LPmud object design
James Seidman
I was exploring LPmud yesterday, and some of the stuff is amazingly
sophisticated from a design point of view. For example, the slot machine in
Tommy's pinball parlor would be essentially impossible to design in
TinyMUD. I was wondering if there are hardcoded into the system, or if
there is some incredibly flexible and sophisticated language available to
wizards for designing their castles.
(BTW, while I am impressed with LPmud, some of the wizards could really use
some spelling tips. Of all of the user-expandable systems I've been on,
LPmud seems to have the largest number of typos, incorrecting spellings, and
poor designs. Object descriptions are often nonexistent. And one of my pet
peeves: some builders make no attempt to maintain topological realism.)
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Jim Seidman, Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA 91711. (714) 621-8000 x2026
DISCLAIMER: I don't even know if these are opinions, let alone those of
anyone other than me.
Richard Johnson
> (BTW, while I am impressed with LPmud, some of the wizards could really use
> some spelling tips. Of all of the user-expandable systems I've been on,
> LPmud seems to have the largest number of typos, incorrecting spellings, and
> poor designs.
Just be glad the descriptions aren't in Swedish. I suspect there'd be far
fewer gramattical and spelling errors if it were, but the place would be
harder to get around in for those of us who speak only English.
As far as the poor design, lack of descriptions, etc., well, that's life.
I tend to stick to places that have a bit of quality control imposed (like
Islandia and so forth). Without it, I tend to get lost, and lose interest.
| Richard Johnson john...@spot.colorado.edu |
| CSC doesn't necessarily share my opinions, but is welcome to. |
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James Seidman
>Just be glad the descriptions aren't in Swedish. I suspect there'd be far
>fewer gramattical and spelling errors if it were, but the place would be
>harder to get around in for those of us who speak only English.
You've got me there. I do think, however, that there would many fewer
players if it were in Swedish. Almost everyone I've run into on LPmud is
from the U.S.A. (but this could be due to when I play and the time-zone
difference).
>As far as the poor design, lack of descriptions, etc., well, that's life.
>I tend to stick to places that have a bit of quality control imposed (like
>Islandia and so forth). Without it, I tend to get lost, and lose interest.
Yes, and in LPmud, since a wizard's status depends on the popularity of his
"castle," this is a good built-in policing mechanism.
Bertil Jonell
>
>I was exploring LPmud yesterday, and some of the stuff is amazingly
>sophisticated from a design point of view. For example, the slot machine in
>Tommy's pinball parlor would be essentially impossible to design in
>TinyMUD. I was wondering if there are hardcoded into the system, or if
>there is some incredibly flexible and sophisticated language available to
>wizards for designing their castles.
It is a language (looks like a variant C).
The only hardcoded part of LPmud is a parser that interprets the datafiles.
Even adding new player commands usually don't involve rewriting the hard-code,
just rewriting the player-object datafile.
Any wizard can use it to make non-standard stuff, Good examples are the
elevator (and Ultimates extensions of it), The machines in Tommys parlor,
Kanteles magic scroll and ring, and styles stilletto.
The possibilities for wizard extensions are practically endless. But
contrary to TinyMUD the competetive aspect is still present.
>(BTW, while I am impressed with LPmud, some of the wizards could really use
>some spelling tips. Of all of the user-expandable systems I've been on,
>LPmud seems to have the largest number of typos, incorrecting spellings, and
>poor designs. Object descriptions are often nonexistent. And one of my pet
>peeves: some builders make no attempt to maintain topological realism.)
There is a post office in the game, I'm sure the wizards in question would
be happy to get mail about any typos and bugs that are detected.
-bertil-
Disclaimer: I didn't write LPmud, I'm just a happy user.
