If you really want non-euclidean areas (which I, personally, don't think you need… we can build nicely complex mazes in real life without them), you can still build them… but you have to do so by hand.

In my description, I'm not advocating abandoning rooms entirely. I'm suggesting using a coordinate based data set to automatically supply rooms that aren't there. If you want to build a set of rooms where going north and then south takes you elsewhere, nothing prevents you from linking the exits to entirely different coordinates. In this case, the rooms themselves would be euclidean, but the exits may not map the same way. For it to work well, you'd also have to avoid showing the players what the actual coordinates are.

You could certainly design and build your world without any graphical tools. It would be more work, and you'd have to be very careful to avoid (unintended) mistakes in the geometry.

I find it interesting how easy and common it is for areas built by hand to seem euclidean, yet once other systems that are added later this can become glaringly apparently. A classic example is a configuration of rooms in a square where 3 of the sides are of length 10 and one side is of length 11. Players may never notice until graphically represented.

My point was that you can specify any distance in feet, yards, chains, furlongs, miles or leagues. If no unit of measurement is given I assume feet, and if no distance is given I assume 66 feet (i.e., 1 chain - which is the same as 1 unit of terrain). This is consistant with 'standard' mud movement, intuitive to newbies, and allows you to move fractions of a terrain unit when desired.


I described my approach in this post.

I think it is because all automappers use little squares for each room, and that wherever the exit is, it will always be on the center of the square. Basically that is what people remember especially since once they know the place enough they turn out description so they can concentrate on moving and fighting their target. It may be frustrating for builders, but in the end for most muds, descriptions have only an interest the first time you enter a room. So it doe snot realy matter , and suspension of disbilief works fine in this case, so long as you do not use any pictures to show the actul mess.

That's easily solved Rarva… get rid of the crutches of autoexits and automap.

When players are FORCED to read the descriptions to find their way around, they remember it. Sure, after a few times they know their way around and zip through stuff, but they had to read it a few times originally, and thus they actually learn the area.

In graphical MMO's you see the same thing. Everyone who played EverQuest knew their way around the zones by heart. The only maps available were ones you could print out that somebody made. In later games, which radar mini-maps, it's not possible to get lost, and most people don't even remember what the different zones look like, aside from general feel, because they just follow the dotted line from quest to quest.

I don't think that's the same thing at all. In MMOs, even sans the automapper, you can reasonably survey your surroundings visually without having to digest a body of text to do it. Implementing automaps or graphical interfaces for muds are often an attempt to bring that "at a glance" interface to players so they can understand their immediate surroundings. Many muds only show what your characters can actually see or in a very limited space (1-2 rooms away) on the automapper. I think it's a reasonable and balanced approach for people with the concerns you have.

But I don't really agree in making people read descriptions to effectively play your game. If their reward is entertainment from the text that should be enough unless it's not actually fun. Why do you have to design the game that way? .. And if it's not actually fun to said players, why are you trying to force them to play that way?

edit:
Also one other point on the subject. Many players may not be native english speakers. They'd have trouble digesting the embellishments maybe all too common in muds, yet would be served well by a simple graphical representation not influenced by the fluency level of the reader.

Reading your average MUD's room descriptions is like watching old people having sex, it's both unsightly and pointless. I can't stress the importance of meaningful dynamic description generation enough. If you want people to read it needs to A) matter B) be easy on the eyes. Not surprisingly mini maps meet those simple requirements, though the amount of useful information they can hold is rather limited.

Have you ever played one of the older graphical MMO's (like EverQuest 1)? What you say sounds good on paper, and makes a certain logical sense… but it's not my experience, nor the experience of many folks I talk with who rather enjoyed the older MMO's where they didn't hand everything to you on a plate.

It's not the fact that a map exists, it's the fact that (by their nature) minimaps acts as compass + GPS navigation aids. They pinpoint where YOU are on the map, and that takes away any chance of you getting lost in any meaninful sense of the word. Text of graphics, if there's a map showing things around you, you can strike off in a direction and see if you get turned around, or if things repeat.

In EQ1, at night, in the Nektulos forest, you could hardly see anything, and like in real life, it was very easy to get turned around as you're stumbling through similar-looking trees, trying to not be eaten by all the aggressive stuff you can HEAR around you. If you didn't know the zone layout, even trying to stay on the roads at night was a challenge.

This is what putting things like exit information and minimaps takes away. With those two things, I can safely turn on "brief" mode and happily walk around slaughtering stuff, never once reading any descriptions. If you consider that to be a valid MUD, then why bother with building a world at all? Why not just have folks stand in "a room" and throw various mobs at them? Making exploration optional is just as bad as not having it at all, IMHO. But then, many people enjoy playing Guild Wars,and that graphial MMO works like that. You jump from instance to instance without any explorable world to tie them together.



What's your target audience? You CANNOT make a mud that appeals to everyone. GenericMUD has been tried before, and it fails. So, you can choose to focus people on exploration and attract people who enjoy reading descriptions and exploring, or you can focus on hack-and-slash with big numbers, and attract people who prefer running around in brief mode. Odds are, the two aren't going to co-exist on the same game very nicely.

As far as non-english speakers…. sorry. I speak (and write) in English. My game is thus targets squarely and ONLY at English speakers. I think anyone attempting to make a MUD in a language that isn't their own is, quite simply, an idiot. If you know a second language well enough to think in it, then by all means try and make a dual-language MUD. There will be 3 players out there who approve. The rest will speak one OR the other language and curse you for all the "foreign" junk they have to put up with. :)

It may seem harsh, but I realistically cannot embrace non-English players, just like I also won't adjust how my MUD looks or works for blind people, or people who are dyslexic. English, ASCII, perhaps ANSI color, those are the ground rules. If you can enjoy my game despite that framework, welcome! But it would be silly of me to put forth the effort to support things, only to realize I'm doing a poor job of it and wasting both my time AND the time of those who still aren't happy with it.

I do consider that to be a valid mud.



People who want to play something fun and functional, and aren't invested in only playing a game that amounts to walls of text.



That's your own choice, but it sounds like you're saying it's absurd for other people to? It may make sense for other people to, and this is basically a discussion about the Evils of What Other People Are Doing™.



Fine, but this is a cop out. This statement can be used to try to justify any design decision that alienates. Let individual game designers decide how many and what group people they want to appeal to. Again, I think nobody on this thread cares about what you personally do, but your suggestion was that Rarva should get rid of these "crutches." Maybe he cares about a different group of people than you do. Also, maybe he can appeal to people who want to read descriptions and those who do not.