college?". If they say "where" have the mob respond with "Where is
what?". Many players are so used to muds which cater to laziness that
they often need a little prompting - but that doesn't mean there's no
hope for them. They just need to understand that your mud isn't like
the others, at which point they'll either be hooked, or they'll leave.
A little while ago I found an Eliza bot available for download, so I
adjusted it slightly to work on my mud. With a change of vocabulary,
it could become pretty effective - I've put the (original) code on my
website in case anyone fancies taking a look:
http://www.kavir.dial.pipex.com/code/eliza.tgz
KaVir.
Scatter
> sca...@thevortex.com (Scatter) wrote:
[snip]
>> gave up. I had written the npc to pick up on combinations like "where
>> & college" or "what & college" or "tell & about & college" so that it
>> would answer questions like "where is the college?" and "Tell me more
>> about the college" and players wandered up and said "college" and that
>> was that.
>I've encountered similar people. The best way to get around the above
>would be to have the mob responding to single words as well - if the
>player just says "college" the mob should say "What about the
>college?"
Ideally, yes - but this npc was sited near other npcs that said things
including 'college' and responded to same - thus doing that sent the
two into an infinite loop responding to one another. Which was amusing
the first time, but... Unfortunately, at the time I was way to lowly
ranked and unsure of myself to get the response system fixed. I also
decided that players who couldn't be bothered to type their intended
question didn't deserve a reply in the first place. =)
Ah I had fun with that npc. He was one of the most powerful npcs in
the city, as an elemental mage. Fed up with college members being
attacked, I tweaked him to automatically protect any college member he
found in combat. At the same time, I tweaked one of the top academy
npcs to similarly protect academy mages. You guessed it - the academy
and college npcs ended up having an all out war. I swear that street
glowed for ages after that battle.
>If they say "where" have the mob respond with "Where is
>what?". Many players are so used to muds which cater to laziness that
>they often need a little prompting - but that doesn't mean there's no
>hope for them. They just need to understand that your mud isn't like
>the others, at which point they'll either be hooked, or they'll leave.
I'll be doing this kind of thing on my mud. My response system is a
little more intelligent. =)
>A little while ago I found an Eliza bot available for download, so I
>adjusted it slightly to work on my mud. With a change of vocabulary,
>it could become pretty effective - I've put the (original) code on my
>website in case anyone fancies taking a look:
My npc response system is basically an 'Eliza' engine. I have a
substantial response database which I adapted from an 'eliza' bot I
found on the net. It's not quite up to conversational standards, but
it certainly makes for an npc that's fun to talk to. =)
I have a really hilarious log from its first major test session. I
swear you wouldn't believe it wasn't understanding things sometimes.
--
Scatter ///\oo/\\\
rr...@lanminds.com
>
>> Our own main city, Tierceron, is 1200 rooms in size--900 of which are
>finished
>> and online right now. We consider that huge although it may not be by
>some
>> standards.
>
>And might I just add that it was the single hardest building job I've
>ever been a part of! Not that it wasn't enjoyable, but coming up with
>interesting street descriptions after about the first 200 was rather
>difficult. When I stroll through our streets, I think we did a rather
>fine job and I've never heard otherwise from any of our visitors. Fact
>is, most visitors have only seen about 25% of the city before they
>become fasinated with a particular section of the city and sort of make
>that there "home".
>
>Chris Smith
>
Ok, I guess this gets back into the playability vs. realism debate,
but is it NECESSARY to have 200 interesting and unique street
descriptions? When I go to a strange city, I know that I pay close
attention to street signs, simply because all streets do tend to have
a sameness to them. And I know how much trouble you can get into if
you try and go by landmarks. (Never use something like 7-11 as a
point of reference!) While it may be easier on the player to have
unique and descriptive streets, is it really realistic to do so?
Couldn't the same thing be done by having a basic description, with an
occasional difference? For example, I was walking down a residential
street in Washington recently, and most of the houses could be
described similarily (2-story brick row homes), with the occasional
item catching my eye... the open gate leading to the side yard, the
purple flowers in one garden, the lawn that stuck out like a sore
thumb amid all the cottage gardens. But for the other houses? I'd be
hard pressed to describe any of them. Couldn't we use the same idea
for a mud city?
Kira Skydancer
Nick Bryant
> Nick Bryant wrote:
> >Scatter wrote:
> >>Nick Bryant wrote:
[cut]
> >> Richard is trying to design and build the sort of mud that he will
> >> enjoy playing - just as I am building the mud that I want to play.
I
> >> think he'd agree with me when I say that I don't particularly care
> >> whether you enjoy playing it - I'm sure there are enough people who
> >> share my own tastes, and if not - well I'll have a whole world to
> >> myself. =)
> >Yes, and therein lies the fundamental problem. When I look at this
sort
> >of attitude from my own perspective I cannot even begin to comprehend
> >how anyone could be capable of that level of selfish narrow-
mindedness.
That was putting it too strongly - Richard had said a few things I was
angry about, and I got a little carried away. Apologies to you both.
> >But to you and Richard it's clearly not only perfectly acceptable
> >behaviour, but actually *desirable* behaviour. To me a MUD's primary
> >reason for existence is to bring pleasure to its players. To you, the
> >primary reason for its existence is to bring pleasure to *you*. We
are
> >*never* going to see eye to eye on this one, I don't think.
>
> So far I've spent three years worth of spare time building my game.
> You're damn right I'm doing it for me, not for anyone else. I'm doing
> it because the kind of game I want to play doesn't seem to exist and
> because I enjoy programming and design. I enjoy the creative process
> as an end in itself, and I won't consider my time wasted if no one
> else ever plays the game.
>
> Is it selfish? Yes - it's my hobby, why shouldn't I do it the way I
> enjoy most? Narrow-minded? I don't think so. How can it be
> narrow-minded to bring into existence a game that is fundamentally
> different from the existing ones? Surely it's more narrow-minded to
> blindly follow the customs and traditions of what has already been
> done.
We're actually not as far apart as one might imagine on this point. I'm
a professional programmer and an amateur author, and I certainly do get
a lot out satisfaction out of the creative process, both technical and
artistic. When it comes to programming, I certainly see myself, like
you, as a craftsman rather than a technician. Where, we differ, though,
is where we get the ultimate buzz. To you, it's creating something that
finally works as you want it to. To me, although I certainly do get a
big kick out of that, I get an even bigger one when someone says "oh, I
just played through zone X, and it was *so* damned cool, well done!" I
used to do a lot of amateur acting at university. I enjoyed it a great
deal. But still the very best moment was when someone came up to me in
the street a couple of days later and said "Oh, I saw you in X, you
were great!" I enjoy creating for myself - but I enjoy creating for
other people even more.
It has to be said, as well, that of course one can't appeal to all of
the people all of the time. Some people want a MUD to be the text-
equivalent of a multi-player game of Quake 3 Arena. Some want a hack-
and-slash experience that is a simple exercise in numbers. Some want in-
depth role-play. Some want a strategy game. But almost nobody wants an
amorphous hodge-podge. So you need to decide somewhere along the line
who you are going to try and encourage and who you are going to ignore.
Someone else compared the MUD-building experience to running a gourmet
restaurant, which is a good analogy - but then inaccurately compared
my approach to running a fast-food outlet. I think, if I ever were to
create a MUD, it would be very much a gourmet affair - if anyone wants
me to repost all my grandiose MUD ideas, I'm happy to do so - the
difference is that if every single customer who tried the caramelised
red onion and seared goats' cheese tart absolutely hated it, then
rather than assume every customer in my restaurant was stupid, I would
think about changing the recipe - or even changing the menu. If some
liked it and some didn't, that would be fine - so long as enough people
liked enough things on the menu to keep coming back.
> I'm reinventing the wheel over and over on my mud because I won't use
> other people's code. I may not end up with wheels that work better,
> but I will end up with wheels that work the way I want and I will have
> enjoyed making them.
Well, that's a matter of personal preference. Personally I will re-
write code if it doesn't work in the way that I need it to work. I
won't if it already does exactly what I want.
> The primary reason for my mud's existence is not to bring pleasure to
> players. In fact, the sole reason for my mud's existence is because I
> wanted to build something different from what's out there already -
> something that works the way I want it to work. It's sole goal is to
> produce the game that I will enjoy playing.
>
> That said, I'm fairly sure that I can't be the only person in the
> world who shares my particular playing style and I'm fairly sure we
> will get other players who enjoy the world. And that's the fundamental
> difference to your point of view perhaps - I want players who will
> enjoy my world the way it is, whereas you're happy to change the world
> to please the players.
"Up to a point, Lord Copper." :-) But yes, I would certainly gauge an
issue like, say, whether there was an imbalance between warriors and
spell-casters on the experience of players of both classes more than on
my own intuition.
[cut]
> I wrote an npc for a mud once that was intended to provide information
> to players about a specific guild and encourage them to join it if
> they were suitable. It had over 50k of information to impart. No one
> ever seemed to get this information though. They were the wrong sort
> of player - they tried a few random keywords and got no response and
> gave up. I had written the npc to pick up on combinations like "where
> & college" or "what & college" or "tell & about & college" so that it
> would answer questions like "where is the college?" and "Tell me more
> about the college" and players wandered up and said "college" and that
> was that.
From my perspective your problem there isn't lack of imagination of the
part of the players, it's a quite rational (albeit wrong) expectation
derived from playing other MUDs. Most NPCs they've enocuntered before
respond to single-word keywords, so unless there is specific visible
evidence to the contrary why shouldn't they assume that yours works the
same way? And if it fails to respond to single words, why shouldn't
they assume it is intrinsically non-responsive? Besides, it isn't even
realistic to have it simply ignore one-word accostings. The way that
ought to work (IMNSHO) is if someone comes up and says "college", the
NPC should jump, and then respond? "I'm sorry? 'College'? What
about 'college'?" That way the player gets the idea that he needs to
come up with a more sophisticated question. Similarly if the player's
next question is "Where is the college?" then the answer should
be: "Ah! Now I understand. It's to the north west of here, through the
wrought iron gates. I work there - is there anything else you'd like to
know?" This in turn lets the player know that there is more to be
gleaned if he can find the right question.
That's actually quite a good example of where your and my design
philosophies differ, I think - both of us would like to see a
sophisticated NPC program that responds to sophisticated cues, but you
aren't interested in players who aren't sufficiently in tune with your
design goals that they can come up with the right questions off their
own bat. I, on the other hand, think that it's a waste to code
something like that if no one gets to see what it's capable of.
> Anyway, I'm digressing. If you're just sitting there all the time
> thinking I'm in a game, what else will this game let me do, what is
> the goal in this game - then my kind of realism will only impede you.
>
> If you're suspending disbelief and becoming a part of the world, then
> the kind of feature that glaringly points out "this is a game" is
> very, very annoying.
Understood.
[cut]
> Suppose you have two different cultures, seperated by large distance.
> One common example is a 'western' culture and a 'far-east' culture.
> They have very different ways of life, very different styles of dress,
> combat - very different equipment. In the 'western' culture, an
> 'eastern' weapon is rare, exotic and valuable. In the 'eastern'
> culture, it's ordinary.
>
> A believable, internally-consistent world says these cultures are far
> apart, so there will be little interaction between them - in fact, for
> them to remain distinct cultures there must be little interaction
> between them. Yet if player's can easily zap between the two, then
> suddenly 'eastern' items are commonplace in the 'western' culture and
> players are wandering around with bizarre combinations of east and
> west equipment, picking the best of each.
>
> Not to mention your economy collapses into chaotic inflation as
> players start buying up eastern goods cheaply in the east, zapping to
> the west and selling for massive profit.
>
> You just can't have realistic, believable seperation of these cultures
> unless the distance between them does act as a barrier.
Okay. All of this, to my mind, is a worthwhile goal. But as with any
goal that doesn't mean that *any* mechanism which achieves that goal is
necessarily a good thing to implement. Suppose that a powerful local
sorceror offered a teleportation portal between western and eastern
civilisations. Suppose that use of this portal was fantastically
expensive, to the extent that hardly any NPC could afford to use it
(setting up a regular trade route, for example, would be uneconomic),
and that only the very wealthiest players could get the necessary money
together - and even then only occasionally, with a lot of wealth-
gathering needed in between. And now suppose that this portal is in
fact the *only* way of getting from one area to the other. (This is all
off the top of my head, you understand - I haven't thought it through
in detail). Wouldn't all of this achieve the necessary separation
between the two zones *without* requiring hours of uneventful journey
time for players to get from one to the other?
> Back to the point at issue, it's a wake-up call when the world says
> 'these places are far apart and have distinct identities' and yet you
> wander into a shop and find rack after rack of "exotic" eastern items
> for sale.
Granted.
[cut]
> You're saying you can get immersed in doing activity X (killing
> monsters perhaps, or whatever) and activity X is catered for in city
> Y, then you want to be at city Y asap to start doing it.
>
> I get immersed in playing a part in the world. Thus if I want to do
> activity X which requires me to be in city Y then I want to travel to
> city Y in a way that's part of (and consistent with) the way the world
> works. If the city is 400 miles away then I want to spend a long time
> travelling if I try to go on foot - because if it doesn't take a long
> time (comparitively) then it's no longer believable that the city is
> that far away.
Well, yes: I find becoming bored spoils any sense of immersion I might
otherwise be building up. In order for something to be an immersive
experience, it has to be able to hold my interest. Spending four hours
watching a screen that simply repeats "You haven't got there yet" over
and over again would not be immersive, now matter how realistic it
might be to make me wait.
> >If you can find a way to make
> >the journey as enjoyable and interactive as the experience that I'm
> >going to get at the far end of it, then fine - but that isn't what
> >we're talking about.
>
> Isn't it? Why wouldn't it be?
Because it isn't. :-)
Look: no one, least of all me, would or ever *could* have any problem
at all with a MUD in which every single location is hand-crafted to be
fascinating, and which has so many original, intriguing, unique
locations that you would need to walk through tens of thousands of them
to get from one city to another. Nobody could possibly have any
objection to that. The problem is that this is difficult or impossible
to achieve. So the question under discussion is, if you *can't* have
thirty thousand fascinating hand-crafted locations in a straight line
between Capital and Karmunt-nigh-Rim, how should the journey be
handled? What some people are arguing is that there should be a large
artificial time delay incurred in crossing the (relatively small)
number of intermediate locations, and/or that the journey should not be
an interactive one, and thus the time taken to travel (say) 40
locations is stretched out until it is consistent with the imagined
distance involved. I'm arguing that a better gaming experience is
achieved by simply accepting that travel times may not be consistent
with what you would expect - in much the same way (as has been argued
elsewhere in this thread) that a book or a film bypasses extraneous
events and only shows you the interesting parts of the plot. Or,
alternatively, I'm suggesting that the intervening country should be
filled in with very high quality randomly-generated terrain - as much
as is necessary to bridge the gap. But the important thing is to make
whatever happens on the journey enjoyable to experience. If the only
way to do that is to make it last 5 minutes, then I don't have a
fundamental problem with that.
> >To achieve that you'd simply need to vastly
> >increase the size of the MUD to the point that every point along the
> >journey was a hand-crafted location.
>
> At worst, yes. At best, it means you have a system that can generate
> landscape at a quality approaching that of hand-crafted locations.
I wouldn't have much of a problem with that, as I said.
> I
> have a prototype that can already do this for deciduous forest. In
> fact, if anything it generates landscape of superior quality to the
> average mud's hand-crafted locations. It includes descriptions that
> vary depending on time of day, time of year and weather, it includes
> interactive resources such as trees you can climb, animal populations,
> realistic plant life, collectable herbs and so on.
>
> Of course, making the intervening terrain have quality and depth
> doesn't mean everyone will want to spend time there. If what you want
> to do is in the city, then the forest is just basically in your way.
Yes, but if it's interesting, that's not a problem. What I object to is
making the player go through 5 hours of staring glassy-eyed at the
screen with no options to do anything - or suggesting that he log off
because the next five hours is going to be so dull he might as well be
off-line.
> >If we assume that for logistical reasons this just isn't possible,
> >then what is the benefit of making the player hang around and
> >forcing him to spend the majority of his time in the boring bits?
>
> I agree with you - if I thought it wasn't possible for the world to be
> of consistent quality throughout, I wouldn't be arguing for realistic
> travel.
Then we may be closer to agreeing than you thought. :-)
> >And if it is possible then this entire thread
> >just dissappears.
