You want something done right, do it yourself.

[Farn]

I've decided to make my own MUD so that every time I think, "hey, things should be this way," I have the power to make it so. Suggestions would be welcome. Here are some of the basic concepts I've got so far:

1. No limiting professions. Every character can learn any skill they want to, but they have to practice it. If you don't practice a skill, it will slowly degenerate - hence you can't be a master at every single skill possible, though you can definitely learn and maintain quite a few.

2. No general experience. You don't go out and slaughter a bunch of sentient creatures, then use that "experience" to raise your climbing and herb-foraging skill. Your skills can improve in 3 ways: Practice, study and being taught by others (both NPCs or other players). Whether a skill you use gets better depends on the challenge. If you're an expert swordsman, going around fighting giant rats (for example) isn't going to improve your combat or swordsmanship skills. You can't learn from a book or teacher if you aren't near their skill level, whether above or below that level.

3. While there aren't any set professions, there will be optional guilds, universities and other groups you can join for opportunities to learn a specific set of skills. There will be a cost associated with the guilds, and a maximum number you can belong to at one time. Also, if you're in the Cult of the Evil Dark Scary Sorcerers of Doom, you probably won't be welcome in the Circle of Happy Bunny Healers.

4. NPC factions. Not every single NPC outside of town will immediately be hostile (though of course some will be). You can do certain things to make them mad or make them happy. Get in good with the kobolds and they'll sell you their famed dirt-covered sacks, and if you're in really good with them, maybe the kobold shaman will spell you up with or even teach you some unique spells that only his people know.

5. Player factions. This would be the basis for organized PvP play. While great in theory, it'll likely be a supreme pain to keep both sides happy and "balanced." This will likely only be worked on after most of the other aspects of the MUD are well-developed, if it still seems doable.

6. Not a combat-centric game. As mentioned before, you improve skill through practice, so you could spend your whole life away from combat but still be a legendary enchanter, alchemist, healer, blackmsith, ale brewer, or whatever. No need to go out and kill things for experience (unless you want to get better at going out and killing things, of course). I've got ideas for fun and involved non-combat systems, including the typical blacksmithing, alchemy, etc. as well as things like farming both crops and livestock, animal taming, cooking, etc.

The greatest thing about all this is that I've already managed to program a basic MUD engine from scratch (so I understand completely how it works and can easily modify/redesign if necessary) and have got it running on a server, so it's not all a pipe dream.

Questions, comments and suggestions are all welcome (in fact, they're encouraged).

Edit: For newcomers, here's the connection info:

Address: clok.contrarium.net
Port: 4000

[StrayRogue]

My best honest advice is to not bother.

Many have tried here. All have failed. The best two examples would be: Unwritten Legends or whatever the hell it was called. Basically it got closest to being a GS clone. It still totally failed.

Second was Jamus' super new game. RSN now Jamus?

[Jorddyn]

Questions, comments and suggestions are all welcome (in fact, they're encouraged).

1. Make everything breakable.
2. Don't let Tsin play.
3. Wouldn't the Cult of the Evil Dark Scary Sorcerers of Doom be a rather hush-hush society? And wouldn't it seem like one of them should perhaps be able to infiltrate the Circle of Happy Bunny Healers.

[Farn]

Ah, well even if it never gets a player base larger than a couple of my personal friends, I'm partially doing it to teach myself to program, so it's still well worth it to me.

Learn by practice.

[Androidpk]

My best honest advice is to not bother.

Many have tried here. All have failed. The best two examples would be: Unwritten Legends or whatever the hell it was called. Basically it got closest to being a GS clone. It still totally failed.

Second was Jamus' super new game. RSN now Jamus?

Exactly.

[Jorddyn]

6. Not a combat-centric game. As mentioned before, you improve skill through practice, so you could spend your whole life away from combat but still be a legendary enchanter, alchemist, healer, blackmsith, ale brewer, or whatever. No need to go out and kill things for experience (unless you want to get better at going out and killing things, of course). I've got ideas for fun and involved non-combat systems, including the typical blacksmithing, alchemy, etc. as well as things like farming both crops and livestock, animal taming, cooking, etc.


Oh, and make a skill so if you choose to not fight, you still have a shot at making it from town to town without being slaughtered by critters on the way.

[Farn]

1. Make everything breakable.
2. Don't let Tsin play.
3. Wouldn't the Cult of the Evil Dark Scary Sorcerers of Doom be a rather hush-hush society? And wouldn't it seem like one of them should perhaps be able to infiltrate the Circle of Happy Bunny Healers.

1. I'm planning on a maintenance system for gear. Some special items will be unbreakable, but for the most part you'll have to work to keep things in working condition, and there will likely be a chance for catastrophic breakage and things like that that are unavoidable.

2. Heh.

3. Depends on what kind of evil dark scary sorcerers of doom they are (some are just in it for attention). Good point, though. There will be chances for subterfuge and the like. I've got a disguise system in the works.

Possibly relating to 1 and 2: I've got a graduated economics major friend that I'm hoping can help me maintain a stable game economy.

[Farn]

Oh, and make a skill so if you choose to not fight, you still have a shot at making it from town to town without being slaughtered by critters on the way.

Well, I always thought it was funny that major caravan roads were plagued by hostile creatures. If it's a route that's majorly responsible for the economic success of its destination points, it'll be kept quite safe (excepting the occasional raid, robbery and such). If you want to be able to safely run off into the Bone-Strewn Plains of Death and Despair to forage some rare herbs, however, you'll either have to be able to defend yourself or find someone that can defend you while you travel and forage around. Sorry.

[Farn]

By the way, how did "Unwritten Legends" totally fail? Was it because nobody ended up playing (if so, any insights as to why nobody liked it?), was it because the game never got to a playable state, or something else?

[The Ponzzz]

I heard it was abandoned and that the lead designer was too hard to work for.

[Farn]

Here's hoping I'm not a pain in the butt to work with.

[grenthor]

By the way, how did "Unwritten Legends" totally fail? Was it because nobody ended up playing (if so, any insights as to why nobody liked it?), was it because the game never got to a playable state, or something else?

I played it for a while. It was really good. Haven't had time for games in a long time so I don't know how its doing currently.

I did just go look at the website and the site is still up and the message boards have lots of current messages so they seem to be just fine.

I'm guessing the fail thing was more of a random omg this sux comment rather than any factual opinion. About the only thing you could say about Unwritten is they never seem to have had the huge playerbase that GS has but very few if any text games do.

I think there is a guy here Magus or something that also has his own game. Talk to him.

[Tisket]

Monks.

[Makkah]

I say good luck. MUDs generally turn out to be boo-boo, but if it's good, people will play.

What you got planned for races?

[Latrinsorm]

Your skill-based approach reminds me a lot of Modus Operandi, another Simu game. I don't mean that as a shot, just that you might look at what they did and take what you like. Good luck! :)

[Farn]

1. Monks

Assuming you're not just trying to get the monk enthusiasts/mockers worked up here on the PC (which you probably are, but I'll answer anyway) - as there are no set professions, you can simply learn and practice any skills you consider monk-like.

2. Playable races.

Still up in the air. Part of me wants to avoid the Tolkien rip-off lineup, but another part of me wants to avoid making up a bunch of weird races that confuse people. I've considered all humans with a bunch of sub-races, but that would be pretty boring for most people.

For now, in the "alpha" stages, I've got humans, dwarves, halflings, goliaths (basically giantmen), orcs and canim (beastial humanoids with some canine features), but that's not set in stone, or even styrofoam. I mainly did it so I could figure out how to code up my character generator and racial differences.

Note the inclusion of "less-civilized" or "less-pleasant" races such as the orc and the beastlike canim. The playerbase will not be forced to be made up of the "pretty" races and be compelled to hack up anything that has too much hair on its body, too-pointy teeth or too ugly a mug.

Also note the lack of elves. Hah. If elves do end up being a playable race, there will be only one type: "elf." Cue negative rep from elf-lovers and people who enjoy designing games with twenty different types of playable elf sub-races.

I'd appreciate any input on the point of playable races.

[Izzy]

Fuck halflings. gnomes instead.

[StrayRogue]

I played it for a while. It was really good. Haven't had time for games in a long time so I don't know how its doing currently.

I did just go look at the website and the site is still up and the message boards have lots of current messages so they seem to be just fine.

I'm guessing the fail thing was more of a random omg this sux comment rather than any factual opinion. About the only thing you could say about Unwritten is they never seem to have had the huge playerbase that GS has but very few if any text games do.

I think there is a guy here Magus or something that also has his own game. Talk to him.

It sucks because it has still never left more than testing. It's gone from Gamma, to Beta, back to Gamma. It's always changing. You're always getting rerolled. Ergo, it's pointless.

[Jorddyn]

I'd appreciate any input on the point of playable races.

Why have races? Why not have a list of features and a set number of points people could spend? So, someone could choose to be really tall, super strong, and fairly quick. But they'd be dumb as a box of rocks and so ugly none of the NPCs would want to deal with them.

Or they could be average height, really smart, and really quick, but they'd be fairly weak and not overly attractive.

[AnticorRifling]

You should make two factions that can't talk to each other and hate each other. On one side put things like skeletons, talking cows, trolls and orcs. On the other side do gnomes, dwarves, and humans.

[Deathravin]

Can anyone say, "Secret cow level"!?

[Farn]

Fuck halflings. gnomes instead.

While we all wait for you to decide on your racial sexual preferences, I'll just note that gnomes have always creeped me out.

As far as not having set races, Jorddyn, I personally wouldn't mind something like you suggested, but most people I talk to about the matter think that not having different playable races would be too boring. Different races seems to be a big hit and a highly-desired feature with most of the people I've talked to.

[Jorddyn]

As far as not having set races, Jorddyn, I personally wouldn't mind something like you suggested, but most people I talk to about the matter think that not having different playable races would be too boring. Different races seems to be a big hit and a highly-desired feature with most of the people I've talked to.

Which is interesting to me, as it seems more limiting, and more difficult to keep everyone happy.

[Farn]

I could make humans a highly-customizable race that can be tweaked to fit any stat configuration, and therefore choosing a different race would be more for specialization, extra flavor and roleplayishness for those who don't want to be "boring old humans."

[Cephalopod]

One word: furries.

[Back]

I've decided to make my own MUD so that every time I think, "hey, things should be this way," I have the power to make it so. Suggestions would be welcome. Here are some of the basic concepts I've got so far:

1. No limiting professions. Every character can learn any skill they want to, but they have to practice it. If you don't practice a skill, it will slowly degenerate - hence you can't be a master at every single skill possible, though you can definitely learn and maintain quite a few.

2. No general experience. You don't go out and slaughter a bunch of sentient creatures, then use that "experience" to raise your climbing and herb-foraging skill. Your skills can improve in 3 ways: Practice, study and being taught by others (both NPCs or other players). Whether a skill you use gets better depends on the challenge. If you're an expert swordsman, going around fighting giant rats (for example) isn't going to improve your combat or swordsmanship skills. You can't learn from a book or teacher if you aren't near their skill level, whether above or below that level.

3. While there aren't any set professions, there will be optional guilds, universities and other groups you can join for opportunities to learn a specific set of skills. There will be a cost associated with the guilds, and a maximum number you can belong to at one time. Also, if you're in the Cult of the Evil Dark Scary Sorcerers of Doom, you probably won't be welcome in the Circle of Happy Bunny Healers.

4. NPC factions. Not every single NPC outside of town will immediately be hostile (though of course some will be). You can do certain things to make them mad or make them happy. Get in good with the kobolds and they'll sell you their famed dirt-covered sacks, and if you're in really good with them, maybe the kobold shaman will spell you up with or even teach you some unique spells that only his people know.

5. Player factions. This would be the basis for organized PvP play. While great in theory, it'll likely be a supreme pain to keep both sides happy and "balanced." This will likely only be worked on after most of the other aspects of the MUD are well-developed, if it still seems doable.

6. Not a combat-centric game. As mentioned before, you improve skill through practice, so you could spend your whole life away from combat but still be a legendary enchanter, alchemist, healer, blackmsith, ale brewer, or whatever. No need to go out and kill things for experience (unless you want to get better at going out and killing things, of course). I've got ideas for fun and involved non-combat systems, including the typical blacksmithing, alchemy, etc. as well as things like farming both crops and livestock, animal taming, cooking, etc.

The greatest thing about all this is that I've already managed to program a basic MUD engine from scratch (so I understand completely how it works and can easily modify/redesign if necessary) and have got it running on a server, so it's not all a pipe dream.

Questions, comments and suggestions are all welcome (in fact, they're encouraged).


Hey, go for it.

I like a lot of your ideas on mechanics. But they have all been done before from what I’ve seen.

What you may need to be original is a genre.

Enough of the elves and orcs already.

[Celephais]

One word: furries.
According to the mud list, WIN!

I've played games without set professions, generally that ruins things... because you can't properly balance skills, and the idea of a skill 'degrading' is a huge turnoff to people. Sort of like how breakage scares the shit out of people, the thought of a skill degrading does the same. Breakage with mitigating factors like a repair system (or knowing when you buy equipment it has a shelf life) is one thing, but knowing a skill you just learned has a shelf life... meh, people don't like that.

Intentional degredation is another thing... think of it sort of like redux, because you learned a spell your physical mitigation decreased, that's okay, because the player had to intentionally make that choice, but just making someone worse at climbing because they haven't climbed in a while is going to piss people off.

[Farn]

Some fun features I've put into my MUD:

Friends List:



friends

Your Friends:

Shainar (offline)
Barges (online)

To add someone to your friends list, type "friends add [name]".
To remove someone from your friends list, type "friends remove [name]".


Identifying the voice of your friends even when you can't see them:



You notice Barges quietly slip into a hiding spot.

You hear a male voice say, "I am mysterious."

friends add barges
Barges has been added to your friend list.

You hear the voice of Barges say, "I am not so mysterious."


Custom ordering:



[Elric's Attire, Main Room]
Various articles of clothing hang from hooks and line the shelves of this humble tailor shop.
Obvious exits: out.

buy

Elric notices your interest and says, "Welcome to Elric's Attire. Feel free to look through our wares." He shows you a catalog listing the items for sale:

1. a tunic: 50 riln | A modest tunic. (customizable)
2. some trousers: 50 riln | A simple pair of trousers. (customizable)
3. a frock: 50 riln | A casual, comfortable dress. (customizable)
4. a blouse: 50 riln | A simple, loose-fitting blouse. (customizable)
5. a blue cotton skirt: 50 riln | A long skirt of woven cotton, dyed blue.
6. some socks: 50 riln | These look like they'd keep your feet nice and toasty. (customizable)
7. a thick wool cloak: 50 riln | Made of thick wool, this cloak will keep its bearer warm.

