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<H1>[MUD-Dev] Ubiquity Scope & Requirements</H1>
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<UL>
<LI><em>To</em>: "MUD-Dev" <<A HREF="mailto:mud-dev#kanga,nu">mud-dev#kanga,nu</A>></LI>
<LI><em>Subject</em>: [MUD-Dev] Ubiquity Scope & Requirements</LI>
<LI><em>From</em>: "Greg Munt" <<A HREF="mailto:greg#uni-corn,demon.co.uk">greg#uni-corn,demon.co.uk</A>></LI>
<LI><em>Date</em>: Sun, 5 Jul 1998 21:00:11 +0100</LI>
<LI><em>Reply-To</em>: <A HREF="mailto:mud-dev#kanga,nu">mud-dev#kanga,nu</A></LI>
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<PRE>
What follows are my scoping and requirements documents. I plan to publish
all my development documents on the web. I don't have any plans to publish
the code right now. I'd much rather have my design copied, rather than my
implementation.
If you can think of anything I've missed, please let me know! Additionally,
I'm hopeful that it will provoke discussion here.
Defining The Project's Scope
Considering the mistakes made in the development of Frontiers, I
wanted my next project to begin as something simple, which,
through
iterative development, would evolve into a fully-fledged,
complex
online environment. Using Bartle's classification of player
goals, I
considered the fact that one type of game could not be all
things to
all people; Socialisers would not appreciate an environment
where
commands not internally consistent remained unimplemented. (The
tell
command, for example - it is difficult, if not impossible, to
plausibly explain how people thousands of miles away from each
other
can communicate. Exceptions to this rule warrant the
intervention of
technology, or magic. I did not feel that such intervention
could be
implemented effectively, within an online environment.)
I had two choices: develop one style of mud, dedicated to one
particular player goal, or develop a server with dedicated
subareas.
(This would effectively be multiple games in a single mud.)
Frontiers was an attempt to provide multiple games, for all. But
I
only really knew about what Socialisers wanted. So, I decided
that
my initial goal would be to develop a piece of software that
would
cater specifically and wholly for Socialisers. After developing
that, as fully as I could, I would enhance it through iterative
development, establishing a 'world', with the original
Socialiser-specific software becoming an OOC command shell.
Analysing The Project Requirements
Let's take a look at the basic requirements of a
Socialiser-specific
online environment.
IT'S ONLINE
'Online' need not mean the Internet; however, the global
network
is a very publicly accessible medium - and therefore a great
provider of many potential users. Additionally it is
well-standardised, and facilities to build Internet support
into
software are common, and freely available.
ITS USERS ARE PERMANENT, OR AT LEAST SEMI-PERMANENT
Users need a permanent identity within the provided
environment.
This sociological demand stems from the need for people to
develop relationships with their peers, irrespective of the
setting. Clubs, societies and guilds are a selection of the
many
examples of this phenomenon. The required sense of identity
is
used to further this sociological goal: it is difficult to
develop a relationship with somebody if your name (and
therefore
your friends' frame of reference to you) is unstable. Could
you
be sure that Bubba is really Bubba? Maybe they are really
Boffo,
who has taken Bubba's name? What happens when the real Bubba
tries to connect?
IT PROVIDES LOGIN SECURITY FOR ITS USERS
To ensure that Bubba really is Bubba, and always will be,
user
representations need to be secure. It is no good to save
Bubba
in a database of some sort, only to allow anyone to connect
as
him. A typical security method is to require a username and
password combination to be input, before full entry into the
world is permitted.
IT SUPPORTS A PERSISTENT WORLD
A persistent world is saved across server reboots. Some
muds,
such as DIKUMUD and its derivatives, provide a static world
which is reset at regular intervals. Reasons for this
include
repopulating areas (replacing 'monsters' which have been
killed,
for example) and resetting traps and puzzles. A persistent
world
is more dynamic, in that things killed stay dead, and doors
unlocked stay unlocked - just as in the real world.
IT PROVIDES A CLEAR, SIMPLE AND INTUITIVE USER INTERFACE
The traditional mud is text-only, accessed via a
telnet-compatible client. However, the mainstream
Internet-aware
public is quite engulfed by the graphical medium. First
Windows,
then the Web, have shown how appealing a graphical user
interface (GUI) is - and why mud-playing has remained on the
sidelines. The average Internet user believes the Internet
and
the Web to be synonymous, and, whilst a gross inaccuracy,
this
large number of people has eluded most muds up until now -
primarily, in my view, because they are not accessible via a
well-known medium. The closest many people have come to
using
muds, is through Microsoft Chat, or web-based chat rooms. If
Ubiquity should use a web interface, the question of whether
to
support telnet clients still remains. Since almost all of
the
current mud users use these clients, it would be in
Ubiquity's
best interests to support it - in the same way that it is
important to have a web interface, to cater for the users
who
are not telnet-aware. Additionally, it would perhaps allow
for
the testing of lower-level functionality than can be visible
from a GUI.