>
> Well I don't think it does - there's still the issue of whether you
> would like being forced to spend a large amount travelling to the city
> you want to get to so that you can do what you want to do. This thread
> would only disappear if you could do whatever you wanted to wherever
> you wanted - so that it wouldn't matter you were travelling between A
> and B rather than being at B when you want.
I probably would want to provide alternatives to long journeys, even if
it consists of toadying up to the high level mages....
[cut]
> >> >- If I ever do run a MUD I will encourage a highly interventionist
> >> >policy on the part of immortals - but not as immortals. Instead,
they
> >> >will (for example) issue quests while disguised as NPC's ("I need
you
> >> >to deliver this to so-and-so in the next village"), or organise
> [snip]
> >> Whilst this may be fun, it puts a very large burden of work on your
> >> staff to keep on coming up with more things for the players to do.
I
> >> think it would be far better to design the game in such a way that
it
> >> generates things to do itself.
> >Of course it would: but unless you personally have created a MUD-
based
> >AI that passes the Turing test, it isn't technically feasible.
>
> You don't need to do that. You just need a capable quest generator
> with a sufficient database of plotlines and world information. A
> generated quest as simple as "give item X to npc Y" can produce an
> epic scale adventure if item X is in the Misram's lair and npc Y is a
> secret thieves' leader in Yak Mototh on the other side of the world.
> Especially if you have to actually travel the world to these places
> rather than 'teleport to misram's lair, teleport to Yak Mototh.'
I don't think people are understanding where I'm coming from with this
bit. I most certainly *would* have an automated random quest generating
system of at least that level of sophistication. Where the immortal-
driven quests come in is at a level of complexity and interest over and
above that. An immortal-driven quest wouldn't be a case of "find the
sapphire in the k'kang caverns and return it to the tavern-keeper in
Dirriech" it would be orders of magnitude more complex. Something
like "Infiltrate the White Hand clan and find out whether there are any
significant factions that could, with assistance, seize control of the
clan leadership" - where the White Hand clan would occupy a sizeable
fortress with several dozen potential active parties, some of whom
could be interrogated, while others would need to be spied on. So if
the player came back later and said "Lord General Skarn is planning a
coup" then the disguised immortal could ask farther "Who are his
allies? If he did commit an act of open rebellion, who would side with
the existing regime, and who would remain neutral until he was sure
which way the wind was blowing?" If the player hadn't found out that
much he would have to go back in again. Moreover the immortal could use
his own discretion when it came to introducing complications - perhaps
someone else (the same immortal in a different disguise) would make the
player a better offer for the same information. Perhaps a dying
messenger would stagger up to the player and murmur "You've been set
up! Beware of... beware..." and then die.
Of course even something as complex as this *could* be scripted in its
entirety (and indeed in quite a number of cases it *would* be, if I had
anything to do with it). But also allowing bored immortals to improvise
this sort of thing in real time *as well* can only make things more
enjoyable. It's even possible that the White Hand organisation might
actually be a *player* clan, in which case the whole thing would become
inherently unpredictable.
There's also non-quest activity to arrange. One example I've mentioned
before would be to make a large orc raiding band and have them assault
the main MUD city. Again, up to a point this could be pre-scripted -
but suppose the orcs actually get through the gate and start pillaging
the town - it's going to be much easier for player-controlled orcs to
pillage realistically. (Again, one could have different factions of non-
immortal players set up to achieve this - but there's always going to
be some higher level of complexity possible with immortal intervention,
and besides, player-controlled orcs might have different priorities -
grudges against other players, a desire for equipment - which would not
coincide with what "real" orc raiders would want.)
> >Until
> >artificial intelligence becomes comparable with human intelligence
> >there will always be things that a human-controlled NPC will do
better
> >than a computer-controlled one.
>
> Your humans will burn out, get fed up, get abused by players.
> Consider, 30 players online. How many staff members will you need
> online to keep them busy? How many new quest/activity ideas will they
> have to be coming up with every day, every week, every month? How long
> will it be before they repeat things they've done before?
>
> Repetitive activities given out by a human are no more enjoyable than
> ones assigned by a poor quest generator. =)
Yes, but as I have now tried to explain, the bulk of quest activity
will be randomly generated, and the bulk of the remainder carefully pre-
scripted. The immortals would cover the remainder as and when they had
time.
[cut]
> >Besides, as I
> >said, it's all about balance and compromise. If my MUD is working out
> >in such a way that only people who play warriors are actually capable
> >of advancing, then something needs to be done about that: spell-
casting
> >classes could be buttressed a bit, for example. That favours people
who
> >play spell-casters - but will the warriors have a problem? No reason
> >why they should. If, instead, in the interests of balance I decided
to
> >make warriors less powerful then that would be a less popular
decision.
> >It could be justified under circumstances, but it's more likely that
> >empowering the other classes would be the better solution.
>
> This is a policy that results in everything being overpowered.
> Warriors are too powerful and have the edge, so you boost the mages a
> little. Later on, the mages have a new spell added and now they are
> too powerful, so you have to boost them up a bit. You can't reduce
> anything, because that would upset players, god forbid.
Oh, now you're just being silly. I said that reducing the power of a
group could be justified in certain circumstances. Obviously unending
inflation is not going to work. But perhaps you underestimate the
player base. I think that any reasonable bunch of MUD players would be
able to acknowledge that something was out of balance and that
something needed done. Suggestions as to what to do could then be made
in public fora. And any action taken should be carried out sensitively,
with explanations, and in public. For example: suppose a particular
offensive spell turned out to be just too powerful, and suppose that
there is a system of exchanging practice points for skills and spells.
The bad way of handling this would be to announce "from now on the
finger of death spell will do only one third of the damage it used to."
This players would be quite rightly pissed off by. (Actually an even
worse way of handling it would be to change the power of the spell
without even telling anyone). The better way to do it:
1) Announce that "we have a problem." Explain that the spell is so
powerful that once a spell-caster acquires it he becomes essentially
invincible and this upsets game balance, and makes playing other
classes undesirable. Ask for suggestions as to what to do about it.
(Maybe a player will come up with a solution you haven't thought of).
2) Assuming that it is decided that the spell should be reduced in
power, don't just change the spell code and leave it at that. Instead,
make sure that every player who has spent practice points on acquiring
a level of skill in that spell a) has their skill in that spell reduced
to zero, and b) has *all* of the practice points that they spent when
originally acquiring the spell *refunded*, so that they have the choice
of reacquiring the same spell to the same level if they wish, or (if
they feel that, had they known when learning the spell that it would
become much less powerful then they wouldn't have learned it) spending
the practice points on something else instead.
3) BEFORE implementing your decision, make sure everyone who could
possibly be affected is aware of what is going to happen.
[cut]
> A believable world cannot have no barriers to travel and yet also have
> distinct "remote" locations.
See previous "expensive portal" suggestion - barriers to travel don't
have to involve wasting the player's time.
> >> >able to escape if he can reach a steep, high cliff before they
catch
> >> >him, and if he has climbing skills. But if the horsemen know what
> >> >they're doing, they can take the long way round and reach the top
> >> >before he does).
> >> Yet to make those strategies possible, you're enhancing realism and
> >> making the world feel like a more real place. The more of this
kind of
> >> realism you have, the more such tactics and strategies become
> >> possible.
> >Not necessarily. For example, far more strategy is possible in a
turn-
> >based combat system than one that functions in real time.
>
> Rubbish, it just means you can take your time to think about things as
> you go along rather than having to plan in advance. It doesn't make
> any difference to what things it is possible to do - what strategies
> are possible to implement. This is entirely dependent upon the depth
> of your game - how "real" you've made your world.
No, I disagree. If you have a turn-based combat system then it means
you can introduce a much larger number of variables than you physically
have time to manipulate if you are running at one combat round every
two seconds. Off the top of my head, let's say you can control:
1) What your primary method of blow avoidance is this round (shield
block, parry, dodge).
2) How you balance the conflicting demands of attack and defence (all
out attack, 50/50, all out defence, some other point on the scale).
3) Which of a series of offensive moves you want to try for the next
strike (straight lunge, feint and thrust, slash, etc.)
4) Which part of your opponent's body you want to target.
5) To what extent you want to target that part of the body as opposed
to looking for opportunities for a hit elsewhere.
6) Which part of your own body you want to focus on defending.
7) To what extent.
8) How much energy you want to expend on the attack rather than
conserving for later in the fight.
9) What additional tactics you want to try (shield bash, kick, judo
throw, hurling dust in the eyes, whatever).
I'm sure one could think of plenty of others. Now, it's easy enough to
have all of these variables, and tweak them as and when you want to
when you're not actually fighting, but if your combat system runs at
two seconds per round there's no way you are going to have time to
tweak *all* of those variables to whatever values you want in each and
every round. But if the combat is turn-based, then you can.
(No, I probably wouldfn't have turn-based combat inmy own MUD, I merely
wish to make the point that realism and depth of strategic opportunity
are not necessarily one and the same thing).
> >> >But in any case, you can easily achieve the same
> >> >effect by balancing the number of "rooms" a player has to go
through
> >> >in order to get to a particular point, using randomly generated
> >> >terrain to fill in the gaps as necessary.
> >> I'm not sure this is a disagreement with the proposal of realistic
> >> travel times - by putting in more rooms, you make the travel time
> >> longer so that time taken is proportional to the distance
travelled.
> >That depends on how interesting the rooms are.
>
> But if the travel time isn't proportional then your example of the
> horse rider pursuing the man becomes unworkable - how the world
> behaves becomes a function how interesting the rooms you're in are.
> The horse travelling the 'boring' long path to the clifftop gets there
> much quicker than the man can climb up the interesting cliff face, for
> example.
I think we're talking at crossed-purposes here. What I meant was, I'm
okay with the idea of using a large number of intermediate locations to
slow someone down, so long as the actual locations aren't dull to
explore. And in this case you certainly would have to have a large
number of very close-together locations going up the cliff-face one
ledge at a time. But the reason the horses would get to the top quicker
is that (in my original proposal) they can move with negligible lag
while the player climbing up the cliff has a two second lag per room. A
player chasing the climber on foot might have a one second lag per
room, depending on his encumberment, and thus might not reach the
hilltop in time if it's a long way around. So you don't increase the
lag for the player climbing up the cliff - you increase the number of
locations he has to pass through. Use lag to introduce differences in
basic speed of movement, and room density to model the effect of
terrain. I suggest this to avoid the situation of deliberately
introducing twenty seconds of lag, or dull, non-interactive journeying.
> >> >better to make a person cross ten locations at 2 seconds per
location
> >> >than it does to introduce a 20-second lag moving across a single
> >> >location.
> >> I don't think anyone has suggested the latter.
> >I'm fairly sure they have.
>
> My own current preference is for a movement points/fatigue system,
> such that different methods of travel allow you to move further in the
> same amount of time.
But wouldn't that risk you missing something interesting because it
fell in the middle of a fast move?
[cut]
> >> On the other hand, perhaps explorers will have a lot more fun
> >> setting up their expeditions with precautions and skills needed
> >> to avoid getting lost and if they do, they'll enjoy the challenge
> >> of finding their way out again.
> >*nod*
> >But this is not something I would expect a MUD newbie to be able to
> >take on.
>
> What do you mean by 'MUD newbie'? Someone new to mudding? I agree, but
> they'll learn and grow into the game and learn what needs to be done
> to cope with the game world.
>
> A "low level" character? No reason they shouldn't be able to take it
> on. In their case, suitable precautions might include securing maps,
> or a guide who knows the way.
Well, I meant someone new to my MUD, and hence new to the concepts of
getting lost, needing a compass, and so on.
> >I'd expect someone to be of at least mid-level before mounting
> >a major expedition into the wilderness like this. And it has to be
> >circumventable: few MUD features piss me off more than Diku-
> >style "random exits".
>
> The facility to become lost can be implemented without having to
> resort to unpredictable room exits. For example, simply take away
> compass-point exits and give forward, back, left and right. Now it's
> much easier to get turned around and lose your way. Even auto-mapping
> clients are of limited aid here, if the player doesn't realise they
> have gotten turned around.
That's a *fascinating* idea which I hadn't thought of before, and it
opens up a lot of possiblities. I'll have to think some more about that
in order to give it the response it deserves....
> >> >It would also, of course, create major problems with any mapping
> >> >algorithm you were using.
> >> Only if your algorithm was designed in isolation and didn't take
the
> >> rest of the game into account.
> >How could you create an algorithm to memorise a route if the game
> >introduces uncontrollable deviations form the route you think you're
> >taking?
>
> The memory of the route is the memory of the route you thought you
> took, not the one you actually took. If you got turned around without
> noticing, then it won't be a 'valid' route and you'll likely become
> lost if you try and follow it again.
Ye-es - but that isn't necessarily good enough. If you want things to
be realistic then it ought to be possible for a player to follow a
route that he has followed before even if, in the middle somewhere, he
wasn't actually going in the direction that he thought he was. If he
remembers going forward, right, left, right, left, forward, and down
then it doesn't matter if, at step three, he thought he was facing East
but was actually facing North.
(Maybe I need to think about this some more).
[cut]
> >> If the player logs off, does the ship continue off without him? If
it
> >> does, what happens when he logs back in - he's swimming in the
ocean?
> >> Or should the entire ship freeze where it is until he comes back?
If
> >> so, what if there was another player on board too? Does that player
> >> get frozen and booted off? Or does that player continue with the
ship
> >> and when the first player logs back in he gets a magical second
copy
> >> of the ship, complete with all the treasure it was carrying in the
> >> cargo hold?
> [snip]
> >Don't think we need any of those. How in general terms do you handle
> >players logging off the MUD?
>
> On my mud? When players log off, the character is removed from the
> game world and saved (complete with inventory). When they return, they
> are placed back in the same room there were in before, providing it
> still exists. If not, they are automatically moved to the nearest room
> that does exist.
Fine.
[small cut]
> >I've no problem with the basic quit/rent
> >system, i.e. you can either quit, in which case you vanish in a puff
of
> >smoke and lose all your gear, and come back to the MUD in the same
> >location the next time you log on, or you have to find a pre-defined
> >safe haven in which case you can store all your gear, and (again)
> >reappear in the same place the next time you log on.
>
> Sounds utterly dreadful. So if you have to go in a hurry because your
> dog has just thrown up on the new carpet, you lose that artifact you
> just spent hours completing a complicated quest for? And you consider
> this playable?
>
> If you're happy with this kind of thing then no wonder you aren't sold
> on the benefits of a "realistic" world.
Well, as I said, it's all a matter of balance. The problem with your
system is, how do you prevent someone from abusing the quit function?
For example, suppose you have just killed a particularly ferocious
dragon, and just as it dies I nip in and steal the gem you've been
after all week. Then I run off a couple of rooms and quit. What are you
supposed to do about it? Or suppose that a couple of days later you run
into me again and demand that I return the gem on pain of death,
there's no way you can make good on your threat if I can just
dissappear by logging out and then return some time when you aren't
there - or even if you are still waiting there, just log off again. By
making a difference between quitting and renting, and allowing the
latter only at a few, specific locations - not too far apart, but
spaced so that it might take you 5 or 10 minutes to get to the nearest
one - and enforcing a loss of inventory when simply quitting, you solve
that problem: if you are trying to kill me to get your gem back and I
cheat by quitting and dissappearing rather than letting you kill me,
then I still lose the gem in the process - not to mention my other
gear. (But depending on the penalties for dying, that might be a better
choice than letting you slaughter me).
There are, no doubt, penty of other solutions - e.g. don't allow anyone
to quit if they've been in combat in the past 10 minutes - but I just
wanted to point out that there are always pros and cons to almost any
approach.
> [snip]
> >in extreme cases, e.g. if the ship actually sinks in the intervening
> >time. But in a case like that an unrealistic solution (player is
> >returned to his home port safe and sound) is preferable to a
realistic
> >but annoying one (player logs on to be told that he has drowned
because
> >the ship was attacked by pirates and scuttled while he was logged out
> >and unable to fight to protect it).
>
> I wouldn't do this because I don't really have a concept of the
> character persisting whilst the player is logged off.
We agree on that, at least.
> The most
> advanced scripting system in the world is not going to let my
> character behave as it would if I was logged on, and since roleplay is
> important to me I want my character behaving in a consistent way. I
> don't want to cede control of my character to the computer just
> because real-life has intervened.