To buy something, type "buy [ # ]"
If an item is available for custom order, type "buy custom " to customize your order.

[i]buy custom 1

Custom materials available for a tunic (4 units):

1. cotton: 10 riln per unit | Soft, breathable fabric made from the cotton plant.
2. linen: 10 riln per unit | A soft, light fabric made from woven plant fibers.
3. wool: 15 riln per unit | A warm fabric made from animal fleeces useful for warmer garments.
4. oilcloth: 20 riln per unit | Cotton or linen cloth treated with linseed oil for minor waterproofing.

Type "custom [ # ]" to choose a material.

custom 2

Custom colors available for a tunic (4 units):

1. bleached white: 1 riln per unit.
2. ecru: 1 riln per unit.
3. ash gray: 1 riln per unit.
4. umber: 1 riln per unit.
5. forest green: 1 riln per unit.
6. pale green: 1 riln per unit.
7. pale yellow: 1 riln per unit.
8. red: 1 riln per unit.
9. orange: 1 riln per unit.
10. powder blue: 2 riln per unit.
11. midnight blue: 3 riln per unit.
12. black: 2 riln per unit.

Type "custom [ # ]" to choose a color.

custom 4

Custom options available for a tunic (4 units):

1. none: 0 riln.
2. short-sleeved : 0 riln.
3. long-sleeved : 0 riln.

Type "custom [ # ]" to choose an option.

custom 2

Custom secondary options available for a tunic (4 units):

1. none: 0 riln.
2. with wood buttons: 5 riln.
3. with bone buttons: 5 riln.

Type "custom [ # ]" to choose a secondary option.

custom 2

Elric repeats your order to you:

a short-sleeved umber linen tunic with wood buttons

The total cost will be 49 riln. Type "buy confirm" to confirm your order.

buy confirm

You confirm your order with Elric and pay the 49 riln it costs.
You receive your tunic.

wear tunic

You put on a short-sleeved umber linen tunic with wood buttons.


Light sources that actually provide light and items that you can actually sit and lay on:



[Redrock, Town Commons]
A towering pine tree grows here in the Town Commons, the ground littered with its needles. Wooden tables and benches are scattered about the area, providing comfortable places for townsfolk to sit while they socialize with one another or do business. Marking the center of the Commons is a raised statue of a man riding a horse.
Also here: Farn.
Obvious paths: east, south.

Farn drops a bedroll.

Farn removes a candle from inside his satchel.

Farn removes some firestones from inside his satchel.

Farn strikes some firestones together several times, managing to produce some large sparks.
Farn uses some firestones to light a beeswax candle.

Farn puts some firestones in the satchel that he is wearing.

Farn removes a brass lantern from inside his satchel.

Farn loads his brass lantern with a burning beeswax candle. (note the candle is a 'burning beeswax candle' now ... it provides light by raising the room's lighting value)

Farn drops a burning brass lantern. (loaded the lantern with a burning candle, so now the lantern in a 'burning brass lantern.' It has taken all the lighting properties of the candle loaded into it)

Farn lies down on a bedroll.

Farn takes a deep breath and slowly releases it, looking to give in to a relaxed state.

look
[Redrock, Town Commons]
A towering pine tree grows here in the Town Commons, the ground littered with its needles. Wooden tables and benches are scattered about the area, providing comfortable places for townsfolk to sit while they socialize with one another or do business. Marking the center of the Commons is a raised statue of a man riding a horse.
You also notice a bedroll, a burning brass lantern.
Also here: Farn (laying on a bedroll).
Obvious paths: east, south.

(Note the "laying on a bedroll" bit in the description)

lay bedr
Farn is already laying there.

get bedr
You can't pick that up while someone is laying on it.

'Mind if I try that bedroll out?
You ask, "Mind if I try that bedroll out?"

Farn says, "Not at all."

Farn gets up off a bedroll.

lay bedroll
You lay down on a bedroll.

rest
You take a deep breath and slowly release it, letting your mind and body relax.


I'm having a lot of fun. Any other fun feature suggestions?

[Mabus]

Best of luck.

If you are doing it because you enjoy it, or to learn, then you will be fine.

I run a small MUD (almost 3 years into this one, still perpetual alpha, but never needed a "player wipe") with from 0-10 players, and I enjoy the hell out of coding. I am not trying to be a "GS clone", but instead am working on my own ideas.

Throes of Creation (http://throes.slayn.net/)

If I can be of any assistance please feel free to contact me.

[Farn]

Thanks. I'm not trying to be the next big MUD - I'm just having a fun time making my own, and learning to code in the process. I only really expect my friends to play, and maybe a few of their friends.

My main issue right now is content. I've got a lot of core systems working, but writing up (decent) room descriptions and such is tough.

[Mabus]

My main issue right now is content. I've got a lot of core systems working, but writing up (decent) room descriptions and such is tough.
You can always try advertising for building staff on the various MUD sites.

If you do make sure you list the building features, whether OLC and offline (or both) is available, genre, what is expected, code base, etc. Make sure the article is professional and spell/grammar checked. Be polite, but realize some people are trolls no matter what.

Be warned, many are in it for some perceived "power", and most (even those not in it for such) will start an area and never finish.

Require maps and concept before you even assign an area. This will weed out a lot of the floaters.

[Fallen]

You can always try advertising for building staff on the various MUD sites.

If you do make sure you list the building features, whether OLC and offline (or both) is available, genre, what is expected, code base, etc. Make sure the article is professional and spell/grammar checked. Be polite, but realize some people are trolls no matter what.

Be warned, many are in it for some perceived "power", and most (even those not in it for such) will start an area and never finish.

Require maps and concept before you even assign an area. This will weed out a lot of the floaters.

I can see even partial aid as being useful. You just claim the intellectual rights to anything they produce, and use their ideas as a springboard to finish what they start.

[Mabus]

I can see even partial aid as being useful. You just claim the intellectual rights to anything they produce, and use their ideas as a springboard to finish what they start.
There are many discussions (some rather heated) over the intellectual property of builders.

I use a non-exclusive, world wide, non-revocable license as the basis for content given by builders. If they leave they can build the same content elsewhere but we get to keep the content they have provided on our service.

Some prefer an exclusive license, but I feel that the writer should be able to reuse their content if they wish.

It cannot be legally termed a "contract" unless some sort of consideration or compensation is given, so we use licensing instead.

It is best to set these terms before anyone provides content, and an email agreeing to the license is sufficient, though a snail-mail signed letter agreeing to the license is preferable.

[Farn]

Thanks for the tips. Handy for when/if I manage to convince someone to help me out. I'm doing pretty much everything myself right now, and trying to avoid burnout (usually achieved by playing some Gal Civ 2 for a few days or reading a good book to take a breather).

I'm considering a sort of dark fantasy genre with a slight post-apocalyptic air rather than the typical "high fantasy." The tech level will most likely be magically-enhanced clockwork technology (still debating whether to include steam tech and common explosives), though much of it has been lost and will be in ruin/relic/forgotten-tomes-of-knowledge form, waiting to be rediscovered by the players over time.

I've got several (planned) areas, events and bits of lore based on (hopefully intriguing) mysterious stuff that the characters can explore, speculate about and eventually discover the truth about. That's always what grabbed me about MUDs.

[Makkah]

Looks pretty cool so far. Are you allowing entry for testing?

[Farn]

Once I've got more than a handful of rooms, I'll let people jump in and play around. It'd be kind of pointless at the moment, since there's not much content to play with. I'm mostly custom-making scenarios with debug commands to do testing right now.

I could make all my planned rooms with vague descriptions and worry about making them sound nice later. Yeah, I'll do that and open it up later today or sometime tomorrow. It'll be nice to have some testers.

Warning in advance: If you do something the engine doesn't like, it tends to get mad and disconnect you. If this happens, you can just log back in and avoid doing whatever made it angry (and send me a bug report, please).

[Lord Orbstar]

just copy / paste rooms from GS4. easy.. change a few words here an there to avoid copyrights..

I present you the city of Whunimers Lantern, Firehorse, RagingRivers, Tallslimjin, Na'Cowardsville, and the Terraced Island

Genius! pure..unadulterated...GENIUS!

[Makkah]

lol @ Firehorse.

[Farn]

Temporary address:

clok.game-host.org

Port 4000. Any telnet client should work fine. Windows built-in telnet is problematic in that it sends backspaces and some other things as special character, so backspacing won't work correctly in the Windows telnet. I prefer MUSHclient, but any telnet client I've tried has worked fine. In PuttyTel, I did have to switch the input format to raw in order to have backspaces and such work correctly.

Still not a lot of content - only about 6 rooms. Some are shops, so people can play around with the items you can buy and mess with custom ordering. Attacking isn't implemented, but you can still hold a weapon in your right hand and type 'attack [name]' for some generic attack messaging.

Hiding mechanics work (not stalking, however). If you hide from people without them seeing you and it's enough of a challenge for you to learn from, your hiding skill will go up. You can drop something while hiding to hide an object, so other players will have to use the search command to find it.

Other useful commands that are working: info, skill, examine, light

There are some roleplay verbs in there, they should all account for whether one is hidden or not. Several are missing - post or PM suggestions please.

Please post or PM any bugs, questions and suggestions, and let me know if anything is wonky or too confusing.

[Back]

In with Apple Terminal no problems.

Goliath?

[Farn]

You have beef with Goliaths?

[Anebriated]

racist...

[Farn]

A few other commands I forgot to mention because I was in a rush to take a bike ride with the little family before it got too dark ...

Use 'buy' to order/buy things in shops, 'who' to see who else is online, /quit to quit ... I should probably make it so you don't need to put the slash before the quit command.

[Izzy]

Pretty neat so far man. It doesn't seem to be very happy when I try to order a custom wool cloak. It kicks me off and I have to log in again.

[Back]

We need a catch-all MUD testing thread. There are like 3 in the past week that I know of.

Always happy to test and MAYBE help build/paint.

[Proxy]

4. NPC factions. Not every single NPC outside of town will immediately be hostile (though of course some will be). You can do certain things to make them mad or make them happy. Get in good with the kobolds and they'll sell you their famed dirt-covered sacks, and if you're in really good with them, maybe the kobold shaman will spell you up with or even teach you some unique spells that only his people know.

Honestly I play RPG's muds or other wise for there magic systems and when I read that bit in 4 I almost came in my shorts. Seriously. Love the idea of learning creature specific spells. And though I couldn't code a way out of a wet paper bag I'd love to help out in the story line/context/ideas depts. Just saying. F'n sweet idea. Oh, would be interested in learning how to code to.

Everything else is full of win btw. Sign me up as a beta tester if nothing else :D

[Jumpkick]

What language is this game written in if you don't mind me asking?

[Farn]

Python.

[Farn]

Anyone interested in helping me "paint" some rooms? Even just a room or two would be nice, or just some general tips. I've found that it's something that's holding me back from working on the rest of the game. I can't stand having empty rooms with horrible filler descriptions, so I worry over them instead of working on other features.

[Mabus]

Anyone interested in helping me "paint" some rooms? Even just a room or two would be nice, or just some general tips. I've found that it's something that's holding me back from working on the rest of the game. I can't stand having empty rooms with horrible filler descriptions, so I worry over them instead of working on other features.
Good luck.

I went through 20+ builders in 3 years, and currently have 3 active. Of the 3, one is on leave to finish his doctorate, one is on leave (till the end of this week) for personal reasons and the other one took 5 days to do 3 out of 4 rooms for a player-requested shrine (which I ended up finishing).

Of the 20+ during the 3 years maybe 6 (maybe) actually showed any merit, ability and commitment. Most never did more then one room. Of the 4,000+ rooms currently in our game I likely did over 50%.

It is a lot harder then some people think (especially after that 200th forest room..., how many "hollow logs, mulch, branches, path, trail, pathway, shrubs" can one person write about?).

All that said, I can build as well as code. If you have an idea for a 10 room area let me know, and I will see if I can whip you a few descriptions up.

[Farn]

Because my world isn't over-populated with glowing fungi:

look
[Complete Darkness]
It's too dark to see anything here!
Obvious exits: none.

light lantern
You strike some firestones together several times, producing several bright sparks.
You use some firestones to light a brass lantern.
Roundtime: 2 second(s).

look
[Shadgard, Mine]
This is a spooky dark tunnel in the mine.
Obvious exits: northwest.

[Mabus]

look
[Shadgard, Mine]
This is a spooky dark tunnel in the mine.
Obvious exits: northwest.
And therein lie a couple building issues.

Take "spooky". Why? If you were a cave-dwelling goblin it might be "homey".

Take "dark". You already seem to handle light and dark with your senses code, if the lantern is lit why is it dark?

One can only wonder why I have trouble keeping builders...

;)

Here, use this:

Crumbled rock lies upon the packed dirt of the confined tunnel's floor, mounding higher near the walls. The sides bear deep crisscrossing lines, scarring the grayish rock with their long indentations. Several rough wooden beams, one cracked and sagging, strain to hold the weight of the ceiling high overhead.

[Farn]

Yeah, that was a filler description (one sentence, overly vague, no punctuation). I quickly whipped up that room solely for testing a room with a -100 lighting rating.

I appreciate the assist, though. If you're okay with it, I'll toss it in as the final description.

[Mabus]

Yeah, that was a filler description (one sentence, overly vague, no punctuation). I quickly whipped up that room solely for testing a room with a -100 lighting rating.

I appreciate the assist, though. If you're okay with it, I'll toss it in as the final description.
I figured that was what it was.
:)

You have my full permission to use, transfer and modify that description any way you want.

[Back]

I offered my service to help paint and I will do that. But I am not signing on to a huge project.

Give me some rooms, what you want from them and I’ll try and help.

[Farn]

I'm not looking for anyone to dedicate themselves to anything big - I'll take whatever help I can get. The game is still quite small at the moment. Do what you feel like doing, and if you get tired of working on it just send me what you've got and I'll finish up what's lacking myself.

