03 Dec, 2007, Tailsthefox wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
Yes before you all say it, I know there is way to many as is. I am hoping that this one will be a bit different. This is a Dbsaga codebase as starting but I am doing as much as I can do to change the format of it. I have added a lot of things to it some of which are snippets from here. I am hoping that it will be a great mud. We have a lot of new races and some custom ones I created. I have been working on this codebase for a good 3 months offline. It is almost open, so there is a few things I wanted to ask.


1: Is it okay if I advertise this website in my motd? I want to do this since this website has been so much help to me.
2: What are some things should I remember when I am hiring coders?
3: What would help me to make my mud successful?
4: How much is too much when it comes to a mud?
5: Where do I look to find good builders and immortals?
6: How do you keep a mud popular after it's successful?
7: Do you have any suggestions on a dragonball mud? (Please don't say anything rude about not using dbsaga or don't make one)
8: I found a server with moocow, but if anything happens with that what free servers would you suggest?

I thank you all in advance for your help and comments.
03 Dec, 2007, David Haley wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
1: I would think so, but I'm not an admin…

2: Make sure you trust them if you give them shell access. Keep backups even if you do trust them (a generally good idea). A coder with shell access is as good as god as far as their level of control over your game. And even without shell access, a coder can always throw in backdoors if they choose to do so. (Very unlikely scenarios here; I'm just saying…)

3: An excellent question… :smile: I have some thoughts but at the moment don't have time to put them down.

4: Too much what?

5: I'd guess forums and the like; existing players too, sometimes.

6: See point 3 :wink:

7: no idea, I've never played a DBZ MUD. On a tangent, I wonder why the most popular themes in MUDding seem to be fantasy, Star Wars and DBZ. The first two I understand, the second seems a little off the wall to me. (Not saying it's bad, just a little random compared to the other two.)

8: don't know, I don't use free servers
03 Dec, 2007, Zeno wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
7: Personally, I wouldn't suggest using the DBSaga codebase. If you want to use Smaug, stick with FUSS. It's a bugfixed codebase.
03 Dec, 2007, Conner wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
Tailsthefox said:
Yes before you all say it, I know there is way to many as is. I am hoping that this one will be a bit different. This is a Dbsaga codebase as starting but I am doing as much as I can do to change the format of it. I have added a lot of things to it some of which are snippets from here. I am hoping that it will be a great mud. We have a lot of new races and some custom ones I created. I have been working on this codebase for a good 3 months offline. It is almost open, so there is a few things I wanted to ask.

1: Is it okay if I advertise this website in my motd? I want to do this since this website has been so much help to me.
2: What are some things should I remember when I am hiring coders?
3: What would help me to make my mud successful?
4: How much is too much when it comes to a mud?
5: Where do I look to find good builders and immortals?
6: How do you keep a mud popular after it's successful?
7: Do you have any suggestions on a dragonball mud? (Please don't say anything rude about not using dbsaga or don't make one)
8: I found a server with moocow, but if anything happens with that what free servers would you suggest?

I thank you all in advance for your help and comments.

Nice post..
1. As David said, I don't see why not, but that's up to the admins here to decide. On the other hand, are many of those who will see your in-game MOTD folks that you feel will benefit from this site? (ie, are they coders or builders or admins of other muds?)
2. David's covered it fairly well. Be cautious about who you give shell access to and always keep good backups, even f you don't give shell access to a coder you should still review the work they're doing for you (the code itself) regularly both to be aware of what changes are going on in your code and to double check for common mistakes like omission of semi-colons.
3. I suppose that, at least partially, depends on how you're defining success. Most people like to give a financial definition to that term and yet in many muds that's not an option that's compatible with their license.
4. I have to ask the same thing David did, too much of what?
5. Initially, you'll have to either go it alone for a bit or post to the forums, you could also check any building schools for your codebase as well (if they exist for your codebase), but once you have a player base, you're generally better off to 'hire from within' when you can, though sometimes real talent may show up in other unexpected places too.
6. Again, I'd have to ask how you're defining successful since most of us who can't charge for our muds consider popularity to be a criteria for success.
7. Nope, I don't watch the show, play the muds, or otherwise known anything about them for the most part.
8. As David says, I don't use free servers, I self-host and because I also host others, any other answer I could give would be unfairly biased. However, with that said, there was a thread on these forums not too long ago with quite a discussion about free servers that may or may not be helpful to you.

You're welcome, in advance, for any help that my comments may provide and I wish you luck with your endeavor.
03 Dec, 2007, Davion wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
Tailsthefox said:
1: Is it okay if I advertise this website in my motd? I want to do this since this website has been so much help to me.

How could I say no to that? :P Of course you can link to us.
Tailsthefox said:
2: What are some things should I remember when I am hiring coders?