Exactly.
> Richard has a different goal - he wants a completely persistent world
> and so he wants player characters to stay when players log off.
Mm. And I think he is ill-advised. :o)
> In
> that case, it's more "realistic" (consistent within the world) if they
> are subject to the same rules and risks regardless of whether the
> player is online or not.
Yeah - question is whether any player besides Richard himself will want
to play like that - or that (if they don't) that will trouble Richard.
(I suspect not).
mor...@niuhep.physics.niu.edu
><rmt...@my-deja.com> wrote
>> "Jon A. Lambert" wrote:
>> > Now in reading the discussion on portals. It was interesting to note
>> > that there was some nodding of heads all around that portals should be
>> > expensive in terms of energy and cost, rare and high level in a
>> > fantasy environment. I'd maintain that concept is as "unoriginal"
>> > as "elves".
How many fantasy novels include cheap and easy and common 'porting?
Dragonriders of Pern. Where it is controlled and does have potentially
deadly costs.
Argh! Can't remember now. The series set in a converted Medieval England
... the Dnarii or some such. That wasn't common, nor easy to set up
as I recall, but it wasn't teribly uncommon or costly to do.
In my list of things to think about I did include the idea that
it was easy and so counter-measures would have to be taken.
But for my world I am using well-guarded caravans to provide jobs for
PCs and to provide one excuse for all the fighters and trainers
and weapons that exist. Quick and easy portals would destroy that.
That may not be important to you but it is to me.
>> Maybe so, but unoriginality is probably all they have in common. Costly
>> portals are a solution.
>To what problem though? What you seem to be suggesting is that it is
>a problem that players can reach their destinations without extensively
>long travel times. Of course half of the muds I play on have nicely
>solved the travel time problem. To cross a desert it takes weeks of
>real time and that time passes on the mud in but a few minutes.
I used to play Lost Souls, outdoors you could go any direction you
pleased (a feature I find very desirable and immersive) You could
also cover every outdoor square of their world in ... something like
an hour. And a large part of that was because there were a couple of
spots where you had to feel your way around a deep chasm or a mountain
chain with a limited number of passes.
I'm sorry but it does nothing for my ability to suspend belief to
have an orc village 10 seconds from the city.
It was fun, it met a need for that environment, but ... as much as I
enjoy car camping in Wisconsin, it just isn't the same thing as
backpacking in the backcountry of Wyoming. I accept the idea that
some people like going to Jellystone Park franchises but don't expect
to find me there if I have another choice.
>The gladiator fight in the arena which takes 1-2 minutes in real time
>in the mud takes maybe 10 to 20 minutes.
That has as much to do with decision making and the heroic nature of
mud player characters as anything else.
[]
>Elves are solutions to problems involving story and theme.
Agreed.
[]
>Elves are symbolic shorthand. For what...is a much longer post.
Yes ...?
Robert the expectant
Myles L Skinner
>
> But for the other houses? I'd be hard pressed to describe any of them.
> Couldn't we use the same idea for a mud city?
That's pretty much what we've ended up doing. We're using different values
of the word "interesting" here. :) The street rooms that meet the minimum
standard are at least a bit better than, "This is Long Street, perhaps the
longest street in Windsor." (which I've actually seen as an entire room
description elsewhere!)
The truly interesting things in the city are mostly indoors--aside from the
occasional park or similar.
Myles L Skinner
>In article <8s26p7$jf0$1...@lucia.acsu.buffalo.edu>,
>
> Hmmm my city is currently only 132 rooms big, comprising of 47
> buildings - but then it's not had much chance to grow yet. I started
> the mud with one building that took up one room, with plenty of grassy
> plains around it, and left the rest up to the players :)
No doubt that gives it a very interesting shape--sort of organic in its
growth.
Our big city is very much a constructed city, built around a grid but with
some eccentricities here and there. That actually makes sense in terms of
our game world, as this is the most "modern" city in our world and it doesn't
have quite the same historical profile an ancient city might have.
Myles L Skinner
>On 11 Oct 2000 13:07:51 -0400, mski...@lucia.acsu.buffalo.edu (Myles
>L Skinner) wrote:
>
>> Did I write the whole system so we could play tag? No, I wrote it to provide
>> some means of travelling between remote locations. But it turned out that we
>> could use what we'd created to play--not in any goal-directed game sense,
>> but for the sheer fun of it.
>
> Can you describe a little of how it works? Is it in combination with a
> 'rooms' model of some kind? How do you define and describe areas, etc?
Yes, we've kept the 'rooms' model and the realspace (which I'm going to be
lazy and call RS) had to be integrated with the pre-existing model.
From the player's point of view, if they are wandering around an "area"
(using the word area in the technical SMAUG sense) then things will behave
much as they would expect. They can wander around from room to room, find
objects to play with, places to shop, things to do just as they would at
other MUDs with room-based areas.
A new player will always start in such an area.
Should they happen to hit a gate, they will be told that the gate leads
"outside" but they're not yet ready to go, and that they should go clear
it with their teacher. Right now we've got a token "skill" that really
just represents permission to go RS. There are probably more interesting
ways to deal with this, but we haven't gotten to that part yet. (i.e. guards
blocking your way unless you have a passport, or you're on a special list
that they can check, or whatever)
Once you're clear to go outside, it's as simple as walking out a gate.
The scale changes somewhat once you get to RS. You're now out on this grand
terrain map drawn ASCIIgraphically with hexagons, inspired by Battletech
MUXes I used to play. You'll be able to see the gate you just walked out of
and your own position in relation to it. You're no longer in a "room" as
such.
However, many of the familiar commands will work. "Look" shows you your
immediate surroundings, for example. The directional commands (n, nw, w, etc.)
don't actually move you anywhere; they just change your facing. If you want
to move, type "walk" and off you go. You can change direction, stop, decide
to start running, or whatever at any time. With a compass you'll even be
able to fine-tune your navigating so that you can head 87 degrees instead
of 90 if you're skilled enough to make that refinement.
If you walk into an area entrance (and entrances are clearly marked on the
map) then you get an appropriate message: i.e. "After a routine check of your
papers you enter Tierceron via the Fenningsgate, arriving at the east end
of rue d'Ormand. Welcome to Tierceron!" at which point the scale shifts and
you're back in the familiar room-based model again.
Now, RS is interesting enough, at least for me, even if it is only a way to
get from one place to another. However, we don't intend to stop at that. Since
we have all this terrain, why not allow as much interaction with it as we
possibly can. Already you can do things like dip your cup in a river and
come up with drinkable water--but don't do this in the ocean, or even worse,
a swamp! Objects dropped in the water will sink to the bottom, and if the
water is deep enough, you have to be able to dive to retrieve them. (All
objects sink right now. I'm working out the difference between sinking and
floating).
You should be able to do things in RS like climb trees or cliff-faces, swim,
dig holes, collect firewood, pick flowers, go ice-fishing, hunt small game
for supper, pitch a tent...and on and on.
A lot of these things aren't coded yet, but the potential is HUGE. I keep
adding new things a little bit at a time. It'll get there eventually.
Reading over the description I just wrote, I have to reflect that I really
haven't done it justice. If you are interested, email me and we can set up
a time so I can demonstrate.
>> I honestly don't remember what MUD you'd be speaking of here.
>
> I doubt you've heard of it since we aren't open yet. I'm speaking of
> Dawn Whispers, hopefully opening for some initial playtesting before
> the end of this year.
I'll keep that in mind. :)
> Right now we have the road network complete at 636 rooms.
So it's likely a bit bigger than Tierceron which has a road network of
something like 410 rooms.
rmt...@my-deja.com
"Jon A. Lambert" <jlsy...@nospam.ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> <rmt...@my-deja.com> wrote in message news:8s37bb$e87
$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> > > Now in reading the discussion on portals. It was interesting to
note
> > > that there was some nodding of heads all around that portals
should be
> > > expensive in terms of energy and cost, rare and high level in a
> > fantasy
> > > environment. I'd maintain that concept is as "unoriginal"
as "elves".
> >
> > Maybe so, but unoriginality is probably all they have in common.
Costly
> > portals are a solution.
>
> a problem that players can reach their destinations without
extensively
> long travel times. Of course half of the muds I play on have nicely
In the context of this thread yes. And thats what your reply seems to
ignore. Read on to find out why I think so.
> solved the travel time problem. To cross a desert it takes weeks of
> real time and that time passes on the mud in but a few minutes.
> The gladiator fight in the arena which takes 1-2 minutes in real time
> in the mud takes maybe 10 to 20 minutes. Yes Kira is right. Many
> muds take the exact same liberties that movies and books do, and cut
> away from scenes, make some scenes longer, and leap forward in time
> all just to provide the player with a realistic, immersive, and
> compellingly interesting detailed experience. And its very playable.
Whats that got to do with the type of realism that this thread is about?
Where the time taken to travel distances is consistent with how far the
distance is? Exactly nothing. My point was that books and movies
aren't
interactive mediums and therefore they have no choice but to do what
they do do. The fact that there are muds out there that don't apply the
design decisions that I do and employ the same devices that static
mediums
do adds no value to this discussion. As to whether muds can be done
employing those devices, being fun, playable, realistic and in a
compellingly interesting way, I don't doubt it for a minute. But the
fact they can also be those things which my mud can be gives them no
extra relevance given the fact they fail to aim for the same things as
a mud that implements realistic travel time. And I consider muds that
implement realistic time travel to be implicitly scorning such plot
devices as you describe, by definition.
Please excuse me if I go over the top in trying to prove my points in
this post, in the responses from Nick, Kira and others I am left with
a feeling they don't have the full picture I see when I try to explain
something. Which means that my arguments don't have the same meaning
to the reader as they do to me. Therefore I am attempting to explain
as fully as I can. I hope I am making a decent job.
> Acutally I was more interested in your comments on the possible
> problems and solutions regarding the earlier points I made about
> character persistency and multiplaying.
This rings no bells. I will mail myself to go back and look for it.
> Elves don't solve anything except perhaps to
> > stop
> > people pretending to be elves because elves aren't otherwise in your
> > theme.
>
> Elves are solutions to problems involving story and theme.
> Like Nick Bryant mentioned, familiarity adds to immersion and
suspension
> of belief. I think he made some excellent points with his
> "habityglabityglibbets". Tolkein did not invent elves and dwarves,
I really don't know what to say here. Sure, he made an excellent point,
but it had no relevance to the topic at hand IMO unless I missed
something.
They are common sense. If you play all the games that ripped off
Dungeon
Master, do you expect them to switch around the directions that the
arrow
keys move from the standard? No. Do you expect them to call a warrior
a
"nerfnab" or something equally bizarre? No. The point isn't about
familiarity adding immersion and suspension, its about playability - the
aspect of playability where if you do wierd shit, you should expect the
player to find it difficult to get involved. And if you can't get
involved
in the game because of bad design decisions, of course you are never
going
to get immersed.
Its hard to argue with you, because I tend to read your statements one
way, then when I have written a response I see that they can be read a
different way.
I'll try a different argument here as well. The fact that introducing
more of the same may add to immersion and suspension of disbelief is all
well and good - but it all comes back to what I see as Nick's
fundamental
problem, if I had realised this earlier, I might not have lost it in my
replies to him. He has this totally unacceptable belief that the world
revolves around him when it comes to muds, if a mud admin doesn't make
a world that he considers to be the ideal reality to play, then its
unplayable, not fun and selfish and narrowminded on their part. It also
includes the idea that all people like to play his idea of whats
acceptable in a mud. Therefore the fact he suggests that making a mud
that is familiar to him in look, feel and content will make it easier
for him to get involved is unsurprising to the least. Just because the
equivalent of elves in my world look nothing like Tolkiens elves doesn't
mean that this point implies. You can assume I am going to do my mud in
a way that it does, but you would be wrong.
What it comes down to in the end is that just because you do it
different,
doesn't mean you are going to do it wrong. Thats what I take from both
of my above arguments.
And as a last addition, familiarity doesn't always add to the immersion
and suspension. It can even work against it. If you are familiar with
Tolkiens versions of something and have no desire to play it, to find a
world that includes it may just kill both of the above right there and
then.
> Elves are symbolic shorthand. For what...is a much longer post.
My arguments still stand IMO.
> I would note that magic being arcane and rare is certainly a staple
> of fantasy literature. No disagreement. I would also note that in
> terms of muds this is also reinforced and implemented. How!? ;-)
> You see in fanstasy literature while magic is often rare and arcane,
> in spite of that fact, the leading characters contact with it is
> most often the centerpiece of the story. Stock Diku excellently
> captures the same sense, feel and attention to magic as the heros
> of the fantasy story. So while the reader of fantasy is just looking
> over the shoulder of the hero, in Diku they ARE the hero and their
> frequent interaction with magic is similar. No wonder it's widely
> popular. It's because its a damn good game design.
I have no comment on this. I agree in principle, and while they may
be widely popular in part because of that, I say that they are also
widely popular because they are an abstract representation of that.
Abstract as in a simplified implementation. And for the purposes of
actually producing a product, which they have and I haven't thats
what you need to do - dumb down a realistic implementation of your
theme of choice until a) it can be completed in an amount of time
that dependent people will accept and b) still provides a version
of the desired world that satisfies the involved parties to use.
And thats what I would define as its damn good game design.
Again I say, to produce a non-compromised/not-dumbed-down implementation
of your theme of choice does not mean it won't have all of the
same advantages.
Well, Ok, so I did have a comment :)
> Now if magic is arcane and rare in your fantasy enviroment, what
> sort of character would one play? Do you put a limit on the
> number of magic using characters then or require special request
> to play one? Because I have seen this done with some success.
Thats an interesting approach I haven't thought of. But I doubt I
would do that. Thats placing artificial limits outside the game on in
game resources. I would be more likely to link the availability of
a form of magic in an inversely proportional relationship to the amount
of effect using it has - with an increasingly visible application
as the ability required to use that given magic increases. Whether this
is part of a spell system that encourages magic users to research new
unique spells or what I am not sure yet. I'll also throw in that
I expect my mud to have an extremely large number of npcs, expecially
considering the size of my initial city.
> > Along
> > the same line as unique unrepeatable quests.
>
> Don't most muds have unique unrepeatble queests. I quest all the
> time and I also love playing on questy muds. Is code really necessary
> at all or even worth doing for this?
Depends on what a unique unrepeatable quest is. Certainly none of the
muds I have frequented have them. What I consider to be a unique
unrepeatable quest would take advantage of the depth of my game.
Couriering an object from one location to the next is a boring enough
quest that offers little challenge in a mud with realistic distances.
But when the required destination for the object is a long way away,
there is suddenly challenge involved. I'm going to expand on this a
bit more and list some example challenges.
o Ambush along the way. This one has the obvious problems of you
have to be there to deal with it. But overwhelming numbers are
overwhelming numbers whether you are there or not. If anything
an automated response to such a situation can increase your
chances of getting away.
o Maybe theres a deadline involved to get the reward, in which case
a more direct route might have to be taken.
Simple quests like this would be easy to generate and I would say that
reasonably complex quests could even be generated using the persistent
NPC's and the muds knowledge of the location of potential pawns to
involve. Characters on my mud have histories, they could even be
unwittingly involved in an automatically generated quest. Restraint
would of course be implemented in the system to make sure that people
don't get pestered.
I would put it to you that the depth my mud offers gives unique
unrepeatable quests a different slant than other muds have done.
Am I uninformed or wrong?
> >I have ideals for the
> > design
> > of all parts of my mud and I have yet to knowingly dumb one down
just to
> > justify another part.
>
> You must mean compromise, because I can't quite figure out what do
> you mean by "dumb down". Are you talking about an interface or
> something like that?
To dumb down your mud is to take what you goals and reduce them for the
purposes of simplicity I guess. I guess to compromise your goals might
be an equivalent phrase.
I started off designing a mud that was the same as everything out there.
It was probably equivalent to the Dikus you describe - although the
standard for dumbed down muds has probably changed since the times I
describe here. The design goals were along the lines of an ocean is a
set of prebuilt rooms that are linked but only allow travel in a certain
way. You logged in and wandered round without a class going to a
guild to join and gain access to the skills of the class membership
of that guild represented. Being new to both mudding and creating, I
took it for granted. Eventually, I attained some skill in writing LPC
code and because the most active creator on my mud. As I got more and
more familiar with the mudlib and what it was capable of doing, I
started wanting what I knew it to be capable of - but I was struck by
a thought, "Why do muds settle for this or a similar level of
abstraction when they can go so much further?".