Current areas I need descriptions for:

Abandoned mine tunnels heading in a southerly direction. Simple mine carts and tracks are within the technological scope of the area, so stuff like that is fine, though it's a relatively undeveloped series of tunnels (see "abandoned"). There should be some caved-in areas. Toss in a couple spooky things like corpses of miners and such. A seemingly bottomless chasm would be fun in there somewhere as well. This is going to be the area that players are free to mine on their own (the foreman won't let you waltz in and mine his profitable tunnels he's claimed), and will be sprinkled with a few critters to fight (currently debating between odd cave-dwelling animals or undead).
Edit: The tunnels should not be lit, though burnt-out/extinguished lanterns and torches and things would likely be present.

Some frontier-town areas. The town is built between two close mountain walls so there's a lot of rock to work with, there's a copper and tin mine, and there's a forest nearby with plenty of lumber, so no shortage of building materials (in case anyone needs that level of information to decide how places look).

Actually ... for the town, I'll draw up a quick map tomorrow and post it for anyone who's interested in town design.

That's it, for the time being. Starting real small. If anyone's interested, post about it here so I don't have two people working on duplicates of the same area.

If anyone wants to just up and get creative and design a few areas on their own with next to no guidance from me, the next areas will be north of the town, in a mountain valley widening as it goes north, which will include some occupied and maintained farms, a forest (at least one lumber mill on the outskirts, but wilder as it gets deeper) and some various mountain paths.

[Proxy]

I'm more then willing to give it a go at helping you out if your interested. I've never worked on the dev/code side of an RPG before. But I'm more then willing to lend a hand where I can. PM me if you want and we can work out the details?

[Farn]

I've got a simple mining system set up. Here's a quick sample:

[Shadgard, Mine]
This is a spooky dark tunnel in the mine.
You also notice a burning beeswax candle.
Obvious exits: northwest.

get pick
You remove a mining pick from inside your satchel.

mine
You pick away at a stone wall. (this messaging means you failed at making any progress)
Roundtime: 13 second(s).

mine
You pick away at a stone wall, causing several fragments of rock to fall to the ground. (this messaging means you've successfully mined some of the rock away)
Roundtime: 8 second(s).

(after several more mining attempts)

mine
You pick away at a stone wall, causing several fragments of rock to fall to the ground.
A section of the wall crumbles away. (This means that the current mineable object in the area has been exhausted and will be replaced by a random new mineable object from a list - it could end up as just more stone to mine through, or something better ...)
You've discovered a vein of copper!
Roundtime: 12 second(s).

l
[Shadgard, Mine]
This is a spooky dark tunnel in the mine.
You also notice a vein of copper, a burning beeswax candle.
Obvious exits: northwest.

mine
You pick away at a vein of copper and manage to dislodge a chunk of copper ore! (Each time you successfully dislodge some ore, the vein loses a "charge" until it gets to 0 and is replaced by a new random mineable object from a specific list)
Roundtime: 13 second(s).

get ore
You pick up a chunk of copper ore. (the chunks come in different sizes, selected at random. This might have been a "small" or "large" chunk instead)

l ore
The copper ore needs to be smelted if it is to be forged into something. (Haven't gotten to that yet)

put ore in sat
You put a chunk of copper ore in the satchel that you are wearing.

Anyway. That's the basic gist of it. Now, aside from the possibility of hostile critters popping by to interrupt, any ideas on how to make the process a little more interesting/less boring?

[StrayRogue]

Using mine for the single command is a bit repetitive. But then every task in a text based game will become dull, regardless of the command, I guess.

[Farn]

I originally had it require you to specify the target, but I only ever plan on there being one mineable object in a room at a time, and that made the requirement to specify the target a bit silly.

[StrayRogue]

I meant in regards to you just spamming >mine. I think there should be a bit more to the process than that, but that's just me.

[Celephais]

You could add more commands as mentioned but not just to change what is typed in, but a risk/reward type system... think of stance dancing for example.

Swinging the pick axe harder you may be able to make better progress/get a bigger chunk at a time, but chance to break the pickaxe, or have it bounce off the wall and impale your skull. You could make "stances" available as mining skill increases ...

Either way you're still just 'grinding' and grindingis boring. You can accept that, or you can put a lot of effort into coding it to be a bit more exciting just to have all the flavor ignored.

[AnticorRifling]

How I mine for fish?!

http://www.zestuff.com/Image.ashx?i=1936

[Farn]

Ah, I see what you mean.

Celephais, I like your idea about a risk/reward system, mining stances/techniques and such. I think I'll accept that as making it interesting enough in that it at least has more variety than a mindless, single-command, one-method-only grind. It also gives more benefit and desire to increasing your mining skill. You know there's someone out there who would enjoy showing off rapid dual-wielded pick mining.

Well, I've at least got the core concept functioning. I'll put the extra stuff on the shelf for the time being and go back to trying to code up decent combat mechanics.

Speaking of combat mechanics, suggestions would be appreciated. I definitely want a wounds system rather than just a raw hitpoints system. The engagement system of Dragonrealms is interesting, but I'm not so sure I like it much.

The concept of Celaphais's earlier mining idea could be applied. You could just straight out "attack," or you could "lunge," which could add a second of roundtime and raise your offense but lower defense for the duration of that roundtime, maybe "hack," which would be like "lunge" but with less offense bonus and no RT penalty, "jab" for a weak but quick (less RT) strike, "subdue" to attempt a nonlethal attack, "disarm" to try and disarm the opponent's weapon ... things like that. Basically, combat maneuver-type things, only they'd simply be part of the normal combat system, not something you'd need to specifically put "points" into. I also have a fatigue system, so certain attacks could cause more or less fatigue.

Specific weapons could have extra functions. Staves and polearms could sweep/trip, chained weapons could have a chance to disarm a weapon without specifically attempting a disarm and could bypass shields, weapons with blades or points would be more likely to cause bleeding, and so forth.

[Mabus]

Speaking of combat mechanics, suggestions would be appreciated.
Map it out. Use spreadsheets. Take your time.

I am currently doing an armorType() at HitLocation() versus DamageType() system, and it takes time to do it correctly.

[Celephais]

Whatever you do, don't make it a system where you just get WTFPWN'd by a manuever with zero warning and it's instant death the second you enter a hunting ground (PVP or bosses sure, whatever).

[Latrinsorm]

The following is my opinion.

The fundamental problem with most text-based combat simulations is they're broken into chunks of time that are way too big. I would suggest a radical break with the Simu models as follows:

1. Combat takes place in a two-dimensional grid. Each room needs to be given a certain grid, which gives you a lot of flexibility and (of course) a lot of work.
2. Combatants have two stances: attack vs. defense and engage vs. avoid, with whatever level of discretization you want.
3. When combat begins, have an optionally hidden message flash giving the player information on what letters have become mapped to, and work with me here because this isn't going to be spaced nicely:

q --> northwest w --> north e --> northeast . . . . . . . . i --> engage
a --> west s --> wait d --> east . . . . . . . . . . . . j --> block l --> attack
z --> southwest x --> south c --> southeast . . . . . . . . , --> avoid

4. Combatants have to navigate through the grid and can't simply enter or exit a room. A minimap window (including exit squares) would be very good to have here, but you could also map k to "check grid" or whatever. (You could also have a check for if the creature is a "threat" to the character and vice versa.)
5. Each combat action requires (or is significantly enhanced by) a direction, so "l a" would be attack west, ", x" would be avoid south, etc.
6. Weapons have ranges. If combatants are not engaged or are otherwise not within range (for instance, due to one party scampering away), attackers suffer a significant penalty. Conversely, if combatants successfully engage, retreating causes significant penalties to defense.
7. Have everything be very fast. Maybe half a second roundtime for movement, a full second for a combat action.

This is very complicated, but I feel it offers a number of benefits: a feeling of actually being in an open meadow or a cramped cave or a dense forest, embodiment of range, less of the "I go, you go, I go" routine, the ability to make creatures difficult without "I did a maneuver from five rooms away and you died" bs, the ability to make certain attacks lethal but still have combat take more than an eyeblink to resolve, etc.

I think GS provides a generally good model to resolve "dagger vs. full plate" and things of that nature, it just does everything else crappily.

[Tisket]

The following is my opinion.

The fundamental problem with most text-based combat simulations is they're broken into chunks of time that are way too big. I would suggest a radical break with the Simu models as follows:

1. Combat takes place in a two-dimensional grid. Each room needs to be given a certain grid, which gives you a lot of flexibility and (of course) a lot of work.
2. Combatants have two stances: attack vs. defense and engage vs. avoid, with whatever level of discretization you want.
3. When combat begins, have an optionally hidden message flash giving the player information on what letters have become mapped to, and work with me here because this isn't going to be spaced nicely:

q --> northwest w --> north e --> northeast . . . . . . . . i --> engage
a --> west s --> wait d --> east . . . . . . . . . . . . j --> block l --> attack
z --> southwest x --> south c --> southeast . . . . . . . . , --> avoid

4. Combatants have to navigate through the grid and can't simply enter or exit a room. A minimap window (including exit squares) would be very good to have here, but you could also map k to "check grid" or whatever. (You could also have a check for if the creature is a "threat" to the character and vice versa.)
5. Each combat action requires (or is significantly enhanced by) a direction, so "l a" would be attack west, ", x" would be avoid south, etc.
6. Weapons have ranges. If combatants are not engaged or are otherwise not within range (for instance, due to one party scampering away), attackers suffer a significant penalty. Conversely, if combatants successfully engage, retreating causes significant penalties to defense.
7. Have everything be very fast. Maybe half a second roundtime for movement, a full second for a combat action.

This is very complicated, but I feel it offers a number of benefits: a feeling of actually being in an open meadow or a cramped cave or a dense forest, embodiment of range, less of the "I go, you go, I go" routine, the ability to make creatures difficult without "I did a maneuver from five rooms away and you died" bs, the ability to make certain attacks lethal but still have combat take more than an eyeblink to resolve, etc.

I think GS provides a generally good model to resolve "dagger vs. full plate" and things of that nature, it just does everything else crappily.

Dude, you posted in the wrong thread.

http://forum.gsplayers.com/showthread.php?t=45282

You are welcome.

[Celephais]

Dude, you posted in the wrong thread.

http://forum.gsplayers.com/showthread.php?t=45282

You are welcome.
hahhaha..... yeah. win.

On topic: Sorry latrin. I normally like what you have to say but that sounds way complicated. People playing text based RPGs aren't looking to play an FPS. They want things slowed down and a bit less frantic.

[Proxy]

They want things slowed down and a bit less frantic.

http://i262.photobucket.com/albums/ii99/Flying_Squirles/TAYEAH.jpg

[Mateius]

read page 1 and then skipped to last. is the game up yet?

[Mabus]

I believe his game is still in alpha, as is the one I do for a hobby(Throes of Creation (http://throes.slayn.net/index.html)).

Just spent all night working on that website. I stink at websites. My last one looked like it was made in 1980. So many types of code, so little time.

[Latrinsorm]

Dude, you posted in the wrong thread.

http://forum.gsplayers.com/showthread.php?t=45282

You are welcome.Yeah, it's also not (even close to) the first idea I've come up with for a combat system. :(
On topic: Sorry latrin. I normally like what you have to say but that sounds way complicated. People playing text based RPGs aren't looking to play an FPS. They want things slowed down and a bit less frantic.I would argue that the current system ends up being much more frantic. "Oh crap a monster I have to hit my disabler macro and... I'm already dead. F'IN STONEFIST!!" Whereas if you walked into a room and a creature was six squares away, you could count on at least 3 seconds before you got punched in the face.

Another thought I had: how many rooms do you remember from the areas you hunted in? The nodes probably, but probably not any actual hunting rooms. Under the proposed system you could find a room like this:

[] >< [] [] [] []
{} [] [] >< [] {}
[] >< [] [] [] []

and learn a unique maneuver to use the obstacles to your advantage, whether to corner a monster or make an unscathed getaway. I'm not exactly a combat maven so I don't know what that maneuver would be, but it beats all hell out of "ctrl-s, amb head" over and over.

[StrayRogue]

I kind of like that idea. It would certainly be different. It would also open up the effects of AOE abilities (beyond them being merely painted text followed by data).

[Farn]

Trying to make non-magical combat a little more involved and interesting. Here's what I've got so far - numbers aren't concrete, and the messaging is pretty bad at this point, but I'm just trying to demonstrate the concept and see what folks think.

l
[Shadgard, Brewery Row]
This is Brewery Row. There is a brewery here.
You also notice a combat training golem.
Obvious paths: east, northwest, southwest.

attack golem
You attack a combat training golem with a test sword!
AAR: 0 - TDR: 35 + d100(46) = 11
A hit!
Roundtime: 4 second(s).

(A regular attack. AAR is attack accuracy, TDR is target's defense - endroll over 0 is a hit.)

slice golem
You slice at a combat training golem with a test sword!
AAR: 0 - TDR: 35 + d100(77) = 42
A hit!
Bits of straw and cotton begin to pour out of a slice in the golem's cloth flesh.
Roundtime: 4 second(s).

(If you have an applicable weapon with an edge, you can use Slice to cause bleeding, though the initial blow will be weaker than a normal attack. Also - critters can have custom bleeding messaging, as was demonstrated by the golem's above.)

lunge golem
You lunge at a combat training golem with a test sword!
AAR: 10 - TDR: 35 + d100(53) = 28
A hit!
Roundtime: 5 second(s).

(Lunging adds an extra second of roundtime, but your attack's accuracy goes up, and the resulting damage will be higher than a normal attack.)

flank golem
You try to maneuver into a position to flank a combat training golem, but it easily turns to face you as you move.
Roundtime: 3 second(s).

(Can't flank something if you're the only one there fighting it.)

Shar just arrived.

(How fortuitous.)

Shar presses a determined attack on a combat training golem with a mining pick!
AAR: 0 - TDR: 35 + d100(79) = 44
A hit!

(Shar just used the Press attack, which is the same as a normal attack function-wise except that now the golem is mostly focused on Shar, so it's less likely to target other people and less able to defend against attacks from people other than Shar.)

l
[Shadgard, Brewery Row]
This is Brewery Row. There is a brewery here.
You also notice a combat training golem (pressed by Shar).
Also here: Shar.
Obvious paths: east, northwest, southwest.

(Note the "pressed by Shar" next to the golem in the description. Kind of handy to help people know who's targetting what in the room, too. I plan on having an "assist" verb which causes you to target the same target of whoever you specify with Assist.)

attack golem
You attack a combat training golem with a test sword!
AAR: 0 - TDR: 15 + d100(38) = 23
A hit!
Roundtime: 4 second(s).

(Since Shar is pressing the golem and I'm not Shar, when I attack the golem its TDR is lower than normal. Eventually, attacks from others will have a chance to break the Press.)

flank golem
You maneuver into a position to flank a combat training golem.
Roundtime: 4 seconds.