This is a really sticky subject. What -you- should do depends on how much you know about the environment you'll be developing in. If you know nothing about it, then it's difficult. A coder has total control over the MUD, you can put in all the level restrictions you want, they can either remove them or change their level. But backup backup backup. If they take off with the code and such at least you'll have a version.
Tailsthefox said:
3: What would help me to make my mud successful?

There are so many things. Obviously having a stable codebase, with an environment of unique well put together ideas. Also, get the name out there. Advertising is huge. If people don't know it exists, you'll have to rely on word of mouth. The usual way to do that is to submit to as many mudlistings as possible, but there are sites who will also run a banner for a cost.

Tailsthefox said:
4: How much is too much when it comes to a mud?

To much what?
Tailsthefox said:
5: Where do I look to find good builders and immortals?

When I find out I'll tell you :S
Tailsthefox said:
6: How do you keep a mud popular after it's successful?

Keep up exactly what you're doing that made it successful in the first place.
Tailsthefox said:
7: Do you have any suggestions on a dragonball mud? (Please don't say anything rude about not using dbsaga or don't make one)

I wouldn't go with the norm. I'd prefer to write a DB mud from the ground up and not use another cookie cutter DB MUD.
Tailsthefox said:
8: I found a server with moocow, but if anything happens with that what free servers would you suggest?

Zeno has a pretty sweet one. PM him to see if he has room.
03 Dec, 2007, David Haley wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
Davion said:
Keep up exactly what you're doing that made it successful in the first place.

That doesn't always work, unfortunately: sometimes what it takes to get something popular in early stages is very different from keeping its popularity. For example, you might have an exciting early game play, but relatively poor later stages of play. Players will therefore enjoy creating their characters, but if they stagnate at higher levels of play, they might get bored and move on. (Unless the early game is exciting enough to keep recreating players to go through it, but IME people don't tend to do that often.) It's a lot like startups: you often need very different management teams to handle the early stage versus the 'mature' stage.
04 Dec, 2007, Hades_Kane wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
Tailsthefox said:
2: What are some things should I remember when I am hiring coders?

I think everyone covered that already. Particularly in the DBZ MUD theme, that can be tricky because every other post on DBZ on The MUD Connector seems to be about a DBZ MUD Owner complaining that so-and-so stole their code. I would say ask for references and check them out carefully.

Tailsthefox said:
3: What would help me to make my mud successful?

Treat your players with respect, and expect them to do the same to one another. Don't be a tyrant, but rather listen to your players, even problem ones. I've found that 9 times out of 10 if a player is acting up or acting out, there's a legitimate reason for them being upset, but fear of Imms, bad past experiences, or lack of communication skills often contribute to them not expressing it in a very productive manner. If you approach people like this with respect and maturity, often times they will gain a lot of respect for the way you handled it and not be a problem anymore.

Tailsthefox said:
4: How much is too much when it comes to a mud?

As everyone else said… too much what? Based off of what I've seen from many other DBZ MUDs, too much color seems to be a big problem.

Tailsthefox said:
5: Where do I look to find good builders and immortals?

Your playerbase. I find the most dedicated and skilled builders/immortals come from people who love the game, and are familiar enough with it to know what is expected of future areas. Unfortunately, advertising on TMC is risky if you are a DBZ based game. If you post there, just be sure to run it through spell check a few times, read through your post carefully, and most importantly, if you get flamed, respond in as calm and mature of a manner as possible, if you even respond at all. I've been trying to post in defense of people who get needlessly flamed, particularly if it's a DBZ MUD that is flamed purely for their theme.

Tailsthefox said:
6: How do you keep a mud popular after it's successful?

Continue to add and evolve. I wouldn't change anything necessarily that's a big hit, but adding new areas, quests, coming up with immortal involved ways to entertain the playerbase, stuff like that.

Tailsthefox said:
7: Do you have any suggestions on a dragonball mud? (Please don't say anything rude about not using dbsaga or don't make one)

I'm not trying to be rude, but if you go with a pre-existing DBZ codebase when you have the ability to modify another codebase into a good DBZ game, I would really really suggest staying away from the codebases all of the other DBZ games use. If you are just super in love with DBSaga, not familiar enough with other codebases, or don't have the skill to modify another codebase into a good DBZ game, then I suppose you should go with what you know you can work with. Otherwise, I would strongly recommend you trying to offer things that are unique to your game that other DBZ games won't be offering. I would also highly recommend a more tactful use of color, as a ton of bright alternating colors is really ugly, and almost every DBZ MUD you log into uses a very similar color scheme. Most of all, the more mature and calm you represent yourself, the better it's going to look for your MUD in the public eye. Don't get trapped into needless flame wars with the likes of DarkOz or Ozma as he is sometimes known, as he is notorious for flaming other DBZ MUDs, for fear of competition I imagine.

