<!-- MHonArc v2.4.4 --> <!--X-Subject: "short" Introductory Message (fwd) --> <!--X-From-R13: [negva Yrrtna <znegvaNpnz.fev.pbz> --> <!--X-Date: from scipio.globecomm.net [207.51.48.12] by in3.ibm.net id 865651027.16600-1 Sat Jun 7 02:37:07 1997 CUT --> <!--X-Message-Id: Pine.SOL.3.95.970607015823.18996A-100000@dryslwyn --> <!--X-Content-Type: text/plain --> <!--X-Head-End--> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN"> <html> <head> <title>MUD-Dev message, "short" Introductory Message (fwd)</title> <!-- meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" --> <link rev="made" href="mailto:martin#cam,sri.com"> </head> <body background="/backgrounds/paperback.gif" bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000" link="#0000FF" alink="#FF0000" vlink="#006000"> <font size="+4" color="#804040"> <strong><em>MUD-Dev<br>mailing list archive</em></strong> </font> <br> [ <a href="../">Other Periods</a> | <a href="../../">Other mailing lists</a> | <a href="/search.php3">Search</a> ] <br clear=all><hr> <!--X-Body-Begin--> <!--X-User-Header--> <!--X-User-Header-End--> <!--X-TopPNI--> Date: [ <a href="msg01244.html">Previous</a> | <a href="msg01246.html">Next</a> ] Thread: [ <a href="msg01309.html">Previous</a> | <a href="msg01249.html">Next</a> ] Index: [ <A HREF="author.html#01245">Author</A> | <A HREF="#01245">Date</A> | <A HREF="thread.html#01245">Thread</A> ] <!--X-TopPNI-End--> <!--X-MsgBody--> <!--X-Subject-Header-Begin--> <H1>"short" Introductory Message (fwd)</H1> <HR> <!--X-Subject-Header-End--> <!--X-Head-of-Message--> <UL> <LI><em>To</em>: <A HREF="mailto:mud-dev#null,net">mud-dev#null,net</A></LI> <LI><em>Subject</em>: "short" Introductory Message (fwd)</LI> <LI><em>From</em>: Martin Keegan <<A HREF="mailto:martin#cam,sri.com">martin#cam,sri.com</A>></LI> <LI><em>Date</em>: Sat, 7 Jun 1997 03:36:34 +0100 (BST)</LI> <LI><em>Reply-To</em>: Martin Keegan <<A HREF="mailto:martin#cam,sri.com">martin#cam,sri.com</A>></LI> </UL> <!--X-Head-of-Message-End--> <!--X-Head-Body-Sep-Begin--> <HR> <!--X-Head-Body-Sep-End--> <!--X-Body-of-Message--> <PRE> I've been asked by Chris to write a "short" introductory message, which I've completely failed to do as this introduction runs to more than a hundred lines. I tried to post this to the list earlier but it doesn't seem to have got through. Apologies to anyone who receives two copies. Those of you who know me (*) will probably be readers of rec.games.mud.admin where I post way too much for my continued employment prospects. I've been mudding since 1994 (**), mainly on a from-scratch mud called Island, which I took over running in 1996 until its unexpected closure. My interests cover many areas of mudding, though "design" sums most of them up. As far as coding goes, I'm no maestro - I can barely use C (Indeed, on Island I introduced The Bug That Killed The Game), and am an advocate of exploring other languages for writing muds. Anyway, a few notes on Island, what I'm doing now, and miscellaneous ideas of mine ... Island: Island was a from-scratch mud which ran in Oxford and Cambridge between 1990 and 1996. It was based on Mundi and MIST. The "Classic" version was only available to people local to the machine it was on, each running their own copy of the game, which communicated through shared files. In 1993, the game was rewritten to be accessible from the Internet, and rechristened Island TNG. TNG, played by a broader range of people than found in the Oxford University Physics Dept, rapidly underwent imbalance problems. XP based muds are inherently unstable - once players reach the top, there's nothing left for them to do. A temporary solution (apart from the "Add more levels, obviously" response I got from a Dikuer) is to increase the difficulty of advancement. Island did this through the introduction of a harsh regime of compulsory quests. The quests tended to be quite elaborate, and provoked fierce competition. It took me more than six months to complete them all. Eventually, it became apparent that the quest-oriented nature of the game was driving players away. Crucially, it was driving away the idiots and powerlevellers. "Strong in Spades", is how Island was described in the light of Bartle's HCDS paper. (Spades being the "Explorer" types). Every year or so, the quests would be updated, and made more numerous, and (we hoped) more intellectually challenging. Island's gameplay was nothing to get excited about, unless you liked combat (well, unless you