(Since Shar is pressing the golem, I can maneuver around to flank the golem while it's concentrating on her.)

attack golem
You attack a combat training golem with a test sword!
AAR: 0 - TDR: -5 + d100(28) = 33
A hit!
Roundtime: 4 second(s).

(Since I'm now flanking the golem, its TDR is even lower when I attack it. Flanking will also grant increases to certain attacks, such as an Armor Chink, which I plan to be a way to bypass the target's armor with weapons like daggers, rapiers, short swords and estocs.)

So. Fun? I think it would be much more enjoyable to employ some tactics during battle other than just "attack critter" over and over again. Any suggestions for further improvements, as far as different tactical maneuvers besides "flank?"

Moves like the Slice and Lunge would be automatically learned as you got more skill in a certain weapon type. Depending on the move, they could take differing amounts of fatigue in comparison to normal attacks. I've got ideas for more stuff like them, but feel free to make suggestions. Some others I've got in mind are Charge (increased damage, chance of knockdown - best with poles, also doable with two-handed weapons), Flurry (multiple blows in rapid succession with small weapons like daggers or brawling weapons, also automatically Presses the critter), Hack (increased damage, lower accuracy) and ... some others I can't recall right off the top of my head, but are in my notes.

Ah, and I also plan to give the shield a much larger role in combat, mostly via shield bashing. Using a weapon and shield will be like two-weapon combat, though shield bashes won't occur on every attack, but will occur randomly with increasing frequency as you build up shield and general combat skills. Basically like a "free" extra attack every now and then, though there will also be a specific command to focus on performing a shield bash.

P.S. Latrin, your combat idea sounds great, but I don't think it'd fit with what I've got in mind for this game. I might use something like it for another game, though.

[Farn]

read page 1 and then skipped to last. is the game up yet?

Still very much in the alpha stages.

[Latrinsorm]

P.S. Latrin, your combat idea sounds great, but I don't think it'd fit with what I've got in mind for this game. I might use something like it for another game, though.Thanks, feel free!

Also, although it's counter-intuitive I'd recommend less moves rather than more. I base this off of my Modus Operandi experience again, where there were about 30 different moves but I only ever bothered to use 3 or 4 (and this was in my DBZ phase, so I had come up with 1337 alt-names for all 30 of them). Then again, you may be significantly better at making distinct and interesting moves than whoever did that MO system, so who knows.

As far as other tactics, I know I always wanted to see some sort of guard/corner engagement that prevented creatures from entering or leaving (respectively) a given room. If used in concert with your flanking/pressing system, I think you could get some really interesting combinations that rely entirely on text-footwork rather than text-mashing.

[Farn]

The moves that simply add a bit to numbers aren't difficult to code up, so I won't be too upset if I make several of those and only a few (or even none) are used - no real effort wasted. A big reason for my making the custom moves is that many will have some utility effect as well, such as bypassing armor, knockdowns, stuns, disarming an opponent's weapon and so forth, and I think these ones will see a fair amount of usage if they're effective enough.

In the end, they at least can be used for when one is bored of combat and wants to spice things up a little or just show off. I prefer to at least give people the option of combat being more flavorful if they want it to be. This is why the moves will be learned automatically as one gains skill in the applicable weapon type - no need to pick and choose and spend "points" only on certain moves and be limited to only a few.

Good call on a way to prevent a target from leaving the room. I could also set another room designation to determine whether the room entrances are choke points or not, and then set up a way to block those paths so nobody else can get in or out. Of course, people might abuse the mechanic in order to be annoying or monopolize resources if it effected player characters as well. Hmmm. I'll have to think on that.

[pabstblueribbon]

I too have been developing a mud for several years. It was a gemstone like combat sytem with 3d grid room (XYZ coord system for ranged combat aka catapults against city gates) system RTS(controlling zones for resources etc)/mud .

One thing that I think you might consider if you'e going to have all these moves, is to have a 'pre roundtime' system. In that instead of attacking and having it happen immediately, have a 'wind up' for each move with associated times giving players / mobs, chances to see what you might do, and counter it with other moves. I always thought this would lead to more skill vs skill than a numbers game too. Just something to think about.

It would look something like..
playera:
sweep playerb

Player brings his sword level with his waist! rt 1 sec (you wouldnt see the rt)
Player swings his weapon in a sweeping motion towards your right flank! rt 2 sec

playerb:
parry middle/low
You bring you weapon up to block a vicious blow to your midsection! rt whatever

then compare these two attack and defending motions giving bonus's for picking the correct defense, then display the result. Successful parry or a hit, then show total roundtime it took and you're out of roundtime. Would be a great combat system with the ability to feint attacks.

[pabstblueribbon]

Oh, you could also make the TDR and AAR formula not only take into account position (standing, prone, flanked, what have you) but also at what point playerb tries to defend himself in the sequence. IE giving him a bonus for throwing up the correct defense at the last minute and perhaps throwing the attacker off balance.

[Celephais]

Linear combat equations are bad IMO ... might I suggest having the roll be on a bell curve? I always thought it was kind of ridiculous in GS that you could get your defense/offense such that your odds were always 100% hit/miss.

[Farn]

Agreed, Celaphais. In my simpler games I've had it so that there's always a possibility you'll take a hit (or land a hit) - no sitting around drinking tea in a room full of hostile critters that keep missing you simply because you're "that good." I'm trying to figure out a good way to accomplish that here.

[Celephais]

Agreed, Celaphais. In my simpler games I've had it so that there's always a possibility you'll take a hit (or land a hit) - no sitting around drinking tea in a room full of hostile critters that keep missing you simply because you're "that good." I'm trying to figure out a good way to accomplish that here.
"Open" rolls, are taken from the d20 system (which may have been taken from something else). Where a roll of a 1 or 20 results in rolling again (or in d100 terms 1-5/96-100), and then result is subtracted or added. This is different then the fumble/natural 20 rule (which I think is dumb as well).

That system would work, but I don't think it progresses as smoothly as it should. I highly suggest you work with a normal distribution, having an AAR v DFR result in a combat rating that determines percent chance to hit. For sake of arguement if someone has a 100 AAR vs a 100 DFR you would want a 50% chance to hit.

Now if someone had a 75 AAR vs a 80 DFR, they're 6.6% less effective at combat ... so plugging that into whatever formula you decide works best w/ your scheme ... lets say we just use that value as the Z-Score in a normal curve, we would get a 47.345% chance to hit (using the cumulative area under the curve).

If it were 50 AAR vs a 150 DFR, standard GS would say you couldn't hit, using the formula above that results in a 2 for the Z-Score (200% less effective) we get a 2.275% chance to hit.

[pabstblueribbon]

A bonus to picking a good counter-measure(skill) and an open roll would definitely get rid of the linear 'numbers' game while still allowing you to build your char and have numbers affect it since it could compare the attacking skill vs defending skill ranks also. Also the further you go up in ranks in a particular skill could be where you learn these 'abilities' (such as flanking, backstabbing, or what we'd call combat maneuvars in GS) within them like a skill tree. Get x amount of skill in one skill and x amount of skill in another and perhaps a new training path opens up with more abilities in it as you improve it. With a pre-roundtime system, IE winding up for the attack as the roundtime, then the attack, it gives a player or a MOB a chance to pick a correct defense. This is interesting that it gives you alot of options for MOB ai and its ability to correctly defend.

[Celephais]

Just my opinion, but I think you're trying to make this into too much of a fighting game. Tekken doesn't convert into text all that well. It's an RPG ... the whole point of it is that it's a "numbers" game. If you are truely going for a game that's based more on the player's skill in combat vs the character's, that's fine, I guess it's more of a "Are you making it like Zelda, or like FF".

Action adventure or RPG?

[pabstblueribbon]

Eh. I've played tons of muds. Achea, Avalon, Gemstone, the list goes on and on. Ability muds where you learn counters that give bonus's to attacking and defending are really really fun. Its a game of experimenting and trying to find the counter. Its not really fasted paced like tekken, and you dont HAVE to use the special abilities.. there's really no difference between them and cmans in GS. I think you're missing the jist of what Im discussing. Its been discussed many times on imaginary realities. A think tank for mud design. Like I said, its not really fast paced. There's still round time its just DURING you trying to complete a skill which makes so much more sense and is much more realistic, than doing a skill immediately after input then waiting on roundtime. Think of it more like chess than an FPS.

[Celephais]

I understand what you're getting at and I understand the implementation. I'm not saying it won't work or won't be fun, and it's really up to Farn as far as what kind of implementation and who his target audience is.

The biggest issue I have with something like reaction based moves is that eventually someone just sets up a trigger in zmud or whatever, when really it should be your character making the defensive gestures (not the player) based on your combat intuition stat or whatever. As for something like feigning, it would seem like you're going for a fast paced game of rock paper scissors that's fine too if that's what he's looking for.

[pabstblueribbon]

The biggest issue I have with something like reaction based moves is that eventually someone just sets up a trigger in zmud or whatever, when really it should be your character making the defensive gestures (not the player) based on your combat intuition stat or whatever. As for something like feigning, it would seem like you're going for a fast paced game of rock paper scissors that's fine too if that's what he's looking for.

The idea behind allowing them to feint different moves (which is successful on a roll of course) is to confuse or screw up those triggers. There could also be different combinations that work differently together. You will NEVER get around the scripting issue with an intelligent combat system. But, I digress. Its only an idea.

[Celephais]

I agree that you'll never get around scripting... the thing about feigning like you said you either make a successful roll on feigning, and then a human would fall for it just as likely as a trigger (if you're saying a human might not believe what they see, why wouldn't they? and any reason could just as easily be put in a trigger... ie commonly feigning target). So feigning will no more screw up a trigger than it would a human. So sure, have feigning as a combat tactic, but not to screw up triggers.

It's a hard balance to strike, you don't want combat to be boring but at the same time you can't make it too fast paced... it's text. (I get that you're saying it's optional, but very few people will see it that way).

[StrayRogue]

Thanks, feel free!

Also, although it's counter-intuitive I'd recommend less moves rather than more. I base this off of my Modus Operandi experience again, where there were about 30 different moves but I only ever bothered to use 3 or 4 (and this was in my DBZ phase, so I had come up with 1337 alt-names for all 30 of them). Then again, you may be significantly better at making distinct and interesting moves than whoever did that MO system, so who knows.



While I agree in principle, I think there should be room for certain moves, beyond ambush, attack or cast @.

I'd get rid of the concept of stances, and have the various attacks themselves effect the strength of your attack & defense. For example, a lunge may be a fast and physically strong attack, but leave you exposed to attacks.

But yeah, having 30 attacks that all do more or less the same thing is pointless. Players will choose the mechanically best ones, and you'll be left with a long list of chaff (pretty much like 90% of the CM list in GS). Each attack needs a high tactical superiority over others. Each needs to be dynamic and not samey.

[Farn]

I'm gathering info for some of the non-combat skills I've got planned. If anyone has any good info resources on older methods of brewing ales and such, please let me know.

[Farn]

Some combat tidbits. Numbers (calculations, damage factors and such) still aren't set how I want them, and the structure of the attack messaging doesn't quite work, but that's all for after I get the basics working.

Unarmed combat basics:



hands
You are holding nothing in your right hand and a burnt-out beeswax candle in your left hand.

attack gol
You attack a combat training golem with a closed fist!
AAR: 0 - TDR: 35 + d100(46) = 11
A hit for 1 damage!
Roundtime: 3 second(s).

put candle in sat
You put a burnt-out beeswax candle in the satchel that you are wearing.

hands
Your hands are empty.

attack gol
You attack a combat training golem with a pair of closed fists!
AAR: 0 - TDR: 35 + d100(46) = 11
A hit for 1 damage!
Roundtime: 3 second(s).

(Note that having both hands empty results in attacking with both fists. Eventually will have a chance for multiple hits)

get gau
You remove a pair of bronze gauntlets from inside your satchel.

wear gau
You put a pair of bronze gauntlets on your hands.

hands
Your hands are empty.

attack gol
You attack a combat training golem with a pair of bronze gauntlets!
AAR: 0 - TDR: 35 + d100(66) = 31
A hit for 5 damage!
Roundtime: 3 second(s).

(If you're wearing something on your hands that is tagged as a brawling assist item, you'll attack with that item when empty-handed instead of just your bare fists)


And something I've always wanted to do ...



get torch
You remove a wooden torch from inside your satchel.

attack gol
You attack a combat training golem with a wooden torch!
AAR: 0 - TDR: 35 + d100(60) = 25
A hit for 4 damage!
Roundtime: 4 second(s).

get fire
You remove some firestones from inside your satchel.

light torch
You strike some firestones together several times, producing several bright sparks.
You use some firestones to light a wooden torch.
Roundtime: 2 second(s).

attack gol
You attack a combat training golem with a burning wooden torch!
AAR: 0 - TDR: 35 + d100(78) = 43
A hit for 6 damage!
... and an additional 5 fire damage.
Roundtime: 4 second(s).


Yay.

[Donquix]

If you're doing fire damage like that add napalm damn it!

dowse with oil + torch = golem a flambe

[Farn]

That's actually a good idea ... an oil item that can be thrown to add the "oil-drenched" tag to a critter, then the next fire attack sets them alight.

See - combat can be interesting without magic!

[Donquix]

They had something like that in DR. Oil + moon mage burn spell = tee hee

[Farn]

I've got the bare basics of my farming system, I think. I intend for it to be a way to make money, a way to provide your own food and a way to produce useful resources that can't be obtained otherwise (useful cooking ingredients, potion ingredients and so forth). I'm also considering making the start town isolated and dwindling, and players can play a large part in helping the town recover and thrive if they put some effort into it. Recent occurrences have driven off most of the farmers, miners, and other laborers, so it's up to the players to provide the town with the resources it needs. This can be done in various ways. In the case of farming, players can do the farming themselves, or they can solve the problem that's caused the NPC farmers to leave, they can find another way to make some money and purchase food from the nearest city and transport it back ... things like that.