And now we come back to justifying why Dikus are a good design.
Because its achievable while still being playable.
But being of the frame of mind which I describe, I consider that design
to be a copout. I can't blame anyone for choosing that copout, but
it is a dumbed down version of what I want to achieve. If for arguments
sake I was forced to implement under that design, yes, I would be
compromising my goals.
rr...@lanminds.com
wrote:
I am going to skip responding to the rest of this post and respond to
just this part. In real life, for these two societies to be
considered unique and different, it involves them being hard to get
to. (Not necessarily distant. A country that never lets "barbarians"
in but is right next door is probably going to be considered even more
exotic that one that is far away and just rumored about.) This is
hard to accomplish in a mud, since as soon as one person knows how to
get to the spot, many other people can find out. There is no real way
of limiting what people do.
In real life, you have the choice between spending a year or more
traveling to some exotic land, getting neat stuff and coming back and
selling them for immense profits. Or, you can spend that same amount
of time close to home, setting up a smaller business, maybe courting
the neighbor's daughter and having a kid. Most sane normal people are
going to take the second route. However, in a mud people don't play
ordinary people. They play the heros. They play the sort of people
who are going to go explore the unknown. So how do you maintain a
realistic world and economy when the majority of your players are
playing characters that should, technically, be a very small percent
of your population? To be honest, I have no clue. Maybe make aging
have more of an affect, so that those 5 trips to the exotic location
take up 10 years of your life? But still, what do you do about races
that live for centuries? Still, it's the fact that most of your
population is playing heros that is going to mess up your economy, not
the distance between your cities or how long it takes to get there.
Oh, and to your statement that travel isn't boring... I'm sorry, but
it is. Getting to neat new spots is fun, but the majority of the time
spent getting to them is not. My family did 2-week long road trips
for vacations, so I am speaking from that experience. There's
occasional interesting things that happen, but mostly it's pretty much
the same thing for hour after hour. Until even those "George
Washington slept here" signs become something to look forward to! :)
Kira Skydancer
>--
>Scatter ///\oo/\\\
>
>
Henry McDaniel
a good design.
> Because its achievable while still being playable.
>
> But being of the frame of mind which I describe, I consider that design
> to be a copout. I can't blame anyone for choosing that copout, but
> it is a dumbed down version of what I want to achieve. If for arguments
> sake I was forced to implement under that design, yes, I would be
> compromising my goals.
>
Hee hee. I think r.g.m.a is back to it's old pre-you-know-who days. And
me without my fireman's suit ;)
-McDaniel
Scatter
>On Thu, 12 Oct 2000 11:22:16 GMT, sca...@thevortex.com (Scatter)
>wrote:
[snip]
>>You just can't have realistic, believable seperation of these cultures
>>unless the distance between them does act as a barrier.
[snip]
>I am going to skip responding to the rest of this post and respond to
>just this part. In real life, for these two societies to be
>considered unique and different, it involves them being hard to get
>to. (Not necessarily distant. A country that never lets "barbarians"
>in but is right next door is probably going to be considered even more
>exotic that one that is far away and just rumored about.)
I'm not sure it would be more exotic - it'd certainly be seen as a
more interesting target, but this is just semantic quibbling. =)
>This is
>hard to accomplish in a mud, since as soon as one person knows how to
>get to the spot, many other people can find out. There is no real way
>of limiting what people do.
This is where distance works much better than more artificial limits.
If player A finds a way into the next-door-country, he can tell player
B and player B can then immediately do it and get in. If player A has
spent several real-time hours on a difficult journey to a distant
place, and then again on the way back - he can tell player B, but B
has to then face the same long journey to get there.
>In real life, you have the choice between spending a year or more
>traveling to some exotic land, getting neat stuff and coming back and
>selling them for immense profits. Or, you can spend that same amount
>of time close to home, setting up a smaller business, maybe courting
>the neighbor's daughter and having a kid. Most sane normal people are
>going to take the second route. However, in a mud people don't play
>ordinary people. They play the heros. They play the sort of people
>who are going to go explore the unknown.
I agree (and this is a good reason you need to have a large world to
explore.) =)
>So how do you maintain a
>realistic world and economy when the majority of your players are
>playing characters that should, technically, be a very small percent
>of your population? To be honest, I have no clue.
I tend to assume that players are a tiny fraction of the city, and
there is a background mass of population that's implied rather than
simulated via npcs. Thus you can absorb much of what the players do as
making little impact on the city as a whole - just have your economy
run on the assumption that players are a tiny minority.
However, this doesn't really help if one player can open a shop and
stock it fully with exotic items from a distant land, all under his
own power.
>Maybe make aging
>have more of an affect, so that those 5 trips to the exotic location
>take up 10 years of your life? But still, what do you do about races
>that live for centuries? Still, it's the fact that most of your
>population is playing heros that is going to mess up your economy, not
>the distance between your cities or how long it takes to get there.
I don't agree with the latter. If the journey is long and difficult,
it's much less likely that players will want to spend the time
building up a stock of exotics, let alone be able to haul items back
easily. A caravan stocked with goods travelling hundreds of miles must
be an inviting target for brigands, for example.
>Oh, and to your statement that travel isn't boring... I'm sorry, but
>it is. Getting to neat new spots is fun, but the majority of the time
>spent getting to them is not. My family did 2-week long road trips
>for vacations, so I am speaking from that experience. There's
>occasional interesting things that happen, but mostly it's pretty much
>the same thing for hour after hour. Until even those "George
>Washington slept here" signs become something to look forward to! :)
You seem to be comparing sitting in a car being driven mile after mile
to active travel - they don't compare. I'll get very bored as a
passenger in a car or bus or train or aeroplane. But half an hour in
an aeroplane is less boring than 4 hours as a car passenger.
I'll get much less bored if I'm driving the car. If I'm cycling,
riding a horse or walking, I'm very unlikely to get bored.
Travel can be boring, but it doesn't have to be. If it is, you've
chosen the wrong method of travelling.
--
Scatter ///\oo/\\\
Scatter
I don't have the time to write a lengthy reply to all of this, so I'm
going to pick and choose. =)
On Thu, 12 Oct 2000 16:00:39 GMT, Nick Bryant
<nicolas...@mswtech.com> wrote:
>Scatter wrote:
>> Nick Bryant wrote:
[snip]
>We're actually not as far apart as one might imagine on this point. I'm
>a professional programmer and an amateur author, and I certainly do get
>a lot out satisfaction out of the creative process, both technical and
>artistic. When it comes to programming, I certainly see myself, like
>you, as a craftsman rather than a technician. Where, we differ, though,
>is where we get the ultimate buzz. To you, it's creating something that
>finally works as you want it to. To me, although I certainly do get a
>big kick out of that, I get an even bigger one when someone says "oh, I
>just played through zone X, and it was *so* damned cool, well done!"
No, I don't think I differ so much there. I'll get a satisfied buzz
out of designing and building something that works as I wanted it to.
I'll get a bigger buzz if it turns out to have emmergent behaviour
that is even more desirable (a good example is the tag game that Myles
mentioned). And I do get the biggest buzz from some unrelated person
saying "Hey, that's really cool - I love it."
It's just that that biggest buzz is not my purpose. If it happens, so
much the better, but I'm not chasing it because I don't want to
compromise my artistic integrity.
I know that sounds incredibly pompous but I can't see how else to say
it. I have a similar problem with a novel I'm writing. I have a tale
that I want to tell, and I'm going to tell that tale. I'd like for the
book to be published eventually and if other people read and enjoy it
then so much the better - but my purpose is not to write a book that
will sell well, just to tell the story I want to tell, in the way that
I want to tell it.
[snip]
>Someone else compared the MUD-building experience to running a gourmet
>restaurant, which is a good analogy - but then inaccurately compared
>my approach to running a fast-food outlet. I think, if I ever were to
>create a MUD, it would be very much a gourmet affair -
Intentionally or not, you did give the impression of prefering to
satisfy the masses than to cater to a niche.
>if anyone wants me to repost all my grandiose MUD ideas, I'm happy to
>do so
Please do - I for one am interested.
>- the difference is that if every single customer who tried the
>caramelised red onion and seared goats' cheese tart absolutely hated
>it, then rather than assume every customer in my restaurant was stupid,
>I would think about changing the recipe - or even changing the menu.
Well we're stretching the analogy somewhat. My position is more along
the lines that if you open a pasta restaurant then people who don't
like pasta are stupid to eat there. And if they eat there and then
complain about the pasta, I'm going to laugh at them rather than stop
running a pasta restaurant.
[snip]
>> & college" or "what & college" or "tell & about & college" so that it
>> would answer questions like "where is the college?" and "Tell me more
>> about the college" and players wandered up and said "college" and that
>> was that.
>From my perspective your problem there isn't lack of imagination of the
>part of the players, it's a quite rational (albeit wrong) expectation
>derived from playing other MUDs.
The _real_ problem was simply that I was coding for the wrong mud, and
thus had the wrong audience. As I was forced to admit, eventually. =)
>Most NPCs they've enocuntered before
>respond to single-word keywords, so unless there is specific visible
>evidence to the contrary why shouldn't they assume that yours works the
>same way? And if it fails to respond to single words, why shouldn't
>they assume it is intrinsically non-responsive?
Exactly - the npc was out of place, it wasn't consistent with the way
the rest of the world works. Players didn't expect npcs to behave like
people or to need to be spoken to intelligently.
>Besides, it isn't even
>realistic to have it simply ignore one-word accostings.
As I've mentioned elsewhere, there were other restrictions involved
that meant it wasn't practical for it to respond to all relevant
keywords as single words, though that would have been better for that
particular mud.
>That's actually quite a good example of where your and my design
>philosophies differ, I think - both of us would like to see a
>sophisticated NPC program that responds to sophisticated cues, but you
>aren't interested in players who aren't sufficiently in tune with your
>design goals that they can come up with the right questions off their
>own bat. I, on the other hand, think that it's a waste to code
>something like that if no one gets to see what it's capable of.
At the time, I coded the npc to suit the way I played, rather than the
way most other people played. In Dawn Whispers, I plan to have a
'tutorial/advisor' mode (inspired by something Richard suggested
actually) which will provide hints and advice to the player, to show
them the way the world works and the way they need to play.
[snip]
>> You just can't have realistic, believable seperation of these cultures
>> unless the distance between them does act as a barrier.
>Okay. All of this, to my mind, is a worthwhile goal. But as with any
>goal that doesn't mean that *any* mechanism which achieves that goal is
>necessarily a good thing to implement.
Agreed, distance is not the only method of seperating such cultures.
>Suppose that a powerful local
>sorceror offered a teleportation portal between western and eastern
>civilisations. Suppose that use of this portal was fantastically
>expensive, to the extent that hardly any NPC could afford to use it
>(setting up a regular trade route, for example, would be uneconomic),
>and that only the very wealthiest players could get the necessary money
>together - and even then only occasionally, with a lot of wealth-
>gathering needed in between. And now suppose that this portal is in
>fact the *only* way of getting from one area to the other.
Yes, this does provide a similar barrier to travel between remote
locations. However, to my mind a couple of disadvantages are apparent.
Firstly, my world doesn't have this kind of magic. Such a portal could
only be created by one or other of the gods and since all their power
comes from their worshippers, they'd need a damn good reason to expend
enough energy to do this. Any such enormous energy expenditure would
potentially put the god at a disadvantage to the others - a weak
moment they could take advantage of. (Naturally, this is an issue
unique to my world.)
Secondly, whilst this method does solve the barrier-to-travel issue,
it provides none of ancillary advantages that masses of intervening
terrain gives you - potential for resources, placement of other
interesting sites to visit, adventures en-route and so forth.
>in detail). Wouldn't all of this achieve the necessary separation
>between the two zones *without* requiring hours of uneventful journey
>time for players to get from one to the other?
I don't understand this constant insistence that the journey is
uneventful. It doesn't have to be. The longer the journey, the less
likely it is to be uneventful. And practically, if you're coming back
loaded with exotic valuables, an uneventful journey might be a
godsend.
>Spending four hours
>watching a screen that simply repeats "You haven't got there yet" over
>and over again would not be immersive, now matter how realistic it
>might be to make me wait.
If the journeys are that dull, you've implemented it very poorly.
>Look: no one, least of all me, would or ever *could* have any problem
>at all with a MUD in which every single location is hand-crafted to be
>fascinating, and which has so many original, intriguing, unique
>locations that you would need to walk through tens of thousands of them
>to get from one city to another. Nobody could possibly have any
>objection to that. The problem is that this is difficult or impossible
>to achieve.
This makes a whole bunch of assumptions:
- that a location has to be hand-crafted to be interesting
- that every single location passed through has to be interesting
- that there is no other way of travelling than to walk
And so on.
This discussion is starting to become a repeating nightmare of:
"If you implement X badly, it'll really suck."
"Yes, but you can do X well."
"But if you implement X like this, it'll really suck."
"Yes, but that's implementing X badly."
"But look, this would suck."
"Yes it would - but you don't have to do it like that."
Etc.
>What some people are arguing is that there should be a large
>artificial time delay incurred in crossing the (relatively small)
>number of intermediate locations, and/or that the journey should not be
>an interactive one, and thus the time taken to travel (say) 40
>locations is stretched out until it is consistent with the imagined
>distance involved.
"Yes, but that's implementing X badly." =)
[snip]
>as is necessary to bridge the gap. But the important thing is to make
>whatever happens on the journey enjoyable to experience. If the only
>way to do that is to make it last 5 minutes, then I don't have a
>fundamental problem with that.
If the only way you can make the journey interesting is to make it
really short, then it's not worth making the journey in the first
place.
[snip]
>Yes, but if it's interesting, that's not a problem. What I object to is
>making the player go through 5 hours of staring glassy-eyed at the
>screen with no options to do anything - or suggesting that he log off
>because the next five hours is going to be so dull he might as well be
>off-line.
"Yes it would - but you don't have to do it like that." =)
[snip]
>> Well I don't think it does - there's still the issue of whether you
>> would like being forced to spend a large amount travelling to the city
>> you want to get to so that you can do what you want to do.
[snip]
>I probably would want to provide alternatives to long journeys, even if
>it consists of toadying up to the high level mages....
Assumes your world has high level mages that can assist travel.
I'd provide in-theme methods of travel that are appropriate. You might
be able to take a carriage to the next city, but there's unlikely to
be a carriage to the other side of the continent. You might be able to
get there by taking carriages between other cities on the way, though.
There's not likely to be a carriage into that desert city, but you
might be able to get hold of a camel to ride and get there faster that
way. Or perhaps there'll be a trade caraven you can join.
Personally, I find all these options more interesting than "zap,
you're there." If you can zap there, getting there is no achievement.
>> >> >- If I ever do run a MUD I will encourage a highly interventionist
>> >> >policy on the part of immortals - but not as immortals. Instead,
>> >> >they will (for example) issue quests while disguised as NPC's
>> >> >("I need you to deliver this to so-and-so in the next village")
[snip]
>I don't think people are understanding where I'm coming from with this
>bit.
Probably has a lot to do with the example you chose, above - which is
precisely the sort of task that is best automated rather than
requiring staff attention and effort.
Your newer example was much better. Even though I've snipped it for
space. =)
[snip]
>Of course even something as complex as this *could* be scripted in its
>entirety (and indeed in quite a number of cases it *would* be, if I had
>anything to do with it). But also allowing bored immortals to improvise
>this sort of thing in real time *as well* can only make things more
>enjoyable.
Oh I agree with this and intend to arrange such events myself. =)
>There's also non-quest activity to arrange. One example I've mentioned
>before would be to make a large orc raiding band and have them assault
>the main MUD city. Again, up to a point this could be pre-scripted -
>but suppose the orcs actually get through the gate and start pillaging
>the town - it's going to be much easier for player-controlled orcs to
>pillage realistically.
If you've got enough staff with enough time, then you can do things
like this using staff to play npcs and the result will feel more real
than computer controlled characters. But I think you can go a very
long way without requiring human intervention to play this kind of
part.
[snip]
>> This is a policy that results in everything being overpowered.
>> Warriors are too powerful and have the edge, so you boost the mages a
>> little. Later on, the mages have a new spell added and now they are
>> too powerful, so you have to boost them up a bit. You can't reduce
>> anything, because that would upset players, god forbid.
