On Mon, 19 Jan 1998, Richard Woolcock wrote: :Travis Casey wrote: :> Unfortunately, all of the muds that I've seen have some aspect of :> real-time play to them -- characters don't take turns and get to do :> their actions at times determined by the game system, but rather, time :> is important in reacting to others. :But turns cannot work in this type of environment - the words "Just get :on with it" have sprung up on many occasion during my roleplaying :experiences. I also recall a little cartoon in the back of a roleplaying :magazine in which a group of adventurers are walking into a room full of :other adventurers and a bunch of orcs, all just sitting around. One of :the recent arrival says "whats going on?". One of the other adventurers :who's sitting down says "Oh, we're just waiting for the GM to work out :the damage on my fireball". Man! I've had things like this happen. :Equally, you can't have a pen&paper roleplaying game done real-time. Try :it - give each player a little clock which goes off every x many seconds :(depending how fast their characters are), and tell them they can yell :their action every time the clock alarm goes...but if they forget - too :bad. :*BEEP* Bubba yells "I'm attacking the...." :*BEEP* Boffo yells "I'm drawing my..." :*BEEP* Biffo yells "Wait! where are the..." :*BEEP* You yell "The dragon breathes on you! DIE!" LARPs, anyone? :> > You are exagerating of course. I was referring at the difference between :> > saying "There is a large and terrifying dragon here." and showing one. :> Of course, with such a description, you're really bludgeoning the :> players -- you're *telling* them that their characters should be :> terrified, rather than trying to create a feeling of terror in them. :I agree completely. The desciption should be created dynamically according :to the players perspectives (I believe this was discussed in the player- :recognition thread). Bubba the village boy sees "A huge lizard thing", :Bubba the village boy who's heard about dragons sees "A huge man-eating :dragon", while Bubba the experienced dragon slayer sees "A young green :Wyrm". How would graphics cope with this? This much I agree with. Heck, I was the prime proponent! : The dragon grins evilly at you, a look of menace in its eyes. : The dragon grins at you with amusement. : The dragon smiles fondly at you. : The dragon smirks as it sees you. : The dragon glances at you, a wicked smile on its face. :Each of the above portray an impression as to the dragon's intent. How :would graphics cope with this? I don't know, but I really didn't like any of the above that much. Well, maybe its just a matter of triteness. The dragon should be _capable_ of such an action in the first place. Theoretically, this would be doable in graphics of high enough caliber. : You smell the scent of rotten flesh coming from the floorboards. Advantage: text. : You hear a voice behind you say "Don't turn around" Advantage: graphics w/ stereo sound. >=) : You feel something cold and sharp pressed into the small of your back. Advantage: text or REALLY good VR. : You taste the bile rising in your throat. Advantage: text. BTW: I have faded (impresserio) flashes of graphics in the background of a text window in the prototype client. The graphics are inlined by the client/server interface, and are generally independant of the game/server interface. They can be static or flash animated, and a better client might even render them based on the server's models and the same information used to generate text. :> But who says you have to? Just as your text description doesn't try :> to give all the details of the dragon's color, size, texture, etc. :> that it could, there's no reason that a graphical representation has to :> be highly detailed. The dragon could be shown in a cartoon/comic-book Ruins the flow... :> fashion, could be represented by a semi-abstract icon, or could be shown Likewise, unless very subtly done. :> like a charcoal sketch. Such representation leave more room for the This is better. Still hard to do well, though. :> player's imagination -- just as giving a less detailed textual :> description does. (Granted, they don't leave *as much* room -- my point :> is simply that you seem to be contrasting a very sketchy description :> with a photo-realistic graphic depiction.) :Seeing "A large green dragon claws you" wouldn't scare me. :Seeing a cartoon dragon hitting me would make me laugh - it would also :spoil the atmosphere, unless the mud was supposed to be funny. Agreed. The text that most muds use is a lot like said cartoon. :Ah, but a good CODER could determine what would make the character :scared. You don't want to roleplay your character being scared of a :dragon? Too bad; you shouldn't have played a farmer. Just as in a :pen&paper rpg the GM might say "No way can you attack the dragon! :You're terrified! Make a courage roll just to see if you can avoid :running away screaming!" it was