Anyway, on to the farming system:

-----

[Shadgard Environs, Farm]
This small farm appears to have been abandoned for some time. A run-down farmhouse stands at the edge of a field, threatening to collapse in on itself at any moment.
You also notice some fertile soil, a small stone well, a wooden watering bucket, a delta-headed hoe.
Obvious paths: south.

l soil
The soil is a deep umber hue and looks quite soft.

get soil
You pick up a small handful of the soil and feel the soft earth as you slowly let it sift through your fingers and fall back to the ground. This would likely be good planting soil.

farm
Available farming commands:

- Till
- Plant
- Water
- Harvest
- Thresh
- Gather

Usage: Farm [command]

farm till
You'll need to be holding an appropriate tool to till with.

get hoe
You pick up a delta-headed hoe.

farm till
You set yourself to the task of tilling some soil with your delta-headed hoe.
Roundtime: 18 second(s).
(The tilling will likely end up taking multiple attempts, with fewer being necessary as your general farming skill goes up)

l
[Shadgard Environs, Farm]
This small farm appears to have been abandoned for some time. A run-down farmhouse stands at the edge of a field, threatening to collapse in on itself at any moment.
You also notice some tilled soil, a small stone well, a wooden watering bucket.
Obvious paths: south.

get seed
You remove some test seeds from inside your midnight blue canvas satchel.

farm plant
You dig a small hole in the soil with your delta-headed hoe, plant a single test seed in it, then scoop some soil back into the hole and lightly pat it down. You repeat this process along neat rows in the tilled soil.
Roundtime: 20 second(s).
(You can do this with one hand empty and seeds in the other, or with an appropriate tool in one hand and seeds in the other as seen in this example)

drop hoe
You drop a delta-headed hoe.

l
[Shadgard Environs, Farm]
This small farm appears to have been abandoned for some time. A run-down farmhouse stands at the edge of a field, threatening to collapse in on itself at any moment.
You also notice some sown soil, a small stone well, a wooden watering bucket, a delta-headed hoe.
Obvious paths: south.
(Any adjectives I can use that would work better than 'sown?')

l bucket
This large wooden bucket has a thick rope handle, as well as small v-shaped spout on one end which makes pouring a bit more accurate.
It is empty.

l well
A rod of wood is suspended across the top of this well, thick rope wrapped around it. Attached to the end of the rope is a metal bucket. A simple crank can be turned to lower the rope and metal bucket into the well.

get bucket
You pick up a wooden watering bucket.

fill bucket
You turn the well's crank, causing the rope to unwind and lower the bucket into the well. After a few moments you hear a faint splash, pause a moment to let the bucket fill with water, then turn the crank the opposite direction to pull the bucket back out of the well.
You fill your wooden watering bucket.
The bucket could hold some more water yet.
Roundtime: 10 second(s).

l bucket
This large wooden bucket has a thick rope handle, as well as small v-shaped spout on one end which makes pouring a bit more accurate.
It is partially full.

farm water
You water the crops with your wooden watering bucket.
The soil could use some more water yet.
Roundtime: 13 second(s).

(after several more waterings)

farm water
You water the crops with your wooden watering bucket.
The soil is fully watered.
Roundtime: 12 second(s).

(after time passes for the crops to grow a bit)

l
[Shadgard Environs, Farm]
This small farm appears to have been abandoned for some time. A run-down farmhouse stands at the edge of a field, threatening to collapse in on itself at any moment.
You also notice some sown soil lined with tiny green shoots, a small stone well, a delta-headed hoe.
Obvious paths: south.

(later still)

l
[Shadgard Environs, Farm]
This small farm appears to have been abandoned for some time. A run-down farmhouse stands at the edge of a field, threatening to collapse in on itself at any moment.
You also notice some sown soil lined with spade-leafed bushes bearing tiny green fruits, a small stone well, a delta-headed hoe.
Obvious paths: south.

(ready to harvest)

l
[Shadgard Environs, Farm]
This small farm appears to have been abandoned for some time. A run-down farmhouse stands at the edge of a field, threatening to collapse in on itself at any moment.
You also notice some sown soil lined with spade-leafed bushes bearing ripe red testfruits, a small stone well, a delta-headed hoe.
Obvious paths: south.

(There are more growth stages than this. The amount will depend on the crop type.)

farm harvest
You walk along the rows of spade-leafed bushes, picking ripe testfruits as you see them and placing them in a pile.
Roundtime: 13 second(s).

l
[Shadgard Environs, Farm]
This small farm appears to have been abandoned for some time. A run-down farmhouse stands at the edge of a field, threatening to collapse in on itself at any moment.
You also notice some sown soil lined with spade-leafed bushes, a small stone well, a delta-headed hoe, a wooden watering bucket, a pile of testfruits.
Obvious paths: south.
(Note the bushes are fruitless ... they'll grow again in time. This is a regrowable crop type that you don't have to re-plant after harvesting.)

l testfruit
Multiple testfruits are gathered here in a pile.
There are 19 testfruits in the pile.

get testfruit
You take a single red testfruit from the pile.

eat testfr
You take a bite of your red testfruit.
Delicious.

-----

There it is. In this sample it's just fruit that you can harvest bare-handed, but for things like wheat you'd use a scythe or sickle to harvest, then use a flail to thresh the grains. You can bring a crate or barrel and use Farm Gather to gather a pile of produce from the ground into the container so you can move the stuff around easily.

Any suggestions? Any farming procedural errors? I've never done any actual farming myself, but I figure these are the basic steps and should be enough for the game. Of course you'd have to come back and water the crops multiple times as they grow.

As far as growth times - I don't want farming to take as long as it does in the real world. That'd be a bit frustrating. I'm trying to decide whether I'm just going to say, "crops grow faster in this world," or perhaps use some magically/alchemically-enhanced soil or seeds that grow faster but result in smaller yields than normal growing. Hmmm.

[Farn]

I rigged the inventory system to automatically order stuff from head-to-toe as you wear it. If you're wearing a hat and put on some new shoes, the shoes will automatically move down to the bottom of the list as soon as you put it on, rather than sit above your hat until you manually enter a command to order your inventory. I know that'll make some people happy.

There is also a separate socks slot. Yay for socks.

[Latrinsorm]

I know that'll make some people happy.No! People should have to earn their sorted clothing! :grr:

Also, not really.

Also, I've always really really liked the idea of a truly living world, but the one worry I always have is that all life can die, and all life can be killed. It would be fascinating to watch a bunch of people coax a town into life, but one griefer with a flamethrower (or equivalent) could wreck everything, and there are always griefers.

But I could be overthinking things! That happens essentially 100% of the time.

[Farn]

With the small playerbase I expect, I'll hopefully be able to personally deal with any griefers and prevent them from ruining everything for everyone "just for the lulz."

I think it'd be fun for it to be a sort of sim-world where the players can see their efforts actually effect the world and cause large changes in the town and things like that. I'm going to try, at the very least - we'll see how it works out.

[Celephais]

One way to deal with griefers is to make it impossible for them to be able to wipe out a town via reasonable mechanics.

For example once an individual murders a citizen of a town the rest of the townsfolk all run indoors and lock them behind them, that way a griefer can't just log in at night and wipe things out, giving PCs time to take him down.

This way it's still possible for people to negatively impact the prosperity of a town (So you can still have "war"), but not in a way that wouldn't let people resond. If no "hero" is attentive to a town within say a week it could be decimated.

[Farn]

Right, there won't be a way for a single person to ruin an entire town's chances of prosperity (at least, not without a lot of time, skill and planning - and a lack of people trying to stop them).

I'm thinking more along the lines of someone who keeps creating new characters to screw things up every time one of their previous characters gets killed/jailed/exiled/whatever, someone who's abusing something that shouldn't be able to cause as much damage as it does, and things like that.

There -will- be some factions involved, however. There's at least one that doesn't want the town there, and players have the opportunity to join that faction (though it's not exactly a public thing, so its population should be small), so the pro-town people will need to stand up for themselves and the town against other actual players.

[Celephais]

though it's not exactly a public thing, so its population should be small
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_TYtL3iq-5_8/RufjfC7dR5I/AAAAAAAAAQw/pbEbw71ji3g/s320/dark+helmet.jpg
Don't expect people to not flock to that faction... because... good is dumb, unless you actively limit it's size it'll balloon.

Also, IMO mechanics like "Constable shows up and tosses you in jail, no matter what you do, and instantly" is kind of dumb, obviously you don't want people to be perfectly immune and able to just dodge the law by hiding or whatever (also dumb you can just "slip into shadows" and they forget about you).

[Farn]

The population of the not-such-good-guys organization will be limited. They're small to begin with, and their leaders want to be able to manage their own people and numbers. If they swell too large too quickly, they'll lose control - so they don't allow anyone and everyone to join whenever they want. They're a patient bunch who believe in baby steps.

This isn't to say that the town is a "good guys" town. It's an isolated frontier town made of of all sort of different people. I'd say my vision for it is neutral-with-good-tendencies, since people in general appreciate being treated fairly and equally, and those things are typically considered "good guy" traits.

Players can form their own groups and try to gain more control and influence over the town and shape how it ends up turning out. Maybe outlaws or tyrants end up getting control. The goody-goodies can either try to stay and fight (both physically and politically), or they can strike off somewhere to create a new settlement based on their own set of morals, ethics and what-have-you. Of course, this will require a lot of GM intervention, but as I said - the playerbase is likely going to be quite small, so it should be manageable.

There won't be much of a town law enforcement, at least not while the town is in its original small, dwindling state. There are some guards and such, but they're NPCs with their own setts of stats, skills and the like, and they won't be ridiculously powerful. They're frontier town guards, not highly-trained military hero captains.

That said, troublemakers will have a decent chance of being caught, even if they try to stick to the shadows in town. The town justice force isn't strictly out-in-the-open oafish guards. They also have their share of stealthy, sneaky types that can sneak around themselves and find troublemakers trying to stick to the shadows. You'll be sneaking around town, proud of yourself for having been hanging about several days even though you've attained 'banned' status, and the next thing you know there's a knife at your throat, held by a town justice stealth agent that's been shadowing you for the past three days, observing what trouble you've been up to.

[GS4Kaldair]

On the mining part. You could incorporate gas pockets. Or finding hidden rooms, with treasure or sleeping monsters, spider nests etc. Give player controllable mining carts, so you can carry a lot without filling your backpack and belt pouch with 15 pieces of ore, you can have 2 tons of ore.

Make sure you add gemstones to the mining system, and pyrite. You could have a panning system to search for gold in the streams and rivers etc. Or diving for pearls in the ocean. Finding sunken ships.

More then just a mining pick. You need small skills, medium skills and large skills. Dynamite?

Hell give people the ability to claim a room, build their own freaking house, shop or temple for their own personal religion? Hah. Build their boats. Be able to pilot them, ride horses or cows or whatever. Farm, and sell produce.

Make it so they HAVE to sleep and eat and reproduce. And let them scold their children for not doing chores, and teach them to farm for you so you can sit back and drink a beer while they toil all day long. Oh wait this was supposed to be a game.

Any system you can make to do something could potentially get very involved or complicated. But could also follow the lines of real life in such ways that it is not hard to learn or follow through. But again you have the problem of what becomes tedious or too realistic.

Any system you implement needs to have a upside, and needs to not take up too much time.

Make sure once your world gets large enough you have plenty of traveling options so someone isn't spending half an hour just to get to their destination.

[Celephais]

Be able to pilot them, ride cows
http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/gg295/1hotsexychica1/cow_riding.jpg

[Farn]

Thanks for the suggestions.

On the part of mining, I've already set it up so that you have chances of finding gems and other valuables as well as just ore. I also have some areas set up so that there's a chance you'll eventually tunnel your way into new areas. Some might just be empty caverns, some may have strange creatures or hidden treasure, some may lead to completely new areas. Maybe you'll unleash an ancient demon of fire and cause the doom an entire underground kingdom, cutting off the world's main source of myithriyiyyl.

Wouldn't it be nice to discover a new area without a GM having to come in and manually add the entrance to it or have an NPC do the discovering while you just follow along and watch? You're in the copper mine, picking away and hoping to strike some turquoise for some quick extra cash, when the wall suddenly crumbles away and you find a tunnel leading into an underground city that no other player has ever seen or been to before. I know I'd love to have something like that happen to me when I play other games. GMs and event-driving NPCs won't even have to be logged into the game when it happens - it'll all be pre-coded and just waiting to be discovered.

People can claim rooms or areas, sure. But there won't be any mechanics backing that up. I've got some building skills in mind (building your own cabin, for instance) but I'm not sure how I'd moderate it. There are some areas that I'd really rather were kept wild and uninhabited, you know? I don't want structures popping up all over the place and quickly becoming abandoned, either. I have this horrible vision of strolling through a virtual-reality Geocities going through my mind. So, this whole idea is iffy. If a group of players all get together and make a large effort to build a fort in a strategic place or a new settlement or something, sure. Make sure the GMs know what you're going for, and there's a fair chance it'll happen in time (it'll take a lot of effort on the players' part, and it's not a guarantee you'll succeed).

Eating will be required, as will resting to reduce fatigue and regain mental clarity. Not necessarily sleeping, though. Not much fun to log into the game just so your character can sleep for several hours, not doing anything at all.

Making babies? Eeehhh ... no. Act out all the baby-making procedures as much as you want (in private), but I'm not coding up pregnancies, labor and baby AI.

[Farn]

Make sure once your world gets large enough you have plenty of traveling options so someone isn't spending half an hour just to get to their destination.

This one's kind of a toughie. While I don't want it to be frustrating and boring to travel, on the other hand, I don't want people to be able to cross the continent in 5 minutes on a whim. I want there to be a definite feeling of distance between some places. Traveling should be traveling, not strolling across the street. I want people to stock up on food, pack a sleeping bag and things like that.

Of course, there should probably be options in certain places (like between sizeable towns/cities) for things like hitching a ride with a caravan or something. Maybe set it up like some of the ships in Gemstone, where you can log out and continue traveling even though you're not connected to the game. Find a caravan, pay a fee, hop into the back of a wagon, log out of the game and go outside or something (I hear it's nice out there). Log back in later, and yay, you're at your destination.

Now, I'm going to have some places that are intentionally difficult to get to, for that "go me, I'm a rugged traveler" feel. Lots of climbing and things to burn your food and stamina. So you're required to either hunt/forage food on the way or bring along a healthy supply of rations. Find a nice, safe place to stop and rest, gather some wood and start a fire to cook, bust out that bedroll and lay on it so your fatigue goes down quicker. Maybe bring along an instrument and practice while you rest. It might just be me, but I think that type of thing is fun.

