<!-- MHonArc v2.4.4 --> <!--X-Subject: Re: [MUD-Dev] MUD Economy --> <!--X-From-R13: XQ Znjerapr <pynjNhaqre.Sat.Eha.QA[> --> <!--X-Date: Sat, 10 Jan 1998 00:29:53 +0000 --> <!--X-Message-Id: 199801092345.PAA00678#under,Eng.Sun.COM --> <!--X-Content-Type: text/plain --> <!--X-Reference: Pine.SUN.3.96.980107172437.4973B-100000@sun38 --> <!--X-Head-End--> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN"> <html> <head> <title>MUD-Dev message, Re: [MUD-Dev] MUD Economy</title> <!-- meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" --> <link rev="made" href="mailto:claw#under,Eng.Sun.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="msg00156.html">Previous</a> | <a href="msg00158.html">Next</a> ] Thread: [ <a href="msg00149.html">Previous</a> | <a href="msg00196.html">Next</a> ] Index: [ <A HREF="author.html#00157">Author</A> | <A HREF="#00157">Date</A> | <A HREF="thread.html#00157">Thread</A> ] <!--X-TopPNI-End--> <!--X-MsgBody--> <!--X-Subject-Header-Begin--> <H1>Re: [MUD-Dev] MUD Economy</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>: Re: [MUD-Dev] MUD Economy </LI> <LI><em>From</em>: JC Lawrence <<A HREF="mailto:claw#under,Eng.Sun.COM">claw#under,Eng.Sun.COM</A>></LI> <LI><em>Date</em>: Fri, 09 Jan 1998 15:45:02 -0800</LI> <LI><em>Reply-to</em>: <A HREF="mailto:claw#null,net">claw#null,net</A></LI> </UL> <!--X-Head-of-Message-End--> <!--X-Head-Body-Sep-Begin--> <HR> <!--X-Head-Body-Sep-End--> <!--X-Body-of-Message--> <PRE> On Wed, 7 Jan 1998 14:32:47 PST8PDT Shawn Halpenny<malachai#iname,com> wrote: > I have been pondering the startup and sustenance of a MUD economy, > some thoughts follow about moving toward a complete trade economy > where no money is present, nor required. Money is a great simplifier -- it need not be global (compare the company scripts from the latter half of last century as in the song with the refrain "Another day older and deeper in debt"). I'd strongly suggest also looking at implementing something like a LET system for currency: <A HREF="http://www.gmlets.u-net.com/">http://www.gmlets.u-net.com/</A> <A HREF="http://www.ic.org/market/money/">http://www.ic.org/market/money/</A> <A HREF="http://titsoc.soc.titech.ac.jp/titsoc/higuchi-lab/icm/">http://titsoc.soc.titech.ac.jp/titsoc/higuchi-lab/icm/</A> <A HREF="http://espc22.murdoch.edu.au/~armlets/">http://espc22.murdoch.edu.au/~armlets/</A> Fascinating stuff. You might also want to look into the extremely interesting and very wide-spread use of "trade dollars" as an alternative currency in Australia. In quite a few industries in Australia more trade is done per day in trade-dollars than in Australian currency. (Sorry, don't have time to dig up much of a URL list: <A HREF="http://www.tradebanc.com/">http://www.tradebanc.com/</A> <A HREF="http://kite.ois.net.au/~btrcard/main001.htm">http://kite.ois.net.au/~btrcard/main001.htm</A>? <A HREF="http://kite.ois.net.au/~btrcard/bart001.htm">http://kite.ois.net.au/~btrcard/bart001.htm</A> There is some suspicion that the total volume of transactions in trade dollars and similar alternative currencies/barter systems in Australia will exceed the total volume of transactions done in the natonal currency before the year 2010. I wouldn't be at all surprised. > All vendors could start out quite stupid (i.e. not having any idea > whatsoever about what an object is worth): e.g. trading 1 kg of > steel for 1 kg of flour. Then, as the local demand for steel rises, > the vendor would learn that he was initially trading steel for _way_ > too little and then raise his "price"). Now that price is what > needs to be determined. It's easy to say "You can have that sword > if you give me three good milk cows", but where does the frame of > reference for the comparison come from? What makes the sword worth > three cows? A problem source is that you are not pre-defining the sales purpose of each vendor. Instead of each vendor knowing that his job is to "sell swords", "be a blacksmith", or some such similar, you attempting an evolutionary system where vendors attempt to evolve a purpose, and from then evolve a sequence of methods to achieve that purpose. Solving both problems at once can be a bitch. I'd suggest by starting with solving the simpler problem of taking deriving methods for a vendor with a known purpose to achieve those purposes (simple matrix iterations or neural nets would likely do), and then once that's done attempt to solve the problem of deriving the base purpose in the first place. The nice thiong about pre-defining the purpose, is that you can then have prices directly reflective of the difficulty in achieve that purpose. It gets to be pretty linear -- "its very difficult to get steel to make the swords I need to make" == "prices are high" etc. > I suppose this view could be summed up like this: shopkeepers do not > really sell items to characters. They act solely as distribution > points and what they distribute