IT PROVIDES VARIOUS SERVICES TO ITS USERS
In order to determine what functionality it is that Ubiquity
should provide, the Internet facilities that are currently
available need to be looked at - those that satisfy
Socialiser
goals. The reason for this, is that only a small minority of
people will use something completely different to that which
they are used to (this can be clearly seen by the dominance
of
TinyMUD, LPMUD and DIKUMUD throughout the mud world); people
tend to stick with what they know, even if a newer product
is
much better. These services are as follows:
Email
Newsgroups
Internet-Relayed Chat (IRC)
Information Repositories
Games
</PRE>
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<li><strong><A NAME="00056" HREF="msg00056.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Ubiquity Scope & Requirements</A></strong>
<ul compact><li><em>From:</em> Vadim Tkachenko <vt#freehold,crocodile.org></li></ul>
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<ul><li>Thread context:
<BLOCKQUOTE><UL>
<LI><STRONG>[MUD-Dev] Re: Affordances and social method (Was: Re: Wired Magazine...)</STRONG>, <EM>(continued)</EM>
<ul compact>
<ul compact>
<ul compact>
<ul compact>
<ul compact>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00448" HREF="msg00448.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Affordances and social method (Was: Re: Wired Magazine...)</A></strong>,
Marian Griffith <a href="mailto:gryphon#iaehv,nl">gryphon#iaehv,nl</a>, Sat 01 Aug 1998, 21:57 GMT
<UL>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00451" HREF="msg00451.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Affordances and social method (Was: Re: Wired Magazine...)</A></strong>,
Robert Woods <a href="mailto:rwoods#nebula,honors.unr.edu">rwoods#nebula,honors.unr.edu</a>, Sun 02 Aug 1998, 01:11 GMT
</LI>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00453" HREF="msg00453.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Affordances and social method (Was: Re: Wired</A></strong>,
Jon A. Lambert <a href="mailto:jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com">jlsysinc#ix,netcom.com</a>, Sun 02 Aug 1998, 05:37 GMT
</LI>
</UL>
</LI>
</ul>
</ul>
</ul>
</ul>
</ul>
</LI>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00050" HREF="msg00050.html">[MUD-Dev] IMatix Tools: Libero and SMT</A></strong>,
J C Lawrence <a href="mailto:claw#under,engr.sgi.com">claw#under,engr.sgi.com</a>, Mon 06 Jul 1998, 20:39 GMT
<LI><strong><A NAME="00048" HREF="msg00048.html">[MUD-Dev] Ubiquity Scope & Requirements</A></strong>,
Greg Munt <a href="mailto:greg#uni-corn,demon.co.uk">greg#uni-corn,demon.co.uk</a>, Sun 05 Jul 1998, 19:54 GMT
<UL>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00056" HREF="msg00056.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Ubiquity Scope & Requirements</A></strong>,
Vadim Tkachenko <a href="mailto:vt#freehold,crocodile.org">vt#freehold,crocodile.org</a>, Tue 07 Jul 1998, 02:51 GMT
</LI>
</UL>
</LI>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00043" HREF="msg00043.html">[MUD-Dev] Meta (Are code release announcement appreciated?)</A></strong>,
Ben Greear <a href="mailto:greear#cyberhighway,net">greear#cyberhighway,net</a>, Fri 03 Jul 1998, 02:13 GMT
<UL>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00044" HREF="msg00044.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Meta (Are code release announcement appreciated?)</A></strong>,
Nathan F Yospe <a href="mailto:yospe#hawaii,edu">yospe#hawaii,edu</a>, Fri 03 Jul 1998, 02:20 GMT
</LI>
<LI><strong><A NAME="00045" HREF="msg00045.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: Meta (Are code release announcement appreciated?)</A></strong>,
J C Lawrence <a href="mailto:claw#kanga,nu">claw#kanga,nu</a>, Fri 03 Jul 1998, 05:44 GMT
</LI>
</UL>
</LI>
</UL></BLOCKQUOTE>
</ul>
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