[pabstblueribbon]

I know im chiming in late, but one reasonable mechanic set in place in a mud i had helped develop is that every player kill you do counts as a negative karma. Basically, every player kill adds 1 or whatever, negative karma, you could add more if it is a repeat kill. This negative karma keeps adding up until you die, and then, you pay the price. You subtract your negative karma that you've built up from exp or skill points that you currently have. Making it possible to be a 'bad ass' but if the town comes after you and does manage to kill you, you pay for it. You would of course have to account for going into the negative.

This pertains to 'anti griefing'

[Farn]

That's an interesting idea. I might work something like that in there, though I don't necessarily want all player kills to be bad karma. If someone runs in and tries to attack me or a friend and I retaliate, resulting in their death, I don't think that should necessarily result in bad karma. Still, something to ponder on.

I'm trying to make death a big deal. It will never result in permanent death (unless the player chooses that option, and goes through about fifty "no, seriously, if you choose this option, your character and all gear will be GONE. Forever." prompts. However, once a character dies their first death, there will be big choices that must be made (if they choose not to pass on forever) that will have a permanent impact on the character. Resurrection is not a common thing in this world (it's a miraculous occurrence, the stuff of myths and legends), though strange things have been happening lately.

[Makkah]

Log on AIM sometime.

[Farn]

A few clips of two basic spells. They're both of the 'pyromancy' school. The first is a burst:




pyro burst shar
You gather your will and focus on conjuring a burst of flame at your target's location, your hands pulsating with fiery light.
Channeling time: 3 second(s).

(Three seconds later)

A sudden burst of fire envelopes Shar!
16 fire damage!





Farn's hands pulsate with fiery light.
You feel something probing your mind.

(Three seconds later)

A sudden burst of fire envelopes you!
16 fire damage!


Note that the spell happens at the end of the casting time, rather than at the beginning. Since this type of spell (burst) targets the location of a specific entity, the target feels the caster attempting to "lock on" to them during the prep messaging. The target can react by either attempting an appropriate counter-spell to cause a variety of effects (nullify the spell, drain the spell energy from the caster, reflect the spell back onto the caster and so on), or they can simply run off before the spell triggers and they'll be safe. I'll probably make a chance for the target to not sense the caster targeting them, based on certain skills of both the caster and target.

Spells that directly target an entity rather than depending on physical aim are good for hitting targets that are particularly quick or agile and have good combat evasive skills, since the spell can't be dodged, but must be mentally warded off. However, these types of spells alert the target that they're being targeted, and also create a brief link between target and caster that the target can use for some nasty counterspells, if they're skilled enough.

Next is a 'ray' spell, which is physically aimed. Rays, rather than bolts, have the possibility of multiple damage cycles:




pyro ray shar
You gather your will and focus on conjuring a ray of flame, rays of fiery light shining from your hands.
Channeling time: 5 second(s).

(Five seconds later)

You aim a ray of fire at Shar!
ACR: 100 - TDR: 0 + d100(28) = 128
11 fire damage!
35 fire damage!
14 fire damage!





Farn's hands shine with rays of fiery light.

(Five seconds later)

Farn aims a ray of fire at you!
ACR: 100 - TDR: 0 + d100(28) = 128
11 fire damage!
35 fire damage!
14 fire damage!


Since the spell isn't locking on to a specific target but is physically aimed, the target isn't aware that they're being targeted (until they see the ray of fire coming at them). The target can only guess who/what in the room is being targeted when they see the caster's prep messaging, and might cast a quick spell to shield themselves from fire if they know one, or just leave the room to be cautious. Since this spell is physically aimed, it's good for using against targets who are strong-willed and ward off mental linking easily, but are lacking in reflexes and physical combat evasive skills.

A bolt would be like a ray, but with only one damage cycle, faster casting time and less fatigue.

Note that the different spells have different prep messaging. If you get really good at learning which messaging means which spell, you can be much more prepared to fend off magical attacks by knowing what they're about to cast.

Not all spells will have "front-loaded" casting time. Some will be instant cast (though I intend these to be somewhat rare), some will be preparatory spells that are reactive, and so on. I'm considering having some skills reduce casting time of spells as well.

For the non-magical types and magical defense: Aimed spells can obviously be dodged or blocked. Lock-on targeting spell defense can be improved by nonmagical skills such as meditation. So, those not inclined toward magical skills/training can still train up decent defenses against magic without using magic themselves.

[Farn]

Whoever that was that registered a character around noon today, you caught me re-writing my engine, so most commands weren't working. Sorry about that. The good news is that I can now, for the most part, edit or add new code and enable the changes live (without having to reset the server). Took a while to figure that one out.

[Celephais]

The whole "being able to walk out of a room" sounds a little flaky. I'm not sure what your plans are for encouraging PVP or whatnot, but might I suggest that if your target leaves the room, and you do not 'cancel' the spell or perform another action that would cancel the spell, the spell would still be "loaded" so as soon as the target re-enters the room it either fires immediately, has a chance to fire immediately, or has a substantially reduced 'rearm' time.

Slamming as mechanical abuse would be an annoying thing to have to deal with.

[Farn]

Part of it is based on the idea of timing things right and/or using set-up moves to prevent the target from escaping by just walking away. For instance, a friend could perform a physical Combat Press on the target (you can't move away while Pressed), you could first cast a quicker-casting disabler spell that knocks down, stuns or roots their feet in ice (among other things), or you could just wait for them to perform an action that you know puts them in enough roundtime that you could finish casting your spell before they're out of roundtime.

Most "entity-targeted" spells will end up "sticking" to the target even if they leave the room (so the spell will still go off even if the caster isn't in the same room), but the chance of it successfully triggering will be reduced as the target gets further from the caster.

[StrayRogue]

My best honest advice is to not bother.

Many have tried here. All have failed. The best two examples would be: Unwritten Legends or whatever the hell it was called. Basically it got closest to being a GS clone. It still totally failed.

Second was Jamus' super new game. RSN now Jamus?

!

[Makkah]

A month bump for that? Substance man, substance.

[Widgets]

This thing hates my gMud, and won't even connect :(

[Farn]

Server's been up and down lately. I've been doing some reconfiguring. Is it not connecting at all, or at least getting to the title/welcome screen?

[Farn]

By the way, the big lull (I didn't really think anyone was keeping track or paying attention, to be honest) is because I'm attempting to set things up to work with SQL databases rather than a slew of individual external files. Learning SQL and how to make Python work with it (as well as PHP due to other side-projects) has taken a considerable chunk of my time lately.

[Jumpkick]

With the increasing push of graphical games is there still desire to start playing a new text-based game? I know for a lot of people Gemstone is just a fimiliar place they don't dare leave to investigate something new.

[Farn]

I'll state for the nth time that I'm not doing this to make money or to make the next big game - I'm doing it for fun and to learn programming, database, networking and server skills.

I don't expect many people to play, and I don't expect the game to have a long run with an active player base, if it even has a run at all.

Oh, and to answer your question - yes. One of the many reasons I'm making this game is because I couldn't find a text-based game out there that I liked, so I decided to just make my own.

[Widgets]

Server's been up and down lately. I've been doing some reconfiguring. Is it not connecting at all, or at least getting to the title/welcome screen?

I get to the welcome screen, but after the /who.../register etc commands, it just hangs with nothing showing

[Paradii]

I was able to make a character and walk around for a bit.

[Widgets]

I was able to make a character and walk around for a bit.

Maybe it's gMud only then...Anytime i try to register, it just hangs after inputting the /register command with my name and PW

[Paradii]

Maybe it's gMud only then...Anytime i try to register, it just hangs after inputting the /register command with my name and PW


Hrmm, try mushclient and see what happens

[Widgets]

Hrmm, try mushclient and see what happens

yea, it's odd...I saw you log in via gMud lol...But can't login myself

[Jumpkick]

I'll state for the nth time that I'm not doing this to make money or to make the next big game - I'm doing it for fun and to learn programming, database, networking and server skills.


I'm not trying to discourage you at all. I am honestly really interested in the number of players that would be excited to try something new. I haven't played Gemstone in some years now ( though I did play for 10 years starting in 1995 ). I think it is an excellent way to learn programming and love to see someone else picking up the profession.

[Fallen]

I would certainly try a new text based game if I had more free time and access.

[Widgets]

I would certainly try a new text based game if I had more free time and access.

I've always loved MUDs, especially of the Star Wars genre...But now a days all of the good ones, have been long gone, like Hunters Network and stuff.

I wouldn't mind giving new MUDs a try, especially Fantasy and Sci-Fi genre's which is why I gave this one a shot. The largest problem with any MUd is obviously establishing a decent player base and one which is dedicated.

In today's numbers, I'd say "Decent" is composed of anywhere from 10-24 players now...And 50+ is even better

[Farn]

I looked a bit into gMud and noticed in the readme file that it says it's in alpha stages still. That said, it is a bit odd that it won't work, when the most basic telnet clients seem to work fine (such as the built-in OS telnet clients).

I've successfully connected and played with built-in telnet clients on Ubuntu, MacOS and Windows, as well as MUSHclient and Putty/PuttyTel.

Honestly, I'm very foggy on the technical details of connecting to the server.

[Widgets]

I looked a bit into gMud and noticed in the readme file that it says it's in alpha stages still. That said, it is a bit odd that it won't work, when the most basic telnet clients seem to work fine (such as the built-in OS telnet clients).

I've successfully connected and played with built-in telnet clients on Ubuntu, MacOS and Windows, as well as MUSHclient and Putty/PuttyTel.

Honestly, I'm very foggy on the technical details of connecting to the server.

Yea, MushClient works for me. I was just always used to using gMud, but none the less I can connect now using MushClient

[Farn]

Whoops. Testing the basic critter AI and I accidentally unleashed a horde of zombies onto the townsfolk. They (the zombies, not the townsfolk) have since been sent to obedience school and will now stay in the abandoned mine tunnels, as they should.

Anyway, the main point of this post is that there are now some zombies spawning and running around in the abandoned mine tunnels on the east side of town, if you want something to beat up on. Combat mechanics are real basic at this point - just attrition, no crits or anything yet. The numbers need some tweaking, but for all the barbarians out there, you've got something to beat up on now if you feel like testing the game out.

Oh. Buy some firestones and a candle or torch. It's dark in there.

[Mabus]

With the increasing push of graphical games is there still desire to start playing a new text-based game?
There are some people that prefer text for the role-play aspects that just are not dealt with in graphical games.

There are also the visually impaired (and even blind) players that cannot play graphical games, but can play text-based games by using screen readers.

[Mabus]

Combat mechanics are real basic at this point - just attrition, no crits or anything yet.
Just got done working on (the initial) race-based hit locations, and armor-types versus damage-types damage modification, systems for the game (http://throes.slayn.net/) I code as a hobby. Already have a basic Injury and Amputation code, but built support into the code for a further critical system.

Had my head spinning. Lots of fun to code.

Started reworking our website too, and makes me realize I am neither a graphical artist nor a website programmer.

Bit by bit. Piece by piece.

[Farn]

There are some people that prefer text for the role-play aspects that just are not dealt with in graphical games.

There are also the visually impaired (and even blind) players that cannot play graphical games, but can play text-based games by using screen readers.

Don't forget the minimalists. I love games that I know I'll be able to run from any old relic box or minimalistic netbook I happen to come across. Text adventures, MUDs, ASCII-art roguelikes and such.

I think my longest-running games I've played are Angband and Gemstone. Gemstone I could play from any computer with an Internet connection, and I still run Angband from my USB drive I carry on my keychain. I used to run it from a floppy that I'd carry around in my backpack, back in the day.



Started reworking our website too, and makes me realize I am neither a graphical artist nor a website programmer.


Oh yeah, the site I'm setting up for mine is pretty awful. I don't plan on any images, except maybe some sketches of the playable races you can choose. Unfortunately, there comes the problem that I'm definitely not an artist, and have no way to put what I've got envisioned onto paper or digital canvas.

My main issue is that of the Canim race, a sort of half-werewolf (quarterwolf?). People tend to envision them as typical werewolves in wolf form, "furries" with wolf heads, but that's not what they are, and I want to dispel that. They're basically (in appearance) humans with more than average body hair, sharp teeth (particularly the canines), slightly hunched shoulders and bowed backs, elongated arms/legs and walking on the balls of their feet. No tails. No full body fur. No wolf ears or snouts. They do have the choice of having "golden" as their eye color, though.

[Sietzer]

I started running around on the game. No idea what to do. But I'm streaking around. The Beginner guide and list of words to use seem to be broken on the main site. I havnt played gemstone for awhile, but have been looking for a mud to play. None have caught my fancy though. Even though this is still being made, could someone maybe send me a guide or what to do to fight. heh

[Farn]

I guess today's project will be putting the basics on the site. To help you out for the time being:

As far as what you need to do to fight: Get in front of a critter and attack it with the "attack" or "kill" verb (both do the same thing). You can attack with two open hands, one open hand or a weapon in one hand (haven't implemented two-weapon combat yet). Don't bother trying to attack the town NPCs (guard, shopekeepers, etc.) - you won't have a chance to hit them. I'm trying to figure out a good balance to have things make sense, but prevent idiots from going around and murdering the shopkeepers who have little to no combat skills with which to defend themselves.

If you want a weapon, there are a few thing that can be wielded in the general store just east of the Town Commons. Go into the store, then use the "buy" verb (which can also be accomplished with the "order" command, which does the same thing). It's not a weaponry shop, so you won't find anything too powerful. You can use the knife, mallet, hatchet, quarterstaff or torch as a weapon.

For fun, and my recommendation for fighting in the mine where it's dark and a light source is required, buy a few torches and a set of firestones. You can club things with a torch like a cudgel, but you can also add some fire damage to your attack by [obviously] lighting the torch and attacking with it while it's lit. With the torch in one hand and firestones in the other, type 'light torch'. Put away the firestones and make sure the torch is in your right hand, then attack as normal. You'll do some basic damage from clubbing them with the torch, and they'll take a bit of extra damage from the fire as well. Remember to bring a stock of torches, since they'll eventually burn out. You can't put a burning torch into your backpack of course, so to extinguish one when you want to put it away, type "extinguish torch".

Currently you don't have to pay any attention to fatigue and related messaging, i.e. "You're feeling a little winded," "You're exhausted," and so on. The numbers have to be tweaked and while the messaging is there, fatigue currently has no mechanical effect on your character.

The mine is on the east side of town. From the Town Commons go east, northeast, east, then "go mine." The foreman won't let you into the eastern tunnels, so head southeast into the abandoned tunnels and you'll find some zombies wandering around to beat up on. Each attack you make, so long as it's not too difficult or too easy to land a hit (due to lack or excess of combat skill), will increase your General Combat skill as well as the category of weapon you're wielding, unless it's an Improvised Weapon in which case only General Combat will go up. Improvised weapons include things like rusty copper spikes and rotting wooden beams that the zombies use. The torch counts as a one-handed hafted weapon, since it's basically a club and similar enough that it fits into a weapon category.