quite fair to put this into a mud, :and doesn't cause problems for roleplaying. And I can see you;re firmly in my corner of the ring... :> "There is a large undine here," 99% of them will have no idea what an :> undine is, how it looks, or what "large" is when talking about an :> undine (remember, "large" when speaking of creatures is relative -- a :> "large cat" might be an 8kg/18lb tomcat, while a "large horse" is much :> bigger than any human, and a "large tyrannosaur" will weigh several :> tons). :Despite my comments on dynamic descriptions earlier in this post, I do :still feel that being able to SEE a huge monster with tentacles/etc is :more effective than seeing a description. Dynamic descriptions I can :do however, but not dynamic graphics ;) How about a fleeting glimpse in the background? :> Further, describing things in this way makes representing similar :> creatures difficult -- what if I want to have another type of creature :> that looks almost exactly like an undine? :The close it looks to an undine, the more likely people will be fooled. :The result? People who fight a lot of both creatures will be able to :tell them apart, whilst other people usually won't (unless told what to :look for). I consider this to be a good thing. This, of course, is the advantage of dynamic text. :> I disagree; text makes it easier to bludgeon the players by *telling* :> them what they should feel. It takes at least a moderately skilled :> writer to make the player truly *feel* the emotions. :Ah, but how good an artist is needed to inspire players to feel emotions :due to graphical images? Exactly: the same problem that plagues text muds would plague amatuer graphic muds: amatuer talent in the creative role. Bad pictures are as bad as bad writing. :> find that some of my emotions respond more to written descriptions, :> and some to graphical depictions. Which is superior depends both on :> what emotion you want to draw out, and on the personal qualities of :> the player you're trying to draw them out of. :> To give a few examples from my own experience... <snip> :Same here - but turn the sound off and no movie even makes me jump. :I think that sound adds atmosphere which graphics alone can never do - :When I first started playing Doom II for example, it used to make me :feel very tense when I could hear growls around me, and sometimes it :would even make me jump. :Perhaps the next phase of mud after graphical will be "graphical with :sound"... I took that as assumed... :> Of course, all of this is merely anecdotal, and is just how things :> affect me -- but I hope my point is made; that both graphics and text :> have things to offer, and there's no reason to feel that either one is :> inherently superior to the other. :I agree of your first point, but not on the second. Both graphics and :text certainly have things to offer, but BOTH are inherently superior :to each other in different areas. If someone tries to create a graphical :version of a text-based game, then I would be very surprised if it was :a success. I am getting more and more tempted to start working on a :graphical mud of my own, but if I do, it will be nothing like any text :based mud. There are reasons to combine the two as well... :Out of interest, can anyone recommend a good book on socket programming? :It a skill I'm sadly lacking to any useful degree...all I need to do then :is work out how to draw a pixel on the screen, and the rest I can do ;) Um. *Glances up at bookshelf.* Stevens' Unix Network Programming is the only one on my bookshelf at work atm, but I can't remember how good it was. -- "You? We can't take you," said the Dean, glaring at the Librarian. "You don't know a thing about guerilla warfare." - Reaper Man, Nathan F. Yospe Registered Looney by Terry Pratchett yospe#hawaii,edu http://www2.hawaii.edu/~yospe Meow
- Re: [MUD-Dev] The impact of the web on muds, (continued)
- Re: [MUD-Dev] The impact of the web on muds, Ola Fosheim Grøstad olag#ifi,uio.no, Mon 05 Jan 1998, 23:03 GMT
- Re: [MUD-Dev] The impact of the web on muds, Marian Griffith gryphon#iaehv,nl, Sat 17 Jan 1998, 10:40 GMT
- Re: [MUD-Dev] The impact of the web on muds, Travis Casey efindel#polaris,net, Mon 19 Jan 1998, 22:13 GMT
- Re: [MUD-Dev] The impact of the web on muds, Richard Woolcock KaVir#dial,pipex.com, Tue 20 Jan 1998, 00:31 GMT
- Re: [MUD-Dev] The impact of the web on muds, Nathan Yospe yospe#hawaii,edu, Tue 20 Jan 1998, 02:52 GMT
- Re: [MUD-Dev] Socket programming (was: The impact of the web on muds), Vadim Tkachenko vadimt#4cs,com, Thu 22 Jan 1998, 20:35 GMT
- Re: [MUD-Dev] Socket programming (was: The impact of the web on muds), Richard Woolcock KaVir#dial,pipex.com, Thu 22 Jan 1998, 21:14 GMT
- OT: Socket programming - platform specific, Jon A. Lambert jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com, Thu 22 Jan 1998, 23:23 GMT
- Re: [MUD-Dev] The impact of the web on muds, coder coder#ibm,net, Thu 12 Feb 1998, 01:38 GMT