>
>Oh, now you're just being silly.
You say that, but I've seen it happen. I've watched this cycle play
out on three different muds (all more-or-less stock diku derivatives
as it happens. I hasten to add I had no attachment to any of them.
*grin*)
[snip]
>For example: suppose a particular
>offensive spell turned out to be just too powerful, and suppose that
>there is a system of exchanging practice points for skills and spells.
(Bad system, IMO =)
>The bad way of handling this would be to announce "from now on the
>finger of death spell will do only one third of the damage it used to."
>This players would be quite rightly pissed off by. (Actually an even
>worse way of handling it would be to change the power of the spell
>without even telling anyone).
To be perfectly honest, I'd probably do this, more or less. An
announcement along the lines of "The finger of death spell has turned
out to be much more powerful than expected. This is causing problems
with game balance, so it will be adjusted accordingly to bring it in
line with everything else."
I wouldn't give any numbers as to power reductions or whatever, that
might set expectations on how it should work. I'd then probably wait a
couple of days before actually making the adjustment (thus heading off
any immediate outcry of "but it's crap now!" since players won't spot
any difference). Then I'd make an initial change, perhaps half the
intended reduction. Perhaps a week later, I'd reduce it to the final
intended level.
>The better way to do it:
>
>1) Announce that "we have a problem." Explain that the spell is so
>powerful that once a spell-caster acquires it he becomes essentially
>invincible and this upsets game balance, and makes playing other
>classes undesirable. Ask for suggestions as to what to do about it.
>(Maybe a player will come up with a solution you haven't thought of).
I wouldn't ask players for suggestions because this would give them a
sense of control over the outcome which they don't have. It all so
suggests "I'm the guy in charge, but I really don't know how to run
the game. What do you think I should do?"
If it's a clear cut balance problem, it's very unlikely that a player
will be able to suggest a workable solution that your own staff-level
discussions haven't already covered.
>2) Assuming that it is decided that the spell should be reduced in
>power, don't just change the spell code and leave it at that. Instead,
>make sure that every player who has spent practice points on acquiring
>a level of skill in that spell a) has their skill in that spell reduced
>to zero, and b) has *all* of the practice points that they spent when
>originally acquiring the spell *refunded*, so that they have the choice
>of reacquiring the same spell to the same level if they wish, or (if
>they feel that, had they known when learning the spell that it would
>become much less powerful then they wouldn't have learned it) spending
>the practice points on something else instead.
I might do something like this if it was a really noticable reduction
and if the mud was considered fully open. I wouldn't do this during a
beta-testing phase where it's expected that aspects of the game will
change.
I also think I wouldn't do a full refund - perhaps if the spell has
become 50% less powerful, I might refund 50% of the effort they put
into it.
[snip]
>> >Not necessarily. For example, far more strategy is possible in a
>> >turn-based combat system than one that functions in real time.
>> Rubbish, it just means you can take your time to think about things as
>> you go along rather than having to plan in advance. It doesn't make
>> any difference to what things it is possible to do - what strategies
>> are possible to implement. This is entirely dependent upon the depth
>> of your game - how "real" you've made your world.
>No, I disagree. If you have a turn-based combat system then it means
>you can introduce a much larger number of variables than you physically
>have time to manipulate if you are running at one combat round every
>two seconds.
Erm, I think that's what I said. A turn-based system gives you more
time to decide what to do. It doesn't change what options are
possible, it just gives you more time to choose between the options.
To make more options possible, you have to add more depth to your
world, making it a more realistic world. That is true regardless of
whether your combat is turn-based or real-time.
[snip examples]
>I'm sure one could think of plenty of others. Now, it's easy enough to
>have all of these variables, and tweak them as and when you want to
>when you're not actually fighting, but if your combat system runs at
>two seconds per round there's no way you are going to have time to
>tweak *all* of those variables to whatever values you want in each and
>every round. But if the combat is turn-based, then you can.
Right, it gives you more time to think and choose. But you can only
choose from implemented possibilities. This does make more complicated
strategies easier to do (though a good combat-scripting system can
alleviate this, providing for reflex actions and so forth.)
Which ever type of combat you have, the only way to make more
strategies possible is to make your world support more depth and
realism. If your world doesn't support picking up a handful of dust
and throwing it at someone's eyes then you aren't going to be able to
do it, no matter which type of combat system you have.
>(No, I probably wouldfn't have turn-based combat inmy own MUD, I merely
>wish to make the point that realism and depth of strategic opportunity
>are not necessarily one and the same thing).
But you must admit that as a general rule, increasing depth and
world-realism increases the strategic possibilities.
[snip]
>> My own current preference is for a movement points/fatigue system,
>> such that different methods of travel allow you to move further in the
>> same amount of time.
>But wouldn't that risk you missing something interesting because it
>fell in the middle of a fast move?
Yes, if you move from place to place quickly without paying attention
to your surroundings then you might miss something. I don't consider
this much of an issue. If you want to be sure you don't miss anything,
move slower.
[snip]
>> The facility to become lost can be implemented without having to
>> resort to unpredictable room exits. For example, simply take away
>> compass-point exits and give forward, back, left and right. Now it's
>> much easier to get turned around and lose your way. Even auto-mapping
>> clients are of limited aid here, if the player doesn't realise they
>> have gotten turned around.
>That's a *fascinating* idea which I hadn't thought of before, and it
>opens up a lot of possiblities. I'll have to think some more about that
>in order to give it the response it deserves....
Actually, you don't even need to change to forward/back/left/right. If
you have a mechanism that allows to to list exits by the direction
that the player thinks they are in, rather than the one they actually
lead then you can achieve the same result.
>> >How could you create an algorithm to memorise a route if the game
>> >introduces uncontrollable deviations form the route you think you're
>> >taking?
>> The memory of the route is the memory of the route you thought you
>> took, not the one you actually took. If you got turned around without
>> noticing, then it won't be a 'valid' route and you'll likely become
>> lost if you try and follow it again.
>Ye-es - but that isn't necessarily good enough. If you want things to
>be realistic then it ought to be possible for a player to follow a
>route that he has followed before even if, in the middle somewhere, he
>wasn't actually going in the direction that he thought he was. If he
>remembers going forward, right, left, right, left, forward, and down
>then it doesn't matter if, at step three, he thought he was facing East
>but was actually facing North.
Well, the way I see it, if the player gets confused, then the sequence
of steps he remembers doesn't match the sequence of steps he actually
took. So if he tries to repeat that sequence, he'll only end up in the
same place if he happens to make the same mistake in the same place.
For example, suppose he got turned around without noticing and then
went forward. To go the same direction without getting turned around,
he'd have to go left. If next time he got there, he didn't get turned
around but remembered going forward, he'd still go forward - and
forward would not be the same direction he went last time.
[snip]
>> >I've no problem with the basic quit/rent system,
[snip]
>> Sounds utterly dreadful. So if you have to go in a hurry because your
>> dog has just thrown up on the new carpet, you lose that artifact you
>> just spent hours completing a complicated quest for? And you consider
>> this playable?
>Well, as I said, it's all a matter of balance.
I'm not sure what you mean there. Surely being forced to either go to
a certain place and pay a certain amount of money in order to offline,
or lose all the things you have gained in the session is bad for
playability? I'm exploring this forest, but I have to leave it and
find my way back out and go back to an inn and pay money to log off.
And then when I come back, I have to waste time going back to the
forest and finding my way back to where I was before I can start
playing from where I was before.
Or I log back into the forest, naked and alone.
Nasty.
>The problem with your system is, how do you prevent someone from
>abusing the quit function?
There are some restrictions - for example, you can't quit if you are
actively in combat - you must disengage first.
>For example, suppose you have just killed a particularly ferocious
>dragon, and just as it dies I nip in and steal the gem you've been
>after all week. Then I run off a couple of rooms and quit. What are you
>supposed to do about it? Or suppose that a couple of days later you run
>into me again and demand that I return the gem on pain of death,
>there's no way you can make good on your threat if I can just
>dissappear by logging out and then return some time when you aren't
>there - or even if you are still waiting there, just log off again.
Such abuse is considered cheating (using necessary OOC mechanisms to
thwart IC play.) I would use the 'cheat' command to report it,
explaining what is happening. I would then use the 'cheat-log' command
to start the mud logging my session so that I can then demonstrate
your behaviour. (The point of this is that the mud's log can be
considered authoritive, whereas a log submitted by a player could
easily be faked.)
The complaint and associated log would then be checked over by an
Administrator and if the administrator agrees that 'quit' is being
used to give an unfair advantage, then you will be dealt with
accordingly.
>By
>making a difference between quitting and renting, and allowing the
>latter only at a few, specific locations - not too far apart, but
>spaced so that it might take you 5 or 10 minutes to get to the nearest
>one - and enforcing a loss of inventory when simply quitting, you solve
>that problem:
You solve that one single problem, but at the expense of general
playability - which I thought you were all for. =)
>There are, no doubt, penty of other solutions - e.g. don't allow anyone
>to quit if they've been in combat in the past 10 minutes - but I just
>wanted to point out that there are always pros and cons to almost any
>approach.
Of course there are, but I've never considered the quit-and-rent
system to be either realistic or playable, so it fails on both the
important counts.
[snip]
>> Richard has a different goal - he wants a completely persistent world
>> and so he wants player characters to stay when players log off.
>Mm. And I think he is ill-advised. :o)
>
>> In that case, it's more "realistic" (consistent within the world) if they
>> are subject to the same rules and risks regardless of whether the
>> player is online or not.
>
>Yeah - question is whether any player besides Richard himself will want
>to play like that - or that (if they don't) that will trouble Richard.
>(I suspect not).
I'm sure I've heard of muds that do do this and the did seem to have
players that liked the system. I can't remember any names though,
perhaps some other readers can help out.
--
Scatter ///\oo/\\\
Nick Bryant
> I don't have the time to write a lengthy reply to all of this, so I'm
> going to pick and choose. =)
See, now you're just quibbling over the meaning of the word "buzz". :-p
For "buzz" read "satisfaction" if it makes you feel better. What you
find ultimately most satisfying is the act of creation according to
your own goals without compromise. What I find ultimately the most
satisfying is other people's appreciation of my creations.
[cut]
> >if anyone wants me to repost all my grandiose MUD ideas, I'm happy
to
> >do so
>
> Please do - I for one am interested.
I shall - I'll need a little bit of time to edit them, though: some
interesting things have come up lately that I want to plagiarise. ;-)
> >- the difference is that if every single customer who tried the
> >caramelised red onion and seared goats' cheese tart absolutely hated
> >it, then rather than assume every customer in my restaurant was
stupid,
> >I would think about changing the recipe - or even changing the menu.
>
> Well we're stretching the analogy somewhat. My position is more along
> the lines that if you open a pasta restaurant then people who don't
> like pasta are stupid to eat there. And if they eat there and then
> complain about the pasta, I'm going to laugh at them rather than stop
> running a pasta restaurant.
From my perspective that's fine - but if people who *do* actually like
pasta start complaining about the food, then I would regard *that* as a
problem.
[cut]
> >Besides, it isn't even
> >realistic to have it simply ignore one-word accostings.
>
> As I've mentioned elsewhere, there were other restrictions involved
> that meant it wasn't practical for it to respond to all relevant
> keywords as single words, though that would have been better for that
> particular mud.
You couldn't make it respond to "college" as distinct from "* college
*"? (Asterisk = wildcard-of-at-least-one-character).
> >That's actually quite a good example of where your and my design
> >philosophies differ, I think - both of us would like to see a
> >sophisticated NPC program that responds to sophisticated cues, but
you
> >aren't interested in players who aren't sufficiently in tune with
your
> >design goals that they can come up with the right questions off their
> >own bat. I, on the other hand, think that it's a waste to code
> >something like that if no one gets to see what it's capable of.
>
> At the time, I coded the npc to suit the way I played, rather than the
> way most other people played. In Dawn Whispers, I plan to have a
> 'tutorial/advisor' mode (inspired by something Richard suggested
> actually) which will provide hints and advice to the player, to show
> them the way the world works and the way they need to play.
I always feel it's nicer (more immersive :->) to have tutorials handled
inside the game engine rather than as OOC instructions, but that isn't
always possible....
Preparation for invasion? :-)
> Any such enormous energy expenditure would
> potentially put the god at a disadvantage to the others - a weak
> moment they could take advantage of. (Naturally, this is an issue
> unique to my world.)
All right, fair enough, that was an off-the-top-of-my-head idea, it
inevitably can't be a universal solution. The point I was making wasn't
to do with that idea as such, I was simply pointing out that are almost
always alternatives to just about everything, and it's important to
stay focused on the *effect* you're trying to achieve rather than any
given method you come up with which might achieve it.
[cut]
> >Look: no one, least of all me, would or ever *could* have any problem
> >at all with a MUD in which every single location is hand-crafted to
be
> >fascinating, and which has so many original, intriguing, unique
> >locations that you would need to walk through tens of thousands of
them
> >to get from one city to another. Nobody could possibly have any
> >objection to that.
Everyone please note that I have made the immediately preceding
statement. :-)
> >The problem is that this is difficult or impossible
> >to achieve.
>
> This makes a whole bunch of assumptions:
> - that a location has to be hand-crafted to be interesting
> - that every single location passed through has to be interesting
> - that there is no other way of travelling than to walk
> And so on.
Well, as I said, if a randomly-generated area really is as interesting
to explore as a hand-coded area, then the whole problem pretty much
dissappears. The only question is whether it can be.
[cut]
> >What some people are arguing is that there should be a large
> >artificial time delay incurred in crossing the (relatively small)
> >number of intermediate locations, and/or that the journey should not
be
> >an interactive one, and thus the time taken to travel (say) 40
> >locations is stretched out until it is consistent with the imagined
> >distance involved.
>
> "Yes, but that's implementing X badly." =)
I'm glad you agree.
[cut]
> I'd provide in-theme methods of travel that are appropriate. You might
> be able to take a carriage to the next city, but there's unlikely to
> be a carriage to the other side of the continent. You might be able to
> get there by taking carriages between other cities on the way, though.
> There's not likely to be a carriage into that desert city, but you
> might be able to get hold of a camel to ride and get there faster that
> way. Or perhaps there'll be a trade caraven you can join.
>
> Personally, I find all these options more interesting than "zap,
> you're there." If you can zap there, getting there is no achievement.
Not necessarily. Suppose that casting a teleportation spell requires
material ingredients that are extremely hard to find. Suppose it drains
so much magical energy that a spell-caster risks death if he casts the
spell when not fully charged, or attempts to do any other spell-casting
for some time afterwards. There are always alternatives....
> >> >> >- If I ever do run a MUD I will encourage a highly
interventionist
> >> >> >policy on the part of immortals - but not as immortals.
Instead,
> >> >> >they will (for example) issue quests while disguised as NPC's
> >> >> >("I need you to deliver this to so-and-so in the next village")
> [snip]
> >I don't think people are understanding where I'm coming from with
this
> >bit.
>
> Probably has a lot to do with the example you chose, above - which is
> precisely the sort of task that is best automated rather than
> requiring staff attention and effort.
>
> Your newer example was much better. Even though I've snipped it for
> space. =)
Hmph. >:-(
> [snip]
> >Of course even something as complex as this *could* be scripted in
its
> >entirety (and indeed in quite a number of cases it *would* be, if I
had
> >anything to do with it). But also allowing bored immortals to
improvise
> >this sort of thing in real time *as well* can only make things more
> >enjoyable.
>
> Oh I agree with this and intend to arrange such events myself. =)
Good, then we're agreed about that too. :-)
[cut]
> >There's also non-quest activity to arrange. One example I've
mentioned
> >before would be to make a large orc raiding band and have them
assault
> >the main MUD city. Again, up to a point this could be pre-scripted -
> >but suppose the orcs actually get through the gate and start
pillaging
> >the town - it's going to be much easier for player-controlled orcs to
> >pillage realistically.
>
> If you've got enough staff with enough time, then you can do things
> like this using staff to play npcs and the result will feel more real
> than computer controlled characters. But I think you can go a very
> long way without requiring human intervention to play this kind of
> part.
I'm not suggesting otherwise - I'm just saying that however much
computer-generated fun you have, there will always be a space for some
human-generated fun on the top of it.
[cut]
> [snip]
> >For example: suppose a particular
> >offensive spell turned out to be just too powerful, and suppose that
> >there is a system of exchanging practice points for skills and
spells.