liked Island's peculiar brand of combat, that is!), which became so complicated that the moves were abbreviated to numbers. The real magic of the game (and the point, as far as the administration was concerned), was the "culture" which the game engendered. The text of the mud (the database, messages, even comments and variable/function names in the source code) was steeped in allusions to literature, mythology, comedy, music and Island history. At one point, political battles would be fought out by writing Island-related parodies of pop songs ('Thank you for the Upgrade', 'Privacy Gaga', 'Lagman', 'The Final Shutdown') Overall, the game was crippled by atrocious design decisions taken early in its history (***), its immense intellectual snobbery (even the new ideas discussion board contained Biblical references), and "political" problems which had little to do with the game, culminating in a former player unplugging the host machine. The search for a safe site with trustworthy administrators continues. What I'm doing now: At the moment I'm writing a mud (from scratch, unsurprisingly) which allows building at a proportional cost to the player, rather than being based on rank. (Or letting everyone build, or no-one at all). More interesting to the design people is that the system incorporates a language called 'E', which looks a bit like Inform. I've had a look at many mud languages, and didn't like any. 'Mud languages' sums these up very well. Muds, as far as I'm concerned, are "virtual worlds", and the languages used to describe them tend to be modelled on general programming languages rather than reflecting virtual worlds in their design. LPC, the best known "mud language", I found to be way too general: you can write webservers in it; it's not a world description language but a general programming language with Mud-flavoured knobs on. (****) E works as a series of definitions of entities within a model world. Entities can inherit features of other entities. That's basically all there is to it, and such concepts will doubtless be familiar to most people on this list. The interpreter enforces very little in the way of type or sanity checking. Not only are objects, doors, monsters and rooms described in E, but the grammar and syntax of the language used to access the mud (the parser, effectively) are also defined. In text-based muds, we use languages to communicate between human players and the computer-controlled game. The "suspension of disbelief" upon which immersive experiences (and other fiction, whether interactive or otherwise) like mudding depends can be impaired if the user's attention is distracted from the content by the interface. If the text of a mud is ungrammatical, dull, poorly spelt, offensive, repetitive or just plain boring, then the spell can be broken, and the experience spoilt. Similarly, the parser must attempt to accept as broad a subset of natural English (or whatever language the mud is in) as possible; having to wrestle with a commandline parser is not conducive to enjoyment of a mud. To the end of making sure the text is not repetitive, I've designed a system for randomised generation of non-boring text, which got an airing in rec.games.mud.admin in a thread about creating consistent names for newborn NPCs. Named "EricGeneric", it has been described as everything from "An invention more significant and useful than time travel" to "Prolog for Poofters" (really!) Miscellaneous: Various other things I'm into include The Mud Tree ("A year-long project to incriminate Richard Bartle"), which is a family tree of mud codebases and original (non-codebase) muds, in which many of you may be interested. (I'm currently in a legal dispute with a company which has placed an unattributed copy of this on their website and claimed copyright.) My other mudding related projects would have to be MUDNS (a lookup system for muds in collaboration with The Mud Connector and ZMud), the oft-discussed but seldom-progressed Hypertext Mud Terminal Protocol, and a voice-driven mud client. Anyway - I've now written a "short" introduction much longer than Greg Munt's (which apparently quoted me, one of his (to me) amusing habits :)). What I've read of this mailing list I find quite encouraging, and hope it comes to serve as a shining "You are not alone" beacon for mud designers everywhere. Thanks for having me along :) Mk (*) though it seems I am better known on the Net as the step-brother of Australia's answer to Jenny McCarthy (**) I played Shades and Islandia before this, but not for any length of time. (***) It was only expected to last 6 months (!) (****) Doubtless I'll now be informed that "Obscura-9 does all this and more, and you really ought to have heard of it" </PRE> <!