If you want to know which commands are available to you, type "help commands" for a command list. It doesn't explain what they do, but they should be pretty self-explanatory.

I'll get to work on the command list and beginner's guide on the site. I didn't think anyone actually went to it, since I never announced it.

Oh, I'm also having fun giving all the town NPCs things you can ASK them about, so if you want to get to know the townsfolk a bit and a little about some of the world lore, try asking them about some basic subjects (name, town, one of the other town NPCs, and so on). You'll usually be able to ask them about some other subjects you see them talk about in their responses. Some people might make references to buildings that don't exist or aren't fully fleshed-out, though. For instance, I haven't built the church or town hall yet, and many buildings are empty inside. The only ones with any current function are the general store, cobbler (shoe shop) and tailor. You can at least go buy yourself some clothes and basic supplies.

[Monsoon]

I fiddled around with it a few days ago. What MUD client do you recommend?

[Farn]

MUSHclient works great.

http://www.gammon.com.au/mushclient/mushclient.htm

You should set some basic settings to optimize the play experience, in my opinion. Go to Game > Configure > Output and make sure to check "Auto-Wrap to window size" so that the game output will fill the whole window instead of being a small, fixed width. I also prefer to un-check "indent paragraphs."

You can set up aliases, macros, scripts and some other fun stuff in the configuration window. You can also set up custom highlights by going to Display > Highlight Word. Don't forget to save world details (File > Save World Details).

[Sietzer]

Thank you. I'll be heading on now then. Go look around some more, hopefully if I'm lucky someone else may be there too.


Quick Edit. Seems I cant get on at the moment. Keeping getting disconnected when I type order.

After a few more attempts of playing. It plays fine. However at the moment, ordering makes it Disconnect. I'll attempt to find other causes for you.

Torch > Every weapon at the moment.

A shambling zombie attacks you with a rusty copper spike!
AAR: -50 - TDR: 3 + d100(48) = -5
A miss.

get spike from zombie
The zombie doesn't store items.

A shambling zombie attacks you with a rusty copper spike!
AAR: -50 - TDR: 3 + d100(16) = -37
A miss.

kill zombie
You attack a shambling zombie with a burning wooden torch!
AAR: 3 - TDR: -50 + d100(48) = 101
A hit for 0 damage!
... and an additional 29 fire damage.
A shambling zombie has been defeated.
Roundtime: 4 second(s).

[Farn]

Sorry about the problem with ordering. I recently changed it so that "order" is the core verb for the mechanic instead of "buy" and forgot to update something. It's fixed now.

I'm not sure if I'm going to fix the 0 damage thing or not. I see it as barely grazing them, or hitting them so pathetically that it just sort of plinks off, without doing any damage. In those cases, with the niftiness of the lit torch, still being able to do some damage is kind of neat. The impact from the torch itself didn't hurt, but the flames on the torch still singed them. This'll make it so that if you're attacking something with powerful physical resistance or armor, you may hit it often but do no damage from the physical strike, but the flames will still burn and hurt it. Makes for a nice tactic versus heavily-armored critters without having to resort to something like magic.

How did the zombie population and spawn rate seem? There shouldn't be more than 3 or 4 around at once. As it is, they spawn pretty quickly after you kill one, so the place is usually teeming with zombies. I'll likely tone that down a bit.

Also: How'd you manage to get a torch and firestones if the 'order' verb wasn't working?

[Sietzer]

Sorry about the problem with ordering. I recently changed it so that "order" is the core verb for the mechanic instead of "buy" and forgot to update something. It's fixed now.

I'm not sure if I'm going to fix the 0 damage thing or not. I see it as barely grazing them, or hitting them so pathetically that it just sort of plinks off, without doing any damage. In those cases, with the niftiness of the lit torch, still being able to do some damage is kind of neat. The impact from the torch itself didn't hurt, but the flames on the torch still singed them. This'll make it so that if you're attacking something with powerful physical resistance or armor, you may hit it often but do no damage from the physical strike, but the flames will still burn and hurt it. Makes for a nice tactic versus heavily-armored critters without having to resort to something like magic.

How did the zombie population and spawn rate seem? There shouldn't be more than 3 or 4 around at once. As it is, they spawn pretty quickly after you kill one, so the place is usually teeming with zombies. I'll likely tone that down a bit.

Also: How'd you manage to get a torch and firestones if the 'order' verb wasn't working?

I bought those before I first posted, I checked this out say 24 hours ago at first. So it was probably before you made the change, So I already had an outfit and such.

Zombie Spawns seemed fine, I was having no trouble finding any of them and I was constantly seeing zombies run through the room. I find the torch works best with weapons, I didnt know you could use a torch till you noted it. Was using a knife till then and was barely able to get any hits in.

It took me a bit to realize, that the zombies dont drop anything, and I thought I was going crazy thinking I killed one! Also does hide do anything? Also I noted one place I could climb but I cant get up it, any other places of the sort? Like certain places to train skills or such.

Does General combat effect weapons AS, such as I train it up with a torch, but later switch to say a great axe or something, will it give me a slight boost for it, so I'll have an easier time training it up then?

Hopefully I wont run out of money till you put in a way to gain some while, I'm training up my basic attack skills and such. I also noted Hiding doesnt really do anything as of now. Since the zombies still attack you while your hidden. Also does the whetstone actually sharpen your blade as of now, or is it useless?

[Farn]

Critters don't currently give drops. I'll set that up next, since someone's actually hunting them. They probably won't drop straight coin (they're zombies, not bankers), but they'll drop stuff you can pawn or sell. Hrm. So I have to set up a pawnshop and other selling places. Good motivation for me. I'll also set up some mining spots, which will probably be a better way of making money. I don't plan on hunting being a huge money maker, except when hunting particularly wealthy targets, which will be uncommon. Trade skills (mining, farming, etc.) will be the better, more consistent money makers.

Hiding and darkness doesn't yet stop critters from attacking you (though darkness will prevent you from attacking them, so beware. I'll fix this soon). As of now, hiding just hides you from other players. It was one of the first verbs I coded, so I need to toss in the skill gains and update it to effect critters as well as players.

You're correct about General Combat. If you have a General Combat rating of 10, you'll get +10 to your AAR (like Gemstone's AS) with any weapon/unarmed attack. If you're wielding a weapon you have skill in, that skill will add on top of that.

So let's say you have 30 General Combat and 10 Daggers skill. Wielding any weapon at all, no matter if it's a type you don't have skill in or an Improvised Weapon, your AAR will be at least 30. If you wield a dagger-type weapon, your AAR will be 40 since you also have 10 Dagger skill to add on top of your 30 General Combat. I set it up this way so that you can specialize in one type of weapon if you want, but still be able to use any other weapon you happen to find with at least some effectiveness due to your general combat experience. This way if you're, say, specializing in daggers, and you happen to find a super-epic-powerful Battle-Axe of Glory, you won't have to just throw it away or sell it since you have no Two-Handed Hafted skill. You can still use it somewhat effectively due to your General Combat skill.

Tip: Examine a weapon to figure out what base weapon type it is.

Skill gain note: Skill gains are based on challenge. If you're really good with swords, you'll have to fight tougher opponents to skill up further. However, if you decide you want to pick up one-handed hafted weapons, you can fight easier opponents than those you were fighting with your sword, since you have less skill in one-handed hafted weapons and hence have a greater challenge wielding them. I hope that makes sense. Let me know if it's too confusing.

Whestones don't work yet, though they'll eventually give a temporary damage factor (not AAR) boost that degrades over time. When you go to order a specific item, some will say (currently non-functional) next to their description which means you can still buy it, but its intended special function isn't working yet.

There's only the barrier climbable now (and the challenge rating makes it impossible, as it's not meant to be overcome by a climb check, but I figured people ought to be able to attempt it). I'll work on throwing in some climbable and swimmable areas in the next few days so you can skill those up if you want.

Thanks for testing things out for me. It's a great motivation to work on some stuff I've had on the shelf for a while as I fuss over some of the sillier details of things I shouldn't really be worrying about at the moment.

[Farn]

Another combat tip: Certain weapons will have the chance of multiple attacks per round, depending on how high your endroll is. For instance - quarterstaves have a chance of landing up to 4 hits in a single attack, and the threshhold for extra strikes is relatively low. The same goes for attacking with two empty hands. I eventually intend to add some info to the Examine messaging for weapons. Something along the lines of, "The weapon is extremely well-balanced" meaning you can land extra strikes per attack with it.

Lighter, weaker weapons will often be the multi-strikers, while bigger, heavier weapons will only have a chance for one strike per attack, but will be the ones to use for crit kills. I'm hoping this will help create some balance between those who choose to go for light, lightning-quick combat style and those who choose to go for "I hit you, you die or are at least maimed" in combat.

[Sietzer]

I got my One Handed-Blunt or what it is called here to about 12 attack, which I thought was a good ending for now, till I can test out some other skills. So I'll be on tomorrow to try and get it up around 20-30. I want to at least 100% Zombies.

I've also noted you dont seem to have a cleaner at the moment, or maybe you do and it hasnt passed over the rooms i've been in. But it may get cluttered with all the torches I'm going to be leaving around in the mines.

[Farn]

Yeah, I'll have to set up a janitor as well. You sure are adding a lot of work to my plate. I also need to toss some barrels into some of the town areas as well. I realized that when I was testing out the order verb and bought something just for testing and wanted to get rid of it afterwards.

Just remember: once you have 100% chance to hit zombies, you won't learn anything from attacking them anymore.

[Sietzer]

Yeah, I'll have to set up a janitor as well. You sure are adding a lot of work to my plate. I also need to toss some barrels into some of the town areas as well. I realized that when I was testing out the order verb and bought something just for testing and wanted to get rid of it afterwards.

Just remember: once you have 100% chance to hit zombies, you won't learn anything from attacking them anymore.

I see. that will be fun. XD I'll probably just swap to other weapons then. I wonder, Is there any other weapons that can be caught on fire, if they are wood?

[joehollywood]

I think it's really awesome what you're doing...

That is all...

[Farn]

No other weapons can be lit on fire - just the torch. It'll likely be quite unique in that respect. I don't foresee any other non-magical weapons having similar abilities, and magical weapons (or magical anything, for that matter) are going to be uncommon.

I don't know, maybe a type of chained weapon with a spiked wooden ball on the end which is wrapped in pitch-soaked rags that you could light on fire. Wouldn't last too long, but it'd be fun for the short time it lasts. Kind of like a non-magical, poor man's feras. Mmmm. Ideas.


I think it's really awesome what you're doing...

That is all...

Thanks. Feel free to hop into the game anytime and play around.

[Fallen]

I think it's really awesome what you're doing...

That is all...

Agreed. It has been fun to watch the game come along.

[Farn]

There's now a janitor who cleans rooms every 3 minutes, so beware putting things on the ground. Burning items won't be taken, however, so you're safe dropping a lit candle or torch in a dark area to free up your hands. I'll eventually give all items a timer when placed on the ground, so any item that's been recently held by a player will be immune to the janitor effect for a set amount of time. I'll probably set up a register-type system that can mark items as permanently immune to the janitor, as long as no jokers abuse it and create heaps of everlasting trash everywhere.

Critters now drop whatever they were holding and/or wearing when you defeat them.

There's now a pawnshop on Main Street, just north of the Town Commons. Be aware I'm tired and didn't code up a confirmation yet, so be careful when selling things, as they'll be sold instantly. I'll work on an appraise verb soon. No back room yet - for now, if you sell something, it's gone for good.

[Farn]

I forgot to mention - there's now a blacksmith shop outside the mine that sells a few more weapons.

I'm working on an area outside the town now. Hopefully it and its critters, climbable areas and swimmable areas as well as farmable soil will be done in the next few days. The descriptions will likely be quite terrible to start.

[joehollywood]

I R keeled many zombies with my mighty sledgehammer RAR...

way to go!

[Celephais]

Farn, can you make the game ignore <c> infront of every entered command? If you do people can just use stormfront (I would just use the wizard but it expects a handshake). I'm kind of lazy and don't feel like installing a mud client (I know they're way better, and I even paid for zMud forever ago and have my key somewhere, but again, lazy).

If you do, all people need to do is make a shortcut of:
Stormfront.exe /GGS/Hclok.game-host.org/P3003/K0

[Farn]

I think it may take more than that, or perhaps there are special characters involved. I tried doing what you asked, and If I use a non-stormfront client and type, for instance, "<c>wave", it ignores the "<c>" and fires up the wave command. However, no Stormfront commands seem to be acknowledged at all when I connect through it.

Also, Stormfront doesn't seem to like the ANSI color codes. Doesn't look pretty seeing things like "Welcome to CLOK!" all over instead of just the words "Welcome to CLOK!" in the specified color. Yuck.

You might be best off grabbing a different client. If you just want a quick foray and don't plan on putting much effort into it, just use the telnet client built into your OS. I'm guessing you're using Windows, since you're using Stormfront, so open up the command prompt and type:

telnet clok.game-host.org 3003

That'll get you in quickly without having to download or install anything, and you can determine whether it's worth downloading a better client.

[Celephais]

I had originally planned on using telnet but oddly enough it is no longer part of the default install in win 7 (the RC at least).

I'll probably install zmud, i was just feeling lazy last night and thought it'd be kinda neat to be able to use stormfront (and a boon for you to let people keep stay in a familiar enviroment and keep use the same script skills).

[Monsoon]

It's included with Windows 7, but it's disabled by default because it's horribly vulnerable.

http://www.leateds.com/2009/telnet-for-windows-vista-windows-7/

[joehollywood]

Um...

I sorta accidentally killed most of the NPC's

I'm sowwy

[Farn]

It's okay, you gave the guardsman something to do.

[Fallen]

I can't remember if you already mentioned this, Farn, but have you started working on the documentation for the game as of yet?

[Back]

Popped in the other day. Fun to be a part of some game development. Thank you Farn.

Do you have a goals timeline yet?

Also, I'd be happy to paint some rooms for you on my weekly day off. Usually Tuesday or Thursdays.

[Revalos]

I keep wondering if I will get sued or arrested or somesuch bullshit if I ever release all the proprietary Aeternity shit I still have on my computer. I have yet to find a lawyer that can explain what happens if you have a non-disclosure agreement with a defunct company with no known successors. Of course, I'm probably already violating the agreement since I still have all the stuff and haven't deleted it yet.