>
> (Bad system, IMO =)
How would you handle it? I'll go into this in more depth if I ever
repost my arrogantly-entitled "ideas for an ideal MUD".... My initial
idea was to have skills that improve primarily with use, perhaps also
with training top-ups that would cost gold. But it's so difficult to
make an "improve with use" system that isn't susceptible to being
abused by means of client programs. (Ride up and down 1000 times, or
cast a certain spell every time you get a message indicating your mana
is fully recharged, whatever). So my alternative idea was to have
skills improve as a result of spending experience points (which
wouldn't just be awarded for killing - more for exploration or quest-
solving). So the spending of experience points would represent a
retroactive decision about what skill you were focusing on improving
during your previous adventure. "I've been practising my tracking
skills, and I have now practised them enough to improve them by 1%".
Hmm. Well, it depends how you phrase it. I suppose what I would
actually say in that case is "At the moment I intend to significantly
reduce the damage done by the spell. Those who have learned it will be
given the option of unlearning it and having their experience points
refunded. Unless of course anyone has a better idea...?"
> If it's a clear cut balance problem, it's very unlikely that a player
> will be able to suggest a workable solution that your own staff-level
> discussions haven't already covered.
True - but perception is important. If the majority of players on a MUD
I was running felt that I was doing a bad job, then it's likely
(although not certain) that I would *IPSO FACTO* be doing a bad job. If
I were a player I would like to feel that my opinions were at least
considered. And I would like to feel that the admins cared enough about
my feelings to at least keep me informed as to what was going on. And
any action is going to induce less of a hostile reaction if there's a
satisfactory explanation given at the time. The sort of mud admin
behaviour which really annoys me is not just stupid, but stupid and
*arbitrary*.
> >2) Assuming that it is decided that the spell should be reduced in
> >power, don't just change the spell code and leave it at that.
Instead,
> >make sure that every player who has spent practice points on
acquiring
> >a level of skill in that spell a) has their skill in that spell
reduced
> >to zero, and b) has *all* of the practice points that they spent when
> >originally acquiring the spell *refunded*, so that they have the
choice
> >of reacquiring the same spell to the same level if they wish, or (if
> >they feel that, had they known when learning the spell that it would
> >become much less powerful then they wouldn't have learned it)
spending
> >the practice points on something else instead.
>
> I might do something like this if it was a really noticable reduction
> and if the mud was considered fully open. I wouldn't do this during a
> beta-testing phase where it's expected that aspects of the game will
> change.
When beta-testing I don't think the players can reasonably expect
anything to be permanenent - that's the whole point of beta testing.
Most sensible players would want to start a new character as soon as
everything settles down anyway, I would think. But once things are
properly up and running, any significant change needs to be handled
sensitively. It isn't just a question of how big the change is, either,
it's also a question of how many resources the player would have have
had to expend to get whatever it was in the first place. Halving the
damage of a magic missile spell might not be much of an issue if the
mages only had to spend a couple of thousand XP to get it up to Master
level anyway, but if they've had to invest 15 million XP just to get
the spell to 50% knowledge, then messing with it even slightly is going
to cause a lot of ill-feeling.
> I also think I wouldn't do a full refund - perhaps if the spell has
> become 50% less powerful, I might refund 50% of the effort they put
> into it.
Well, that would depend on how the learning system worked, whether
there was a similar alternative spell, how much that spell cost, and so
on.... Suppose that the reduction made the spell barely more powerful
than prismatic spray (the next offensive spell down - have you ever
read any Jack Vance?) It might be that, with the spell at its original
power, it made sense for mages to learn both; but with the spell at its
new power it makes sense to choose one or the other, but no sense at
all to choose both. Under those circumstances you're going to make
people who have already learned both spells feel very cheated.
Please note that I am a firm believer in a MUD admin having absolute
power over his own MUD. Any attempt at anything that actually resembles
democracy is almost certainly headed for disaster. But I believe in a
benevolent and transparent absolute dictatorship rather than an
arbitrary and secretive absolute dictatorship. :-)
> [snip]
> >> >Not necessarily. For example, far more strategy is possible in a
> >> >turn-based combat system than one that functions in real time.
> >> Rubbish, it just means you can take your time to think about
things as
> >> you go along rather than having to plan in advance. It doesn't make
> >> any difference to what things it is possible to do - what
strategies
> >> are possible to implement. This is entirely dependent upon the
depth
> >> of your game - how "real" you've made your world.
> >No, I disagree. If you have a turn-based combat system then it means
> >you can introduce a much larger number of variables than you
physically
> >have time to manipulate if you are running at one combat round every
> >two seconds.
>
> Erm, I think that's what I said. A turn-based system gives you more
> time to decide what to do. It doesn't change what options are
> possible, it just gives you more time to choose between the options.
>
> To make more options possible, you have to add more depth to your
> world, making it a more realistic world. That is true regardless of
> whether your combat is turn-based or real-time.
Yes, but the number of strategic options will be limited by your
physical ability to change them. If you have the opportunity to change
every one of 8 or 9 combat-related attributes in every single round,
that's a very different situation from (effectively) having to decide
on a single combination before the battle and sticking to it right the
way through, because there simply isn't time to change things. Constant
modification seems to me to be far more tactically complex. For
example: you size up your opponent beforehand and notice that the
armour on his left arm is lighter than that anywhere else on his body.
So you decide to primarily target that arm in order to maximise damage.
However, during the fight you notice something odd: your enemy is
persistently defending his right leg and letting you score hits on the
lightly-armoured arm. If you're in a turn-based fight then you will
have time to notice this, and ask yourself: "is there perhaps some
critical weakness associated with his right leg, such that even though
I am damaging his arm he can't allow me to hit his right leg even once?
or is this perhaps a bluff intended to make me think that and distract
me from the arm? or does the arm actually have some form of protection
that I'm not aware of such that even though it looks like I'm damaging
it, actually I'm not doing any harm?" You might then adjust your combat
tactics accordingly. Or alternatively: "my enemy has chosen to defend
his head for the past two rounds: does this mean that he will change
tactic this round and defend somewhere else, or is he going to stick
with the same defence pattern for the whole fight?" Or: "his blows are
powerful enough to damage me even through my shield - I'd better switch
to dodging rather than shield-blocking." But if the fight is over too
quickly then you won't have the opportunity to make any of these
decisions, and thus the whole thing becomes less strategic. As soon as
some logistical consideration makes it *practically* impossible to
change a variable, then that variable loses much of its reason for
existing.
To take a rather extreme analogy, suppose you are going to decide an
argument by playing best of 9 rounds of scissors/paper/stone. Would it
be more interesting to choose what symbol you want to play each round,
or choose a single symbol to play beforehand and have both players
repeat their original choice each round?
[cut]
> >(No, I probably wouldfn't have turn-based combat inmy own MUD, I
merely
> >wish to make the point that realism and depth of strategic
opportunity
> >are not necessarily one and the same thing).
>
> But you must admit that as a general rule, increasing depth and
> world-realism increases the strategic possibilities.
As a *general* rule, certainly - but not *always*, and not
*exclusively*. If you have a fast-turn-over combat system then
introducing additional possibilities starts to suffer from diminishing
returns after a while because you simply don't have the time to
actually use any of them.
> [snip]
> >> The facility to become lost can be implemented without having to
> >> resort to unpredictable room exits. For example, simply take away
> >> compass-point exits and give forward, back, left and right. Now
it's
> >> much easier to get turned around and lose your way. Even auto-
mapping
> >> clients are of limited aid here, if the player doesn't realise they
> >> have gotten turned around.
> >That's a *fascinating* idea which I hadn't thought of before, and it
> >opens up a lot of possiblities. I'll have to think some more about
that
> >in order to give it the response it deserves....
>
> Actually, you don't even need to change to forward/back/left/right. If
> you have a mechanism that allows to to list exits by the direction
> that the player thinks they are in, rather than the one they actually
> lead then you can achieve the same result.
I prefer your original version.
Actually I think I may have been a bit muddled with that one. Here's
the situation I was thinking of. Suppose you want to get from the East
Gate of the city to the Cathedral in the town square. You set off
westwards, but because of all the twisty little streets at one point
you think you think that West is straight on, when actually it's to the
right. So you head straight on, and you're just beginning to think "it
can't be as far as this" when you suddenly stumble across the
Cathedral - but you've actually approached it from the south side
instead of from the east. Now, during the course of this journey you
have been unambiguously lost - you didn't know which way was West, and
you weren't where you thought you were relative either to the gate or
to the cathedral. But nonetheless the route that you followed *is* a
valid way of getting to the Cathedral, and if you went through exactly
the same sequence of forwards, lefts and rights again you would be able
to find the cathedral without any problem, it just might not be the
most direct route.
I suppose I'm uneasy about the notion of "you thought you went forward
but you actually went left", and more comfortable with the notion
of "going forward will always make you go forward, it's just that you
might think forwards is North when it's actually West, because the last
street you followed curved very gently to the left and you didn't
notice". I suppose in order to make this work you need to have a rather
more finely-graduated way of choosing a direction than "forward"
or "left" - making a mistake by 90 degrees is tough. It's more
reasonable to suppose that you could make a mistake by five or ten
degrees, especially if you're in an open outdoors situation (a forest,
say) where you could reasonably move in any direction. The problem with
THAT being that if you can move in *any* direction it messes with the
notion of having discrete locations.
Hmph.
I'm going to have to think carefully about that one.
Talking of forests, I'd be interested to hear a bit more about your
deciduous woodland generator....
> [snip]
> >> >I've no problem with the basic quit/rent system,
> [snip]
> >> Sounds utterly dreadful. So if you have to go in a hurry because
your
> >> dog has just thrown up on the new carpet, you lose that artifact
you
> >> just spent hours completing a complicated quest for? And you
consider
> >> this playable?
> >Well, as I said, it's all a matter of balance.
>
> I'm not sure what you mean there. Surely being forced to either go to
> a certain place and pay a certain amount of money in order to offline,
> or lose all the things you have gained in the session is bad for
> playability? I'm exploring this forest, but I have to leave it and
> find my way back out and go back to an inn and pay money to log off.
> And then when I come back, I have to waste time going back to the
> forest and finding my way back to where I was before I can start
> playing from where I was before.
>
> Or I log back into the forest, naked and alone.
>
> Nasty.
It's bad in some ways, but good in others. From a realism point of
view, for example, it's more plausible to suppose that you would find a
really safe and secure place before going to sleep or hanging around
and doing nothing for ages rather than just setting up camp in the
middle of a zombie-infested swamp because you can rely on being unhurt
for whatever period is involved. It's also a way of controlling
inflation - if powerful items of equipment cost enormous amounts of
money to store, then it may become uneconomic to keep them. It
encourages people to come back regularly. And it guarantees that when
you log back on again you come back in the same safe place that you
were when you left. If you rematerialise in the middle of a swamp you
might end up getting slaughtered by a wandering swamp dragon that, if
you had come up on it by normal means, you would have heard hissing in
the distance and been able to avoid, but which now takes you completely
by surprise....
> >The problem with your system is, how do you prevent someone from
> >abusing the quit function?
>
> There are some restrictions - for example, you can't quit if you are
> actively in combat - you must disengage first.
A start.
> >For example, suppose you have just killed a particularly ferocious
> >dragon, and just as it dies I nip in and steal the gem you've been
> >after all week. Then I run off a couple of rooms and quit. What are
you
> >supposed to do about it? Or suppose that a couple of days later you
run
> >into me again and demand that I return the gem on pain of death,
> >there's no way you can make good on your threat if I can just
> >dissappear by logging out and then return some time when you aren't
> >there - or even if you are still waiting there, just log off again.
>
> Such abuse is considered cheating (using necessary OOC mechanisms to
> thwart IC play.) I would use the 'cheat' command to report it,
> explaining what is happening. I would then use the 'cheat-log' command
> to start the mud logging my session so that I can then demonstrate
> your behaviour. (The point of this is that the mud's log can be
> considered authoritive, whereas a log submitted by a player could
> easily be faked.)
>
> The complaint and associated log would then be checked over by an
> Administrator and if the administrator agrees that 'quit' is being
> used to give an unfair advantage, then you will be dealt with
> accordingly.
That's all very well, but it depends on the cheater resorting to the
same cheat more than once against the same victim, doesn't it? If I
just used quit illegally the once, then snuck back on (when you'd gone
off elsewhere) and sold the gem, then let you kill me the next time we
met, and shouted afterwards "see, I don't even have his stupid gem, he
was lying and trying to frame me for cheating, you should discipline
*him!*" what then? Or suppose I manage to dodge you for a couple of
days - should all of my actions during those couple of days be logged?
If so, it's going to take a *lot* of disk space. If not, then
presumably you will have to reactivate the cheat log when you see me.
But suppose I set up my MUD client to quit as soon as it detects that
you're in the room. Even if you set up your own client to activate a
cheat log as soon as you see me, if I have a faster, less laggy
connection, I may always be able to quit before you can activate the
logging mechanism.
I've also always felt that, as far as possible at least, cheating (even
OOC cheating) should be dealt with in-engine, so that "well, if it's
cheating, why does the game let you do it?" would be a valid defence as
much of the time as possible. Perhaps this is naive of me. There are
always going to be *some* exceptions, of course....
> >By
> >making a difference between quitting and renting, and allowing the
> >latter only at a few, specific locations - not too far apart, but
> >spaced so that it might take you 5 or 10 minutes to get to the
nearest
> >one - and enforcing a loss of inventory when simply quitting, you
solve
> >that problem:
>
> You solve that one single problem, but at the expense of general
> playability - which I thought you were all for. =)
Oh, I am, I am - but like I said, everything is about balance and
compromise. Renting may well not be the best system - to be honest it's
low enough on my list of priorities that I haven't decided what the
best way of handling logging off is. Your system has a lot to commend
it too. Link death causes similar problems - to what extent do you
protect link-dead people because it's unfair if their link genuinely
drops by accident and their character dies while they are unable to
control it, and to what extent do you need to protect against people
dropping link in the middle of a fight to save themselves?
rmt...@my-deja.com
> > spending large amounts of time just watching the scenery go by.
There
> > is a reason that cut-aways are used in books and movies... as much
as
> > I love scenery, can you imagine watching a movie about Columbus
where
> > it took a month real-time to get across the ocean?
>
> If a player has other characters to run then that would mitigate
> the problem of travel times. Allow the player to enjoy the mud
> while his other characters are "unavailable". Otherwise they'll
I don't see why not.
Like many others I plan to have an account system where all a
players characters are created and played by logging into that
account.
Which leaves open the following possibilities:
- Sharing characters between accounts where two players can own
the same character and take turns using it. This might be an
interesting experiment, and it also allows two friends in
different time zones to get the most out of a character.
- Possibility of character level passwords, so that you can give
someone access to your account but not all your characters.
This needs some thinking to work into my multiplayer concerns
I list below, but I suspect requiring that both parties gain
permission from me on pain of losing all characters and
accounts, would solve this.
> get bored, log into another better mud (mine?), and that will be
> the last you'll see of them. ;-)
I find thats a large jump in logic. You're assuming that while the
mud that went to the trouble of making a really detailed mud realistic
in a lot of ways to enhance the depth of that realism, for some reason
or other paid no attention to making that mud a pleasure to start
playing. I have always had the same lofty goals for my login process
and in-game help that I have had for the gameplay.
Heres a few options for things to do while your character is doing its
thing that immediately spring to mind:
- Provide an account level existance where people can meet giving
clue to their placement or position in the game. At this level,
they might chat, play chess, other online games.. with the
advantage they can choose to get notifications on their
characters actions or even switched back to their character
if the need arises.
- Have companion muds that are linked in, in a way like the last
option, and give the players the option to play these. These
muds have the advantage that they would be quality places that
meet my standards (I don't mean game depth here) in terms of
the admin and game design - don't read too much into this.
Why would anyone consider linking up to my mud? Well, if I
do it as well as I think I can, then people will come. By
being linked to my mud they gain the advantage of sharing a
player base.
> Of course in a world where all characters are persistent, players
> with multiple characters would always be mulitplaying. I've always
> been in favor of allowing mutliplaying myself. But to some,
> multiplaying constitutes "cheating" and cannot be tolerated. I
> guess it depends on your game type.
I have nothing against players having multiple characters if they are
under the same account. What I do dislike is:
- The abuse that could be made by players who log in a whole raft
of characters at the same time - although I doubt this would be
hard to detect and punish (standard punishment - delete accounts
of involved parties).