Bertil K K Jonell @ Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg
NET: d9be...@dtek.chalmers.se
VOICE: +46 31 723971 / +46 300 61004 "Don't worry,I've got Pilot-7"
SNAILMAIL: Box 154,S-43900 Onsala,SWEDEN (Famous last words)
Lars Pensj|
In article <55...@jarthur.Claremont.EDU> jsei...@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (James Seidman) writes:
>
>I was exploring LPmud yesterday, and some of the stuff is amazingly
>sophisticated from a design point of view. For example, the slot machine in
>Tommy's pinball parlor would be essentially impossible to design in
>TinyMUD. I was wondering if there are hardcoded into the system, or if
>there is some incredibly flexible and sophisticated language available to
>wizards for designing their castles.
None of the rooms, objects or monsters are hardcoded. They can all be
specified by the LPmud programming language.
I made a C interpreter (or at least similar to C) with some powerful
functions, and this is what is used to define objects etc. There is no
difference between objects, rooms and monsters. They are all just
objects. Objects can also be dynamically created and destructed. An
object can itself create new objects. The biggest object destructor
in the game is the shop, which only keeps one copy of every item.
>(BTW, while I am impressed with LPmud, some of the wizards could really use
>some spelling tips. Of all of the user-expandable systems I've been on,
>LPmud seems to have the largest number of typos, incorrecting spellings, and
>poor designs. Object descriptions are often nonexistent. And one of my pet
>peeves: some builders make no attempt to maintain topological realism.)
Now, this is somewhat embarrassing. There are some reasons to this. The first
one, is that I and most of the creating wizards, do not have english as their
natural language.
The second one is, that I started to make this program about 6 months ago,
and as I had to do it myself, I had to emphasize debugging, not spelling.
I do get a constant stream of spelling reports. I save all, and will
fix them when I get time for it (any year).
There is also a problem of forwarding spell reports to the wizard that
is responsible, because a player can't know for sure if the object
is defined by a wizard, or a basic part of the game.
The game driver is beginning to get rather complex (>20000 lines), so
maintaining is a big job. However, recently, some friends of mine have
started to track bugs, so the future seems promising.
As examples of possibilities:
One wizard made computer, with a BASIC interpreter. You get experience
points from writing BASIC programs ! The more complex program, the more
experience points.
One wizard dropped his castle in the elevator, and renamed it to
"hatch in roof" (should be ceiling ? :-) which you can use to climb out,
onto the roof of the elevator. He then defined the elevator shaft,
counterweight to the elevator, and some fantastic possibilities to
move around in the shaft. To be able to move around, you have to have a friend
manoevering the elevator for you ! There are some real time events, and
timing is important.
One wizard made a "Doors inc.". That is, he defined some kind of general
doors. To test this, he made a "doorcloner". With this object, he can
create doors in two rooms that is connected to each other,
and keys (if wanted) that can lock the doors.
All designing and debugging of new objects are done "on line". The
game does not have to be restarted to get the new objects.
To be able to create your own objects, you first have to become wizard.
This is automatically done by gaining enough experience points, and
the visiting a special NPC, and ask for a castle from him. You will then
get small portable castle, wich can be dropped anywhere. It will
grow into a "full scale castle", and also be loaded at a restart of
the game. The wizard get a subdirectory for his own objects and rooms,
and get access to a simple editor and file manipulation commands.
He can read (and copy) from the basic "game definition", but not
definitions from other wizards.
A word of the topological realism.
I do agree fully with you. To maintain topological realism is important
for the game. The only exception is mazes (puzzles) wich have as idea,
that the problem is to find your way. I really dislike when 'north' followed
by 'south' brings you to a totally unexpected place.
I think that most of the wizard contributed code follows logical
design, and I try to convince the new wizards to do this. But I will not
force them, and they are free to do as they want.
To stimulate wizards to make a "good" puzzle, there is a high score system,
where you can see which wizard's castle is the most popular. This list
is only visible to wizards, and is where the real competition starts.
If a player makes a tiersome and hard-to-solve puzzle, he will have
few visitors, and can see that in his scores.
I will make the source (without the wizard contributions) available
by anonymous ftp, soon. Just have to make the game a little more stable,
and make better documentation for wizards.
--
Lars Pensj|
la...@myab.se