depends on what they are asked for, > what they have, and what they can get. After all, what would money > mean to a NPC shopkeeper? Certainly, he could just accumulate it > like everyone else and retire wealthy but is that interesting from > any point of view other than simulation? It seems that money > wouldn't be required at all. Programming a generic trader is a different problem as you also have to solve the problem of the trader knowing what is needed and wanted in each area. There are two basic sources of resource consumption that a trader may attempt to supply: NPC's and players. NPC's are simple -- you can put all sorts of logging and needs/wants code into the survery to give the traders extra data under the covers. Players are more difficult. I would suggest attempting a back-end solution by having your system track the location of consumption of all objects across the game, and then have the traders assume (usually correctly) that point-of-consumption == sales opportunity. -- J C Lawrence Internet: claw#null,net Internet: coder#ibm,net ----------(*) Internet: jc.lawrence#sun,com ...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith... </PRE> <!--X-Body-of-Message-End--> <!--X-MsgBody-End--> <!--X-Follow-Ups--> <HR> <!--X-Follow-Ups-End--> <!--X-References--> <UL><LI><STRONG>References</STRONG>: <UL> <LI><STRONG><A NAME="00090" HREF="msg00090.html">MUD Economy</A></STRONG> <UL><LI><EM>From:</EM> Shawn Halpenny <malachai#iname,com></LI></UL></LI> </UL></LI></UL> <!--X-References-End--> <!--X-BotPNI--> <UL> <LI>Prev by Date: <STRONG><A HREF="msg00156.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Unique items</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Next by Date: <STRONG><A HREF="msg00158.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Commercial value of RP</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Prev by thread: <STRONG><A HREF="msg00149.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] MUD Economy</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Next by thread: <STRONG><A HREF="msg00196.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] MUD Economy</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Index(es): <UL> <LI><A HREF="index.html#00157"><STRONG>Date</STRONG></A></LI> <LI><A HREF="thread.html#00157"><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] MUD Economy</STRONG>, <EM>(continued)</EM> <ul compact> <ul compact> <ul compact> <LI><strong><A NAME="00151" HREF="msg00151.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] MUD Economy</A></strong>, Shawn Halpenny <a href="mailto:malachai#iname,com">malachai#iname,com</a>, Fri 09 Jan 1998, 21:33 GMT </LI> </ul> <LI><strong><A NAME="00148" HREF="msg00148.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] MUD Economy</A></strong>, Shawn Halpenny <a href="mailto:malachai#iname,com">malachai#iname,com</a>, Fri 09 Jan 1998, 19:07 GMT </LI> </ul> <LI><strong><A NAME="00121" HREF="msg00121.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] MUD Economy</A></strong>, Adam Wiggins <a href="mailto:nightfall#user1,inficad.com">nightfall#user1,inficad.com</a>, Thu 08 Jan 1998, 19:57 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="00149" HREF="msg00149.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] MUD Economy</A></strong>, Shawn Halpenny <a href="mailto:malachai#iname,com">malachai#iname,com</a>, Fri 09 Jan 1998, 21:10 GMT </LI> </UL> </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="00157" HREF="msg00157.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] MUD Economy</A></strong>, JC Lawrence <a href="mailto:claw#under,Eng.Sun.COM">claw#under,Eng.Sun.COM</a>, Sat 10 Jan 1998, 00:29 GMT </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="00196" HREF="msg00196.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] MUD Economy</A></strong>, Jon A. Lambert <a href="mailto:jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com">jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com</a>, Mon 12 Jan 1998, 05:25 GMT </LI> </ul> </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="00088" HREF="msg00088.html">threaded servers (was Re: [MUD-Dev] request for comments</A></strong>, Mike Sellers <a href="mailto:mike#online-alchemy,com">mike#online-alchemy,com</a>, Wed 07 Jan 1998, 18:37 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="00113" HREF="msg00113.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] request for comments</A></strong>, Miroslav Silovic <a href="mailto:silovic#zesoi,fer.hr">silovic#zesoi,fer.hr</a>, Thu 08 Jan 1998, 13:07 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="00166" HREF="msg00166.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] request for comments</A></strong>, JC Lawrence <a href="mailto:claw#under,Eng.Sun.COM">claw#under,Eng.Sun.COM</a>, Sat 10 Jan 1998, 03:17 GMT </LI> </UL> </LI> </UL> </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>