Tailsthefox said:
8: I found a server with moocow, but if anything happens with that what free servers would you suggest?

I wouldn't know, don't use a free server. I use quantact.com, and never have had a problem with it, and it's super affordable. The only problem is if you don't know how to setup servers or don't know linux very well, you might have considerable problems getting going.


Either way, good luck, and just remember the more mature you seem on the forums, the better chance you'll have of people taking your game seriously. And try try try to offer something different and new from the other DBZ MUDs and I think you'll have a good bit of luck. Also, do everything in your power to try to keep your players behaving right.
04 Dec, 2007, Hanaisse wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
3. Put up a website with a forum and lots of basic information about your MUD - the getting started experience, what races/classes you offer, what unique features your mud has, maybe some maps (I find they help me get familiar with a mud more than any other feature). Plus, advertise, advertise, advertise.

4. One thing I find, based on experience is too much Admin/player interaction. Try not to get 'too' friendly with the players. I've left many mud's because of too much 'So what did you do today' kind of chatter. Polite conversation is good, but I really don't care if the Admin took their dog to the vet for fleas that day. I've seen it also lead to players expecting special treatment (and admins giving it).
04 Dec, 2007, Tailsthefox wrote in the 9th comment:
Votes: 0
Wow number 7 hit me right in the ass. I didn't want to hear don't use Dbsaga. I personally like dbsaga codebase, but then again that might because I like old codebases. As for number 4, I was refering to too much, color, and areas. Is there a too much when it comes areas? because as is I have about 40 areas that mortals can use. Should I be looking to create newer ones or redoing the stock dbsaga areas?
04 Dec, 2007, David Haley wrote in the 10th comment:
Votes: 0
Areas become "too much" not in terms of quantity but in terms of overall cohesiveness. If you have a bunch of areas that make no sense together, you probably have too many; you should reduce the number and focus your efforts on making a coherent world.

Besides, the area-by-area difference isn't necessarily a big deal; a division could be purely administrative. If it makes things easier to divide a single geographical location into many areas, then fine. This is another reason why quantity doesn't really matter.

(The whole notion of what an area "is" is an interesting question. Some people think of areas as independent bodies that could in principle be plugged-and-played into other MUDs; I tend to think of them as administrative divisions over a game's terrain that would probably make no sense in another game. I also don't mind there being dependence between areas; in fact I encourage it so that not every area implements its own "wooden table" or "iron longsword" objects.)

Stock areas are always "bad" in that they are, well, stock – everybody will have them and therefore they likely don't serve the purpose of making your game unique. If there are several stock areas, especially in the areas first seen by players, they will assume that your MUD is mostly stock even if it isn't. So, new areas always help, but it's important to keep them focused and to keep the overall result coherent.
04 Dec, 2007, Guest wrote in the 11th comment:
Votes: 0
I think the main reason people are telling you to try and avoid using th DBSaga codebase is not because it's DBZ based, but because it's old and buggy. There are a lot of problems with it that would need to be fixed in order for it to be stable. Not to mention the irrational color scheme. Using something more recent like SmaugFUSS and then porting the DBZ content over to that would make a lot more sense. But if DBSaga is what you're set on, then I suppose you could spend some time pouring over the bugfix lists on SmaugMuds.org which would get you more or less to the same point.
04 Dec, 2007, Hades_Kane wrote in the 12th comment:
Votes: 0
Tailsthefox said:
As for number 4, I was refering to too much, color, and areas. Is there a too much when it comes areas? because as is I have about 40 areas that mortals can use. Should I be looking to create newer ones or redoing the stock dbsaga areas?


I touched on color before, and definitely would like to emphasize that too much color is really a turn off for a good majority of MUD players. Sure, you can turn it off, but that to me is quite boring as I do prefer color to help accent certain things, or help bring focus to others, or just to create a visual difference in what I'm seeing. But most DBZ MUDs you might log into really do WAY overdo it with color, and that is one of the main things they tend to get flamed about. It tends to be representative of a Newbie Admin or someone with just absolutely no aesthetic taste.

What is the 'point' of your game… is it exploring, player killing, roleplay, social interaction, collecting, leveling/hack 'n slash, or what? That will often determine how big of a world you want. Generally speaking, I think it's safe to say that you can't have enough areas as long as the ones you do have are cohesive with one another, fit together well, and are well done. On my MUD, we have 87+ areas complete with 18219 rooms total (including a 11160 vnum world map). We are going to eventually cap our levels at 100, and area wise we only have up to level 50 complete, so realistically, I'm probably looking at having about 150 areas before the MUD is actually "complete." Even then, we'll still continue to develop, add more areas, add to existing areas, etc. So yeah, I think it's hard to actually overdo it with areas.