- The use of characters as supplementary devices. What I mean here
is only creating a character as a tool to gain items and money
for another of your characters. Characters must be played, not
used. I have no doubts that this can be automatically monitored.
Apart from that..
Hope this is the kind of comment you wanted..
Richard.
rmt...@my-deja.com
rmt...@my-deja.com
get
> > your character to take are your own fault.
>
life
> offline (as I try to do!) I wouldn't be as likely to play a game that
required
> such a time commitment. This is just my personal preference; I'm well
aware
> that there are people who live online. ;)
You miss what I understand to be the point. Its not that someone is
going to be away from the game for a week, its that it only matters if
you script stupid things with your character for that away time.
And you make the same assumption others have - that it has to be
dangerous to be away from the game. I ask myself why, and all I can
come up with is that you're bringing your preconceptions of the games
you currently play - where the action is perhaps non-stop. The action
is non non-stop in my mud, its the same design made deeper, more
realistic etc. And thats why the offline activity is such a boon, it
allows you to spend only a moderate amount of time online and to have
the boring repetitive things done while you are gone - to me this says
you have it backwards, this feature alone makes it the ideal mud for
someone like you with limited interest in spending great amounts of
time online.
Richard.
KaVir
rmt...@my-deja.com wrote:
> In article <39E6B009...@hotmail.com>,
> Henry McDaniel <henry_m...@hotmail.com> wrote:
Read the subject of the message :P
KaVir.
rmt...@my-deja.com
You both misunderstand. I had no intention of having my characters stay
online all the time. Reread the thread, I came up with that as an
option
to make the game more playable, as an alternative for Nick. I argued
along
that line because I was frustrated by Nick's ability to acknowledge that
a realistic world could be playable. Having come up with that option, I
am now seriously considering it and will probably take it. You
convinced
me to take it Nick, proud of yourself? :)
> > In
> > that case, it's more "realistic" (consistent within the world) if
they
> > are subject to the same rules and risks regardless of whether the
> > player is online or not.
>
> Yeah - question is whether any player besides Richard himself will
want
> to play like that
To really know the answer to that you would have to see my end product,
and I am the only person who can see it at this stage, it being in my
head.
I suspect if you logged on you would be pleasantly surprised, as would
most people who assumed the worst about it so far.
> or that (if they don't) that will trouble Richard. (I suspect not).
You're right. For the most part it won't. But I would gain enjoyment
out of having people who share your position about its playability log
in and see exactly how playable it is.
Not to rub your noses in it of course, but as a final bit of
justification against your naysaying in these posts. I have put a lot
of thought into a mud based on the concepts I have described, and it
offends me when someone says:
1) The status quo works fine. People like the status quo.
You're wasting your time to not give them what they like.
And by the way, you're a bad person to do what you're doing.
2) It wouldn't work anyway, you couldn't do it playably,
3) Even if you did do it, I doubt anyone would play.
The simple facts are:
1) I'm open minded. If someone actually argued convincingly that
it couldn't be done in a playable way, I would alter my goals
in an instant. No-one has argued convincingly that way yet.
2) I have put a lot of thought into what I am doing. As I mentioned
in a reply here to Jon, I started with Diku type limitations and
asked why it wasn't done differently. I have spent years
stretching
the boundaries of my ideals and goals and justifying to myself that
each stretch was doable - in both design and playability.
Feeling sick from a bad curry,
Richard.
rmt...@my-deja.com
The Eternal City. It has many design decisions in common with what I
am aiming for. Its a commercial mud too Nick, I would be interested to
know if you re-evaluate some of your positions based on the fact theres
at least one mud out there akin to what I aim for?
<snip>
The Eternal City™ represents the next generation in text-based virtual
reality. Welcome to an ever-growing world where you can help decide the
future. Join the leadership of the legions, rise within the ranks of
the criminal underworld, rout law breakers with the constables, or
learn the ways of healing from the Temple of Ereal. Come and join us,
and see how your actions and those of your fellow citizens will impact
the richly detailed world of
Midlight!
"If you're looking for a game you can really sink your teeth into, with
a world in which you can become a true character, this is it."
- Michael Wolf, PCGamer
</snip>
rmt...@my-deja.com
> Scatter wrote:
> > At the time, I coded the npc to suit the way I played, rather than
the
> > way most other people played. In Dawn Whispers, I plan to have a
> > 'tutorial/advisor' mode (inspired by something Richard suggested
> > actually) which will provide hints and advice to the player, to show
> > them the way the world works and the way they need to play.
>
> I always feel it's nicer (more immersive :->) to have tutorials
handled
> inside the game engine rather than as OOC instructions, but that isn't
> always possible....
I disagree.
> > "Yes, but that's implementing X badly." =)
>
> I'm glad you agree.
In dismissing Scatter's statement describing what it was like to argue
with you, you did yourself a big disservice. I actually had tears in my
eyes when I read it, not because I care that much, but because Scatter
had yet again been able to put into words exactly what I was thinking.
> It's bad in some ways, but good in others. From a realism point of
> view, for example, it's more plausible to suppose that you would find
a
> really safe and secure place before going to sleep or hanging around
> and doing nothing for ages rather than just setting up camp in the
> middle of a zombie-infested swamp because you can rely on being unhurt
> for whatever period is involved. It's also a way of controlling
> inflation - if powerful items of equipment cost enormous amounts of
> money to store, then it may become uneconomic to keep them. It
> encourages people to come back regularly. And it guarantees that when
> you log back on again you come back in the same safe place that you
> were when you left. If you rematerialise in the middle of a swamp you
> might end up getting slaughtered by a wandering swamp dragon that, if
> you had come up on it by normal means, you would have heard hissing in
> the distance and been able to avoid, but which now takes you
completely
> by surprise....
Scatter was using it as an example of how your stance on playability is
contradicted by the use of a Diku rent system. Or at least thats my
interpretation.
But you don't argue that at all, what you are saying is that its to
enforce realism even though such a system is a big inconvenience.
It may encourage players who are familiar with the system and accept it
as the status quo to come back, but anyone new to this system is going
to find it a major inconvenience - I might even go on here to compare
it in this aspect to the suggestion that someone made (you?) that people
new to my mud would wander off and get lost and find that a major
discouragement. Except, getting lost when you wander is a natural
result
and it can be understood intuitively. A rent system is an abstraction
making the game easier to maintain but it forces unnatural inconsistent
behaviour into the immersion that a player has with your game.
Richard.
rmt...@my-deja.com
> I am going to skip responding to the rest of this post and respond to
> just this part. In real life, for these two societies to be
> considered unique and different, it involves them being hard to get
> to. (Not necessarily distant. A country that never lets "barbarians"
> in but is right next door is probably going to be considered even more
> exotic that one that is far away and just rumored about.) This is
> hard to accomplish in a mud, since as soon as one person knows how to
> get to the spot, many other people can find out. There is no real way
> of limiting what people do.
That you know of.
rmt...@my-deja.com
> Hmmm my city is currently only 132 rooms big, comprising of 47
> buildings - but then it's not had much chance to grow yet. I started
> the mud with one building that took up one room, with plenty of grassy
> plains around it, and left the rest up to the players :)
I'd be interested to know what model you use to let the players develop
the landscape. Somehow I suspect its not one of those muds where you
give the player a limited ability to create. More along the lines of
giving them the tools to build?
Myles L Skinner
>>
>> Hmmm...well, all I can really say here is that leading a *very* full
>> life offline (as I try to do!) I wouldn't be as likely to play a game that
>
> You miss what I understand to be the point. Its not that someone is
> going to be away from the game for a week, its that it only matters if
> you script stupid things with your character for that away time.
>
> And you make the same assumption others have - that it has to be
It's probably because you told us something to the effect that "If you're
going on vacation for a week, that's your own tough luck." Strong statements
like that tend to drown out the rest of your points!
Myles L Skinner
>
> ...I suspect I never left defending myself long enough to get him that way.
Nothing much to add here. I just think it's unfortunate the way these
discussions always have to polarize the way they do. But that's nothing new
for rgma, and it's pretty typical of discussions among "experts" in many
fields. Bleah.
rmt...@my-deja.com
mski...@hercules.acsu.buffalo.edu (Myles L Skinner) wrote:
> In article <8s7r1k$7ou$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, <rmt...@my-deja.com>
wrote:
> >>
> >> Hmmm...well, all I can really say here is that leading a *very*
full
> >> life offline (as I try to do!) I wouldn't be as likely to play a
game that
> >> required such a time commitment...
> >
> > You miss what I understand to be the point. Its not that someone is
> > going to be away from the game for a week, its that it only matters
if
> > you script stupid things with your character for that away time.
> >
> > And you make the same assumption others have - that it has to be
> > dangerous to be away from the game. I ask myself why...
>
> It's probably because you told us something to the effect that "If
you're
> going on vacation for a week, that's your own tough luck." Strong
statements
> like that tend to drown out the rest of your points!
Well. I would love to say that I have maintained the same stance all
along. But as I described in a followup to the Nick/Scatter facade, my
goals have shifted. I think even Nick has shifted in his views a
little, although that may be mainly attributable to the fact that hes
now more on the defense whereas when it was me who was discussing with
him, I suspect I never left defending myself long enough to get him
that way.
Richard.
Shaydz
19:34:10: Shaydz: I do find it interesting, not sure how much I would
personally use, but it makes me think
along different lines to the traditional way of doing
things
19:35:36: Donky: Have you chimed in? I lose track of who has.
19:36:02: Shaydz: nope, I tend to be one of those people who reads but
doesn't have much to say :P
19:37:00: Donky: Well, as much as I would love to - or have and have cut it
out before posting - it would be
nice if someone could chime in and say, "Nick, you are an
ignorant tosspot"
19:37:28: Shaydz laughs
19:37:34: Donky: "Stop bothering Richard and go back to your crappy little
stock Diku"
19:37:52: Shaydz: Us hundreds of readers are just sitting back and thinking
it
19:38:08: Donky: I just couldn't get over his response to Scatter sticking
up for me
19:38:42: Donky: It was like so revealing, that he thought we were
narrowminded and selfish - I couldn't
believe it
19:39:22: Donky: Did you read the thread with my replies to Jon Lambert?
19:39:30: Shaydz: well thats because you are not doing it the way he wants
you too, how unreasonable of you
19:40:08: Shaydz: yup
19:40:34: Donky: The longer reply which went into more detail why books and
movies don't apply, did my
arguments sound valid?
19:40:38: Donky: Stand up.. etc?
19:40:48: Donky: I need feedback on this type of thing.
19:42:04: Shaydz: it did, I need to go back and read it again I think, but I
think you explained why a
progressive game is different to a story where you use
cutaways etc.. or are you talking
about something different?
19:43:06: Donky: Why the devices used in books and movies might be put to
good use in some muds, they by
definition weren't applicable to be used in muds that
implemented realistic travel?
19:54:32: Shaydz: cre they do but I don't know how well it would work or
wether I personally would be
interested in such a thing (even though there are probably
heaps of people that would be, I
tend to be the sort of person that wants to log in his
char from where he logged out, do
what he wants to and then leave)
20:01:48: Strevious: dang loriel left
20:01:56: Donky: Ok, what if you could log out, and say to your character
before you left. Go to the smithy
where you have a job and earn me some money while I am
away?
20:02:42: Shaydz: hmm, well that's a good point, I guess I would have to try
and open my mind and try it
before passing judgement
20:03:44: Donky: Or even, to the complexity of: while I am away, go hunt
some animals, skin them, sell the
meat, use the money to buy some item I want, then return
here ready for tomorrow when I wake
up/get back from work.
20:04:18: Donky: Really, it might do me a world of good to talk to lots of
people who prefer to log on and off
in the same place and state to see what I can do to make it
attractive
20:04:26: Shaydz: I think it would come down to the way it was implemented,
would they actually be doing it in
the game?
20:04:42: Donky: Absolutely.
20:04:42: Shaydz: so other people could go and try to interact with them
etc..
20:04:58: Shaydz: and how would the interaction be handled?
20:05:18: Donky: How would you like it to be handled?
20:06:16: Shaydz: I don't know to be honest, thats not really something I
have thought about
20:06:52: Shaydz: I'd like to think that it could make some pretty complex
choices for you, even down to well
there is no food in this area, I like hunting over there
as well so I'll try there
20:09:08: Donky: Well, I would allow it to be completely configurable by the
user - thats my main concern. If
they want to character to be autonomous if theres nothing
else for it to do - then great, if
they want it to head for the nearest inn in the safest
manner and check in till they come
back - or even leave it just before they get back so its in
the place they want to start -
then thats fine by me. And I would make it extremely easy
to set up.
20:10:42: Donky: Ideally you could learn a lot of new things about the game
you didn't know, if you sat there
and watched it be autonomous. i.e. You set it to behave
autonomously, with an interest in
certain things, then watch to see how it goes about it.
20:11:22: Donky: If you specified you wanted a goal to be learning a craft,
it might find an opportunity with
an NPC you might otherwise not have found.
20:12:18: Shaydz: Thinking about it it sounds like it could be a good idea
and fun to play, I think I would
still have some doubts until I played it but I would
definately give it a go and see how
much I enjoyed it
20:12:32: Donky: Heh, ok.
20:13:26: Shaydz: I couldn't say if I would enjoy it or not without playing,
but I guess thats what it comes
down to with all muds, unless they are dikus where I know
I'll hate it before I even start
:P
20:14:04: Donky: Hey, but come on, with the good ol' rent system, how can
you help but love it? :)
20:14:28: Donky: Thats a fundamental part of what makes a game playable - if
Nick advocates it, it must be so
:)
20:15:58: Shaydz: sorry, I'll type quit here and go straight over to his mud
20:16:02: Shaydz: like we all should
20:16:14: Donky: No, you missed his point.
20:16:52: Shaydz: he had one?
20:16:52: Donky: In creating our own muds, we're being selfish and
narrowminded, we should all make muds the
same as his so he can log on everywhere and find something
thats playable.
20:17:28: Donky: And the whole point of us making a mud is to keep him happy
20:17:32: Shaydz: ahh, of course, and here I was thinking he would be happy
with the 100 new stock dikus that
go up everyday
20:18:12: Donky: I dare you to take the cre history and post it to r.g.m.a
under the title of Nick Bryant's
limited view :)
Cheers
Shaydz
rmt...@my-deja.com
> Hey, it was a dare, I had to do it :P
All I can say is that most of what was there was said in humour or as a
way of letting off steam. I did not think he would actually post it.
I apologise to Nick for the fact he had to see the comments made.
As an aside I would just like to mention that it is hard to get
feedback on posts to this forum. Sure people reply, the people you are
arguing with mainly, but that doesn't exactly make you sure your
arguments stand and are solid. If people think I am talking bollocks,
chime in and say so, don't just lurk. If you think I made a good
point, chime in and say so, say why you think its a good point. As
long as you do it constructively it can only help improve the standard
of my participation in this group.
rr...@lanminds.com
wrote:
>On Fri, 13 Oct 2000 06:27:14 GMT, rr...@lanminds.com wrote:
>
>>On Thu, 12 Oct 2000 11:22:16 GMT, sca...@thevortex.com (Scatter)
>>wrote:
>[snip]
>>>You just can't have realistic, believable seperation of these cultures
>>>unless the distance between them does act as a barrier.
>[snip]
>>I am going to skip responding to the rest of this post and respond to
>>just this part. In real life, for these two societies to be
>>considered unique and different, it involves them being hard to get
>>to. (Not necessarily distant. A country that never lets "barbarians"
>>in but is right next door is probably going to be considered even more
>>exotic that one that is far away and just rumored about.)
>
>I'm not sure it would be more exotic - it'd certainly be seen as a
>more interesting target, but this is just semantic quibbling. =)
>
>>This is
>>hard to accomplish in a mud, since as soon as one person knows how to
>>get to the spot, many other people can find out. There is no real way
>>of limiting what people do.
>
>This is where distance works much better than more artificial limits.
>If player A finds a way into the next-door-country, he can tell player
>B and player B can then immediately do it and get in. If player A has
>spent several real-time hours on a difficult journey to a distant
>place, and then again on the way back - he can tell player B, but B
>has to then face the same long journey to get there.