--X-Body-of-Message-End--> <!--X-MsgBody-End--> <!--X-Follow-Ups--> <HR> <ul compact><li><strong>Follow-Ups</strong>: <ul> <li><strong><A NAME="01258" HREF="msg01258.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] "short" Introductory Message (fwd)</A></strong> <ul compact><li><em>From:</em> coder#ibm,net</li></ul> <li><strong><A NAME="01249" HREF="msg01249.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] "short" Introductory Message (fwd)</A></strong> <ul compact><li><em>From:</em> caliban#darklock,com (Caliban Tiresias Darklock)</li></ul> </UL></LI></UL> <!--X-Follow-Ups-End--> <!--X-References--> <!--X-References-End--> <!--X-BotPNI--> <UL> <LI>Prev by Date: <STRONG><A HREF="msg01244.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Rooms, 3D arrays, etc.</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Next by Date: <STRONG><A HREF="msg01246.html">The laws of probability</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Prev by thread: <STRONG><A HREF="msg01309.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] The laws of probability</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Next by thread: <STRONG><A HREF="msg01249.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] "short" Introductory Message (fwd)</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Index(es): <UL> <LI><A HREF="index.html#01245"><STRONG>Date</STRONG></A></LI> <LI><A HREF="thread.html#01245"><STRONG>Thread</STRONG></A></LI> </UL> </LI> </UL> <!--X-BotPNI-End--> <!--X-User-Footer--> <!--X-User-Footer-End--> <ul><li>Thread context: <BLOCKQUOTE><UL> <LI><STRONG>Re: [MUD-Dev] The laws of probability</STRONG>, <EM>(continued)</EM> <ul compact> <LI><strong><A NAME="01282" HREF="msg01282.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] The laws of probability</A></strong>, clawrenc <a href="mailto:clawrenc#cup,hp.com">clawrenc#cup,hp.com</a>, Wed 11 Jun 1997, 05:57 GMT </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="01284" HREF="msg01284.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] The laws of probability</A></strong>, Adam Wiggins <a href="mailto:nightfall#user1,inficad.com">nightfall#user1,inficad.com</a>, Wed 11 Jun 1997, 08:47 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="01297" HREF="msg01297.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] The laws of probability</A></strong>, clawrenc <a href="mailto:clawrenc#cup,hp.com">clawrenc#cup,hp.com</a>, Thu 12 Jun 1997, 03:00 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="01309" HREF="msg01309.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] The laws of probability</A></strong>, clawrenc <a href="mailto:clawrenc#cup,hp.com">clawrenc#cup,hp.com</a>, Fri 13 Jun 1997, 01:04 GMT </LI> </UL> </LI> </UL> </LI> </ul> </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="01245" HREF="msg01245.html">"short" Introductory Message (fwd)</A></strong>, Martin Keegan <a href="mailto:martin#cam,sri.com">martin#cam,sri.com</a>, Sat 07 Jun 1997, 09:37 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="01249" HREF="msg01249.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] "short" Introductory Message (fwd)</A></strong>, Caliban Tiresias Darklock <a href="mailto:caliban#darklock,com">caliban#darklock,com</a>, Sun 08 Jun 1997, 02:52 GMT </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="01258" HREF="msg01258.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] "short" Introductory Message (fwd)</A></strong>, coder <a href="mailto:coder#ibm,net">coder#ibm,net</a>, Mon 09 Jun 1997, 00:03 GMT </LI> </UL> </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="01242" HREF="msg01242.html">[WotC TSR buyout] WotC Survey</A></strong>, Jeff Kesselman <a href="mailto:jeffk#tenetwork,com">jeffk#tenetwork,com</a>, Sat 07 Jun 1997, 05:30 GMT <LI><strong><A NAME="01327" HREF="msg01327.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] RP=MUSH/PG=MUD</A></strong>, Martin Keegan <a href="mailto:martin#cam,sri.com">martin#cam,sri.com</a>, Sat 07 Jun 1997, 03:14 GMT </LI> </UL></BLOCKQUOTE> </ul> <hr> <center> [ <a href="../">Other Periods</a> | <a href="../../">Other mailing lists</a> | <a href="/search.php3">Search</a> ] </center> <hr> </body> </html>