In regards to stock? I'd start replacing them. Another big reason DBZ MUDs tend to get flamed is for being "yet another Saga clone" or whatever. The fewer elements of stock DBSaga you have, the more you'll stand out among the sea of DBZ games, and the more unique content you'll have to offer the players. If you don't offer anything unique, then why should they take a chance on your game when there are plenty of other games just like it out there, you know?

On the topic of other "too many" things… I think there is definitely a such thing as too many races, too many classes, too many clans, etc.

I don't have extensive knowledge of DBZ, but from what I can think of, some of the standard races include: Human, Saiyan, Namekian, and Androids. There are a lot of others, but you might consider starting out with a more narrow list.

One thing to consider, but it may or may not work out… Just about every fanboy that logs into a DBZ game wants to basically be either Goku or Vegeta, so they create a Saiyan and before you know it, your game is overrun by them. What you might consider is either having Saiyans start out almost indistinguishable from Humans and make it a long, hard process to become as powerful as Saiyans become, or consider having it not selectable at character creation and come up with some other alternate route for people able to create Saiyans. If you go with an account system, maybe have it so that they have to max one character of another race and then they are granted the ability to create one Saiyan on that account, and either make it so that they can only create one Saiyan per maxed character of another race, or once they gain the ability to create one on that account, that's the only one they can create on that account. This would have the option for anyone to eventually be able to create one, but keep their numbers lower than the other races to keep it sane. I really think it's a good idea, but you do have to weigh that against a pretty good chance you'll have people coming in and going "oh noes i cant be a saiyan how ghey!!" and leaving. But, it is something to consider I think. You could also have other similar "prestige" races setup like that (again, this kind of hinges on having an account system). Maybe allow the creation of Demons, or maybe after they've maxed two or three characters, they can create a Kai of some sort. There is a lot of stuff you could do with that, where you reward people through their account by maxing characters or reaching certain milestones or conditions.

Don't be afraid to think outside of the box, and don't be afraid to stray away from what every other DBSaga game has… the more unique you make your game, the better chance you have of it succeeding.
04 Dec, 2007, David Haley wrote in the 13th comment:
Votes: 0
Hades_Kane said:
I touched on color before, and definitely would like to emphasize that too much color is really a turn off for a good majority of MUD players. Sure, you can turn it off, but that to me is quite boring as I do prefer color to help accent certain things, or help bring focus to others, or just to create a visual difference in what I'm seeing.

Another suggestion might be to let the player customize more than just "color on or off". Let them set the color for each event type. In other words, don't dictate the color scheme to them: let them pick a color for the event types.
05 Dec, 2007, Zeno wrote in the 14th comment:
Votes: 0
Quote
I personally like dbsaga codebase, but then again that might because I like old codebases.

DBSaga has bugs, memory leaks, exploits etc from stock Smaug (as well as more from DBSaga). If you're using it just because you're more familiar with it, SmaugFUSS should be fine (DBSaga is based on Smaug). If you want to attract more players, using the DBSaga codebase may not be the way to go. There are already dozens of DBSaga clones out there.
05 Dec, 2007, Tailsthefox wrote in the 15th comment:
Votes: 0
Well as is the dbna codebase I am working with right now I have been fixing up some bugs and memory leaks. Dbsaga is just going to be the first verison on this mud. I actually plan on doing it with another codebase in a verison update. It's just I wanted to get something I can mess around with to help my skills. (if any) I plan on using smaugfuss 1.8 now thanks to your suggestions. I am going to do one huge verison upgrade in about a year or so with the verison I create using Smaugfuss 1.8. But as I said I am not all that good with coding and I am still learning. So if you guys have any suggestions or guides please let me know.

Again I thank you for your input and I really will take it into account.
05 Dec, 2007, Conner wrote in the 16th comment:
Votes: 0
Hey, you never know, in a year we might be up to SmaugFUSS 1.9c or some such.. or even Smaugfuss 2.0 so be sure to check back at http://www.smaugmuds.org between now and then. :wink:
05 Dec, 2007, David Haley wrote in the 17th comment:
Votes: 0
Note that it will probably be easier to upgrade from SmaugFUSS 1.7 to 1.8 than from pretty much anything else to 1.8. You should keep that in mind very early on, before you have lots of areas, skills, pfiles, etc. that you need to convert.
05 Dec, 2007, Kayle wrote in the 18th comment:
Votes: 0
FUSS 1.8 reads previous Smaug Formats though, I thought.
05 Dec, 2007, David Haley wrote in the 19th comment:
Votes: 0
Yes, but does that include DBSaga formats?
05 Dec, 2007, Conner wrote in the 20th comment:
Votes: 0
I imagine that depends on how modified from stock Smaug they are.
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