>
>>In real life, you have the choice between spending a year or more
>>traveling to some exotic land, getting neat stuff and coming back and
>>selling them for immense profits. Or, you can spend that same amount
>>of time close to home, setting up a smaller business, maybe courting
>>the neighbor's daughter and having a kid. Most sane normal people are
>>going to take the second route. However, in a mud people don't play
>>ordinary people. They play the heros. They play the sort of people
>>who are going to go explore the unknown.
>
>I agree (and this is a good reason you need to have a large world to
>explore.) =)
>
>>So how do you maintain a
>>realistic world and economy when the majority of your players are
>>playing characters that should, technically, be a very small percent
>>of your population? To be honest, I have no clue.
>
>I tend to assume that players are a tiny fraction of the city, and
>there is a background mass of population that's implied rather than
>simulated via npcs. Thus you can absorb much of what the players do as
>making little impact on the city as a whole - just have your economy
>run on the assumption that players are a tiny minority.
>
>However, this doesn't really help if one player can open a shop and
>stock it fully with exotic items from a distant land, all under his
>own power.
>
Hmm.. I see it differently. For example, Marco Polo came back from
the Orient with great tales of the strange things that he had seen
(and if I recall correctly, stuff to sell). That's one person
stocking a shop with exotic goods. Now, what happens when you have a
hundred Marco Polo's living in that town? You'd have to have a
population a hundred times larger to keep the affect the same. And,
in a mud it's complicated by the fact that all the Marcos know that
they are the heros, and that the good items are going to be at a shop
owned by another Marco. So it doesn't matter if there are 2 weapon
shops owned by Marcos and 20 by ordinary people, everyone will try and
go to the first 2. (Unless, of course, you make it so that you can't
tell the difference between PCs and NPCs.)
>>Maybe make aging
>>have more of an affect, so that those 5 trips to the exotic location
>>take up 10 years of your life? But still, what do you do about races
>>that live for centuries? Still, it's the fact that most of your
>>population is playing heros that is going to mess up your economy, not
>>the distance between your cities or how long it takes to get there.
>
>I don't agree with the latter. If the journey is long and difficult,
>it's much less likely that players will want to spend the time
>building up a stock of exotics, let alone be able to haul items back
>easily. A caravan stocked with goods travelling hundreds of miles must
>be an inviting target for brigands, for example.
>
>>Oh, and to your statement that travel isn't boring... I'm sorry, but
>>it is. Getting to neat new spots is fun, but the majority of the time
>>spent getting to them is not. My family did 2-week long road trips
>>for vacations, so I am speaking from that experience. There's
>>occasional interesting things that happen, but mostly it's pretty much
>>the same thing for hour after hour. Until even those "George
>>Washington slept here" signs become something to look forward to! :)
>
>You seem to be comparing sitting in a car being driven mile after mile
>to active travel - they don't compare. I'll get very bored as a
>passenger in a car or bus or train or aeroplane. But half an hour in
>an aeroplane is less boring than 4 hours as a car passenger.
>I'll get much less bored if I'm driving the car. If I'm cycling,
>riding a horse or walking, I'm very unlikely to get bored.
>
>Travel can be boring, but it doesn't have to be. If it is, you've
>chosen the wrong method of travelling.
>
I think that we find cycling, riding, and walking more interesting
because we don't do it often. However, to people who have no other
means of getting around, it's probably as exciting as being a
passenger is to us. Also, keep in mind that in general you WANT
travel to be boring. Boring is safe. The things that make travel (as
an item in itself, and not the destination) exciting are also the
things that make it dangerous. Read the journals kept by people who
actually made trips in olden times, and you will see that they tend to
cover two things: the monotony of the good times, and the curses
about the bad.
Perhaps we are just arguing semantics here. I get the feeling that
you think of travel as synonomous with "exploring". That's an
entirely different thing, and is a lot more exciting. However, it
doesn't necessarily have a set goal. You are looking for a lost city,
and not Big Town 123.2 miles away down the East Road. In exploring, a
well developed world is extremely important, and the things that you
find along the way are possibly more important than the ending. On
the other hand, if you join a merchant caravan that is wanting to make
the big festival in Big Town, the caravan's only goal is to get to
that town as quickly and safely as it can.
rr...@lanminds.com
<nicolas...@mswtech.com> wrote:
>Scatter wrote:
>> I don't have the time to write a lengthy reply to all of this, so I'm
>> going to pick and choose. =)
>> Nick Bryant wrote:
>> >Scatter wrote:
>> >> Nick Bryant wrote:
>>
>
>> [snip]
Just curious, what do people think of forcing characters to actually
sleep? I have been on muds where you get "exhausted", but you can go
for weeks of mud-time without ever having to actually sleep. I have
a feeling it's because most people don't want to have to sit there and
wait through watching their character sleep (especially if it's true
sleep where you can't see, talk, or do anything.) I know that we
are all supposed to be great heroes, but it seems a bit odd to me. So
how do people handle this? I can't see forcing people to sleep 8
hours a night, like they always recommend.. heaven knows there are
days where I don't! However, the "grab enough sleep to max out the
hitpoints" way seems very artificial to me.
Kira Skydancer
M. Whittington
>Just curious, what do people think of forcing characters to actually
>sleep? I have been on muds where you get "exhausted", but you can go
>for weeks of mud-time without ever having to actually sleep. I have
>a feeling it's because most people don't want to have to sit there and
>wait through watching their character sleep (especially if it's true
>sleep where you can't see, talk, or do anything.) I know that we
>are all supposed to be great heroes, but it seems a bit odd to me. So
>how do people handle this? I can't see forcing people to sleep 8
>hours a night, like they always recommend.. heaven knows there are
>days where I don't! However, the "grab enough sleep to max out the
>hitpoints" way seems very artificial to me.
>
>Kira Skydancer
We switched a while back to an approach that gradually made characters
sleepy, giving little hints like yawning when the sleepy flag reached
a given level. After a while of ignoring the signals, the characters
would fall asleep, whatever else was going on. We discovered that it
is not a popular feature, to say the least, so we wound up removing it
and assuming that sleeping is just part of what characters do while
logged off, which was the view expressed by many players when we began
the experiment.
We still have the sleep command, of course, and it does enhance the
recovery of energy and health, but it's no longer forced (it's just
a good idea now if the character is fairly beat up and tired). Of
course, our game day is fairly long (6 real hours = 1 MUD day), so
anything that takes a character out of play does so for a good while,
and players do not like having their characters taken out of play for
what they regard as something that can be assumed to happen in other
ways, at other times.
We no longer feel the need to make them sleep, and they no longer
feel the need to bitch about it.
Reginleif of Harshlands
Alan Schwartz
[About quit/rent]
>It's bad in some ways, but good in others. From a realism point of
>view, for example, it's more plausible to suppose that you would find a
>really safe and secure place before going to sleep or hanging around
>and doing nothing for ages rather than just setting up camp in the
>middle of a zombie-infested swamp because you can rely on being unhurt
>for whatever period is involved.
It occurs to me that the ability to camp safely in a swamp, etc.
is probably a skill that could be modeled so that characters
who work to develop it might be able to 'camp' (new alias for quit)
safely without renting. (Of course, developing the skill should probably
require some camping, and a chance of being raided, and thus reconnecting
to learn "During the night your camp was raided by X and you've lost Y
(and Z, etc.) Next time, you decide, you'll set up camp differently
(e.g. downwind, on a higher place, in the trees, whatever)".
If PCs are allowed to raid camping PCs, this also may ameliorate
some of the 'grab your loot, run, and d/c' cheating issues you
raise.
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Javelin@Belgariad, and elsewhere | PennMUSH Server Maintainer
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Donky
> Just curious, what do people think of forcing characters to actually
> sleep? I have been on muds where you get "exhausted", but you can go
I think its a perfect opportunity to employ your movie and book
devices. I am curious how you make the time that passes quickly in a
cutscene or timejump apply to only one player. Does it suddenly become
night/day for all players? Or does that players time jump out of sync
with everyone elses?
> for weeks of mud-time without ever having to actually sleep. I have
> a feeling it's because most people don't want to have to sit there and
> wait through watching their character sleep (especially if it's true
> sleep where you can't see, talk, or do anything.) I know that we
Its hardly playable. Really, its worse than realistic travel because
at least when you are travelling you have some form of interaction at
all times - assuming you are logged on.
> are all supposed to be great heroes, but it seems a bit odd to me. So
> how do people handle this? I can't see forcing people to sleep 8
> hours a night, like they always recommend.. heaven knows there are
> days where I don't! However, the "grab enough sleep to max out the
> hitpoints" way seems very artificial to me.
One idea I used to have when I started creating was when players sleep
or go unconscious, they would go into a dream world. This seemed like
the perfect way to fit out of theme areas into an otherwise
thematically consistent mud. I think this is a very interesting
concept that could be used in interesting ways. Just to clarify a
little bit, there might have been a selection of worlds that someone
could go into when they sleep - these might have quests in them - which
with the player not having any idea when they are going to wake
up/recover consciousness.. it might be a beat the clock thing.
--
Richard Tew / Donky @ Nameless Sorrows (long term project)
http://www.nameless-sorrows.org telnet://nameless-sorrows.org:3000
Donky
> Perhaps we are just arguing semantics here. I get the feeling that
> you think of travel as synonomous with "exploring". That's an
> entirely different thing, and is a lot more exciting. However, it
> doesn't necessarily have a set goal. You are looking for a lost city,
> and not Big Town 123.2 miles away down the East Road. In exploring, a
> well developed world is extremely important, and the things that you
> find along the way are possibly more important than the ending. On
> the other hand, if you join a merchant caravan that is wanting to make
> the big festival in Big Town, the caravan's only goal is to get to
> that town as quickly and safely as it can.
I consider travelling to be exploring. We actually refer to that in
our justification for realistic distances in the article in Imaginary
Realities I referenced earlier on.
If you are travelling somewhere new, it is always going to be
interesting
to some degree. And if your setting is medieval fantasy then each city
is going to be a lot more different and exotic than cities in the
current
day are from each other. Bustling streets, markets full of exotic
wares,
spices, slave markets, magical wonders, unfamiliar races..
And thats where the realistic distances come in. As I think Scatter has
said somewhere, if it requires effort to gain a reward, the perceived
value of that reward is higher. This leads me to believe theres an
argument to be made for the fact that the most powerful items are the
most popular in a mud. Its not playable to have realistic distances,
therefore you can travel across the mud in perhaps an hour at the most,
any item is within your grasp. Everyone else has them, and its very
easy
for you to get them as well. Its like an arms race. But if the
powerful items were hard to find, couldn't necesarily be found in the
same way over and over, and it took travel to get somewhere where you
might find one - then the perceived value of the items rockets from
commodity to luxury. But that is really reiterating Scatters point
from another angle.
Safe havens are not in theme in my mud. Areas where there is magical
protection from harm may loosely be described as fitting in, but when
it comes down to it, they are fantastical and gratuitious. This is
where realistic distances provide an in-theme replacement. Buy
passage on some form of transport and flee to an unknown locale.
Anyway, back to work.
Jp Calderone
I like that example. Let me demonstrate a possible solution
with another:
In the 16th and 17th century (or so) the Portugese had managed
to find and map a southeast route to asia - around the tip of
africa - and this route they guarded fiercly. The had the only
good way to bring back goods efficiently and quickly and they
made quite a profit on it. If they *had* let the Spanish and the
English sail ships down along that route, their monopoly would have
been lost. So the Spanish and the English went off and looked for
a western route.
So, give players means to defend a particular source of exotic
goods. I myself have been planning to implement a "guard exit"
skill for some time now. This would effectively give individuals,
or perhaps more realistically clans, the ability to carve out a
territory for themselves - an area that no one else can get to
without mounting a serious offensive or finding some alternative
means of entry.
> >> [snip age]
> > [snip boring travel]
> [snip boring travel
>
> Perhaps we are just arguing semantics here. I get the feeling that
> you think of travel as synonomous with "exploring". That's an
> entirely different thing, and is a lot more exciting. However, it
> doesn't necessarily have a set goal. You are looking for a lost city,
> and not Big Town 123.2 miles away down the East Road. In exploring, a
> well developed world is extremely important, and the things that you
> find along the way are possibly more important than the ending. On
> the other hand, if you join a merchant caravan that is wanting to make
> the big festival in Big Town, the caravan's only goal is to get to
> that town as quickly and safely as it can.
Given that a MUD is set in a "wild" state - midieval or fantastic,
or whatever word you want to use, the point being not "civilized"
as the world is today - then maybe there shouldn't be any such thing
as the boring type of travel. Information travels more slowly in
such settings, and changes to political and military standings, or
new raiders on a caravan's route, or any of a million different
interesting and yes, dangerous, things can beset what a week or a
month ago would have been a nice peaceful trip. So keep travel
quick, but make it another aspect of the game, not just a means of
getting into the next fight.
Jp Calderone
chy...@ludens.elte.hu
> Ah I had fun with that npc. He was one of the most powerful npcs in
> the city, as an elemental mage. Fed up with college members being
> attacked, I tweaked him to automatically protect any college member he
> found in combat. At the same time, I tweaked one of the top academy
> npcs to similarly protect academy mages. You guessed it - the academy
> and college npcs ended up having an all out war. I swear that street
> glowed for ages after that battle.
>
Ah, so it was _you_ who coded those guys! *glares*
You know how much grief they're causing me? With their InstaSpells (tm)
which blithely ignore all defences and crush anything in their path...
I curse thy name thrice daily when I see how much I'll need to rewrite :)
Seriously, though... very good NPCs they are, they just need to be
brought in line with our normal spellcasting rules :)
Chyron
P.S. Good luck with your MUD, sounds like it's going to be a very good
one. Stop by at YouKnowWhichMUD to say hi, I'm known as Hergrom
there (not anything close to an admin, btw, more like the rank
you were probably at when you made the NPCs) ;)
Otis Viles
>I've encountered similar people. The best way to get around the above
>would be to have the mob responding to single words as well - if the
>player just says "college" the mob should say "What about the
>college?". If they say "where" have the mob respond with "Where is
>what?". Many players are so used to muds which cater to laziness that
That's pretty much what I've done on my iDirt. I've got a few mobiles
that respond to such things; I suppose I ought to make all of the mobiles
respond minimally. In the style of the Ultima series of games, one word
(sometimes two) is enough to prompt the mobile to respond, and I try to
steer the players towards the words that will work with the things the
mobiles say in response.
--
Otis Viles: Mudder, RPGer, KMFDM fan, Internet Oracle Priest
dr...@speakeasy.org, http://www.daestroke.com/cierhart/
dr...@daestroke.com, http://stormclouds.daestroke.com/
Making iDirt 1.82 a safer place, one bug at a time.
Otis Viles
>Ideally, yes - but this npc was sited near other npcs that said things
>including 'college' and responded to same - thus doing that sent the
>two into an infinite loop responding to one another. Which was amusing
Not sure about your code base, but iDirt has "say" which sends the message
to the room and "tell" which is used for a specific player or mobile. I
put all of my similar commands as tell's, so that that mobile has to be
told something in order to parse it and respond.
Otis Viles
Skinner) wrote:
>In article <39dd272b...@nntp.lanminds.com>, <rr...@lanminds.com> wrote:
>> How do you deal with the disparity in time between someone in a city
>> and someone in real space? In other words, if someone is in a city
>I deal with it by running away and hiding and hoping nobody asks hard
>questions. :)
Another way to argue away the disparity is that in a city you often have to
move slower or more carefully to avoid running into other people in the city.
In a dungeon setting, it's slower, more careful movement to avoid hazards of
the dungeon -- traps, fallen masonry, etc.
Thats basically the "explain it away" method of justifying the same time scale
for different movement scales. AD&D essentially did the same thing by having a
movement point be 10 feet in a dungeon, 10 yards outside.
mor...@niuhep.physics.niu.edu
>rr...@lanminds.com wrote:
>> Just curious, what do people think of forcing characters to actually
>> sleep? I have been on muds where you get "exhausted", but you can go
>> for weeks of mud-time without ever having to actually sleep.
In my plans low endurance, low sleep, low food and water, low hit points
all result in reduced abilities. That said I am shooting for a 5:1
mud:reality time scale and for a healthy person 24 hours without sleep
isn't that big of a deal.
>Its hardly playable. []
Multi-character playing would be one sol'n.
[]
>One idea I used to have when I started creating was when players sleep
>or go unconscious, they would go into a dream world. []
Interesting idea.
Robert