One day I'll get up the gumption to post it all here.

[Fallen]

Why would you want to post it here? Is Farn's world based on Aeternity in some way?

[Farn]

Fallen: Documentation on both mechanics and lore are both in my head as of right now. I've been concentrating on getting things to work in-game, but I could throw some basics on the site to give myself a coding break every now and then.

Back: Glad to have you helping me test. I don't have a goals timeline, since I am unfortunately one of those people who see a timeline, think, "eh, I've got time to slack off" and then end up just giving up on it. I realize some timelines will be necessary eventually, since the players should know when stuff will be available, fixed and whatnot, but for right now, I'm just going along at my own pace. It -is- just me and a couple of volunteer painters, after all.

By the way, I'd like to extend my thanks to all those that have been logging in and testing things out for me. I appreciate all the input, and systems that have been broken, allowing me to further fortify them. It also provides a healthy helping of motivation, which does wonders.

[AnticorRifling]

Probably so Farn can use it if there's no NDA attached.

[Revalos]

Yeah, most of the stuff I have is documentation and coding related. Pretty much straightforward. The lore is all pretty retarded honestly, but the other stuff might actually be useful in some way to someone working on a mud.

I keep thinking that it defaults to public domain after some sort of time, but I have no idea really.

[Farn]

For the convenience of people who are playing/testing:

The 'tell' command will send a message to everyone connected to the server. You can also use 'chat', for those used to Psinet. This is a development-time feature that will be taken away when/if the game ever goes 'official', but for now, everyone can communicate with everyone easily.

It doesn't currently have the ability to send to a specified target.

[Celephais]

Popped in the other day. Fun to be a part of some game development. Thank you Farn.

Do you have a goals timeline yet?

Also, I'd be happy to paint some rooms for you on my weekly day off. Usually Tuesday or Thursdays.
He told me RSN on his goals but... I don't know, Farn promised he'd release monks back in 2004, but I don't think he even started making the game by then, talk about setting the bar too high.

[Farn]

Today's developments:

Bank system. You can DEPOSIT, DEPOSIT ALL, WITHDRAW and CHECK BALANCE. Please report any bugs. I somehow managed to come up with some free cash once (deposit all ended up depositing twice as much as I should have had on me), but have been unable to reproduce the bug.

Rudimentary group mechanics with the JOIN and LEAVE verbs. Some wonkiness remains, but it's late and I'm tired. For fun power struggles, join each other (i.e. Farn joins Shar and Shar joins Farn).

REGISTER an item at the Town Hall to make it janitor-proof.

[Mabus]

I keep wondering if I will get sued or arrested or somesuch bullshit if I ever release all the proprietary Aeternity shit I still have on my computer. I have yet to find a lawyer that can explain what happens if you have a non-disclosure agreement with a defunct company with no known successors. Of course, I'm probably already violating the agreement since I still have all the stuff and haven't deleted it yet.

One day I'll get up the gumption to post it all here.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.

But as someone that follows intellectual property, owns intellectual property rights and works with intellectual property...

If you do not own the Copyright to the materials you should either get a license from the authors, or not use the materials.

Whether a company still exists is irrelevant to Copyright law.

Once a work is set down in tangible form it is considered under Copyright (within the USA).

If the work is done under specific agreements, or for compensation, the work may well be a "work for hire", in which case the contracting party (the game, in this instance) would be the Copyright holder (rather then the author).

The gaming community (especially text-based game community) frowns heavily on Copyright and license violators.

If you do not have provable, direct permission to use the property (such as licensing, or being the actual Copyright holder) it would be best to not use the material.

Just an opinion.

[Sean of the Thread]

I had the same question a few years ago. My non disclosure etc is long gone but I had taken a lot of GUI programming work and databases of leads I collected on several hard drives when I was laid off.

Mostly to show my work to a company when my non disclosure was up and if desperation (example my daughter is dying) needed it to sell the few million leads.

I've since destroyed the hard drives but I always wondered. There was no copyright and I fucking designed and wrote them... /shrug?

[Farn]

As interesting as it might be to look at someone else's code for ideas and inspiration, I am rather enjoying coming up with everything completely from scratch so I know exactly how and why everything works the way it does, or as much as possible, at least. I still don't know why some things happen in my code, but I at least have the sure knowledge that they're unintended effects that should be tracked down and figured out, since I wrote it in the first place.

[Farn]

http://forum.gsplayers.com/images/reputation/reputation_pos.gif You want something done... (http://forum.gsplayers.com/showthread.php?p=1008270#post1008270) 10-13-2009 09:05 AM Hallo. Vee gayts es eenen. I am looking far uar link to game. Can u halp me?

For you and others who don't want to scour the thread for the connection info:

http://clok.game-host.org/play.php

Note that most of the site links aren't working and content is subject to change without notice, though there is the command list and a few tips for beginners under the 'play' tab.

[Celephais]

Farn, if you wouldn't mind would you mind sharing how you're going about it, what language, what hosting enviroment, data storage method, are you using any third party libraries, what's your parsing technique (regex/string walking), any other morsels that would be interesting.

I personally have little to zero desire to write a text mud, I'm a graphical programmer at heart, just interested.

[Farn]

Farn, if you wouldn't mind would you mind sharing

If I wouldn't mind, then no, I wouldn't mind. Hah. Anyway ...


would you mind sharing how you're going about it, what language, what hosting enviroment, data storage method, are you using any third party libraries, what's your parsing technique (regex/string walking), any other morsels that would be interesting.

I'm writing everything up in Python. I'm using the 'twisted' framework for the networking bit, which is why I'm foggy on the details there. I originally wanted to code everything from the ground up, but got impatient at actually getting something to work in the beginning, and so decided to use twisted for handling people connecting to the server and such. Here's the site for more details on that: http://twistedmatrix.com. I don't know much about the details, unfortunately. I may go back sometime and write my own connection/server code, but for the time being, I'm okay with using this.

I'm hosting the server on my own Ubuntu (8.04) LAMP server here in my home. Unfortunately, this means the server's on a low-grade residential broadband connection, but it's not a very demanding server, and so far things have run smoothly. Power-outages and network outages cause problems, of course. This is a hobby project of mine, so I won't be paying a data center a hundred plus dollars per month to host my server. Anyone who gets disconnected due to network and power problems here at the source has my apologies in advance.

Character information is stored in a .char file that's written by the Python "pickle" function (http://docs.python.org/library/pickle.html) (http://docs.python.org/library/pickle.html%29). Same goes for bank account information, though bank accounts are in their own file separate from the character file.

I had a problem at first in that I had to reset the MUD server each time I made a change to any of the code. I eventually stumbled upon the "execfile" function, which, when called, executes whatever code is written in the specified file. So if you use the 'wave' verb, the engine reads the code contents of the "wave.vrb" file and executes them. This way I can change the code of any verb, definition and so on dynamically, without kicking everyone out and restarting the server. I've got it to the point that just about everything runs this way, so having to restart the server is very rare. I can even reload rooms, item templates and so forth without restarting the server. I was getting rather discouraged until I figured this part out.

I'm currently working on converting items so that their properties come from a template file rather than being hard-coded into each copy of the item. This way if I decide I need to, for example, change the DF of broadswords, the change will effect all broadswords already in existence, rather than making anyone who already owns an old copy of the broadsword have to give it to a GM or put it into a "misty chamber" or something to convert it to the new style.

For a while I was considering converting to SQL databases for characters, items, rooms and so on, but I decided against that for this project. It posed some additional coding problems, and I sort of like that I've got the game running without any extra database systems. It's working fine without them so far, so I don't see any reason to change things.

As to parsing technique, I don't know what "regex" and "string walking" mean. I'm new to the programming scene, so you'll have to forgive my naivete. I'll paste the code for my 'drop' command, which will hopefully shed some light on what you're asking about, as well as give you a glimpse of the general way I'm coding verbs.

Note: "obj" in the code below represent any text after the first word (which is the verb) of the entered command.



item = '?'
if self.character['roundtime'] > 0:
self.sendLine('Wait '+str(self.character['roundtime'])+' second(s).'+self.character['endtag'])
else:
for ritem in self.character['rhand']:
if obj in ritem['noun']:
item = ritem
ihand = self.character['rhand']
for litem in self.character['lhand']:
if item != '?':
pass
else:
if obj in litem['noun']:
item = litem
ihand = self.character['lhand']
if item == '?':
self.sendLine("Drop what?"+self.character['endtag'])
else:
fullitem = item['article']+' '+item['pread']+item['noun']+item['postad']
ihand.remove(item)
self.saveChar()
firstperson = 'You drop '+fullitem+'.'
thirdperson = self.character['name']+' drops '+fullitem+'.'
for client in loc['occupants']:
if client is self:
if 'hiding' in self.character['tags']:
loc['hcontents'].append(item)
self.sendLine(firstperson)
self.sendLine("You realize you've dropped the item while hiding, so people will have to search in order to find it."+self.character['endtag'])
item['tags'].append('hidden')
d100 = random.randint(1,100)
item['hiddencr'] = int(self.character['gskill Stealth']+d100)
else:
loc['contents'].append(item)
client.sendLine(firstperson+client.character['endtag'])
else:
if 'hiding' in self.character['tags'] or loc['lighting'] < -99:
pass
else:
client.sendLine(thirdperson+client.character['endtag'])


Yuck. I can't figure out how to make it retain the whitespace, so that might make things confusing.

Anyhow, hope I answered some of your questions. If you want, I can post some examples of character, item and room codes.

[Celephais]

As far as determining verbs go I'm assuming you have a function somewhere that handles all user input, and then reads up until the first space to determine which verb file to execute?

What I meant by regex vs string walking would be if you just took the command and ran it against a regular expression (this is essentially a script like language to determine if strings match a given critiera), for example if you had a regular expression of:
g(e(t)?)?|t(a(k(e)?)?)? (?<target>[.]+)

It would match "g, ge, get, t, ta, tak, take" as commands and store whatever came after in the target reference. I'm assuming right now if you only type tak you wouldn't fire off the take command unless you specifically made a tak.vrb file.

String walking is simply going character by character through a string and writing code for each step of the way, it's capable of being very fast, but certainly not robust (regex can be slow, but I doubt you're putting any strain on your server as it is).

That all seems very cool and architectually sound (I'm sure there are things you could improve but I don't see the point, you get what you've written and you're not having performance issues). I haven't gotten around to logging in yet but I'm looking forward to checking it out and would love to help you were I can (I don't really know python, but any concepts like regex or whatever I can help with).

[Farn]

When you type in a command, it tries to match up the first word of the command with a verb or its alias in a list of available verbs. This list is contained in the vlist.lst file, which contains the core verbs and aliases that can be used to activate the verbs. Here are a few examples:

First the code that activates the verbs:


for vlistitem in vlist:
if verbdone == 'no':
for alias in vlistitem['alias']:
if verbdone == 'no':
if verb == alias:
coreverb = vlistitem['coreverb']
execfile("verb/"+coreverb+".vrb")
verbdone = 'yes'


There are several lines that look like this in the vlist.lst file:

vlist.append({'coreverb':'accept','alias':['accept','accep','acce','acc'],})

So if you type any of the values in the 'alias' field, it'll look to the .vrb file named after the 'coreverb' value. In this case, it'll fire up 'accept.vrb' since 'accept' is the coreverb value.

vlist.append({'coreverb':'attack','alias':['attack','attac','atta','att','kill','kil'],})

The aliases are also handy for letting other commands fire up the same verb. You can use 'kill' to fire up the 'attack' verb, and I don't have to make two separate .vrb files for the different words ("attack" and "kill").

[Monsoon]

Can you post a rough map on the site?

[Farn]

Can you post a rough map on the site?

Surely. Good idea. I'll let you know when it's up.

[4a6c1]

Danke Farnenhausen

[Farn]

Map of the town:

http://i37.tinypic.com/21171g0.jpg

The area outside the gates doesn't currently have any critters or descriptions, but there's some farmable soil out there. Unfortunately, the required farming tools aren't available yet, but should be soon.

There are zombies and ghouls to fight in the mine. Bring a light. I'll let you (general you) explore that area yourself. I'll add some mineable walls to the mine sometime today or tomorrow.

Have fun. Sorry there isn't more content yet - I'm trying to balance room creation and content with coding the core systems.

Edit: Map's also on the site here: http://clok.game-host.org/world.php

[Farn]

I can't remember if you already mentioned this, Farn, but have you started working on the documentation for the game as of yet?

By the way - what kind of documentation were you looking for? Mechanics/gameplay information, world lore, or both?

[joehollywood]

I think general world lore would be of a lot of help

[4a6c1]

It must be super fun to create your own world. I'm suprised all coders dont have a GOD complex.

[Mabus]

It must be super fun to create your own world.
It is. But it is also a LOT of work.

I'm suprised all coders dont have a GOD complex.
Many do.

"Power-tripping Admin" is not an unheard charge on many games.

Some games even have specific staff named as the deities of the world, and often call themselves "immortals", "wizards", or "gods".

[Back]

fun. Sorry there isn't more content yet - I'm trying to balance room creation and content with coding the core systems.

Sounds good. Never built a game myself but it would seem to make sense to get all of your core mechanics done before you go building tons of rooms or areas.

Indeed, mapping the world should come after initial concepting. Like, who are the gods, what are the major cities, where do the various races come from and so on.

Mudconnetor.com has a forum that many coders use. Might check in there for advice.

[Fallen]

By the way - what kind of documentation were you looking for? Mechanics/gameplay information, world lore, or both?

World war. Geek that I am, I would want to jump in and start roleplaying immediately.

[joehollywood]

I can't wait till he finishes mining...then I can claim that an "amatuer" ...

literal definition, not an insult

...created and implemented an entire artisan skill in a week, when multiple "professionals" couldn't manage to get halfway in 2 years

I also think you should have a wandering NPC monk that has a sign around his neck that says...

"the year of our lord 2004"

[4a6c1]

I also think you should have a wandering NPC monk that has a sign around his neck that says...

"the year of our lord 2004"

:rofl:

[4a6c1]

Farn. Hi. I want a unicorn.

That is all.


go stab
[Shadgard Stables]
These are the smelly stables.
Obvious exits: out.

Another empty text stable. SAD FACE.

[Farn]

I'll work on putting some world lore on the site. Not everything is set in stone, but I've pretty much figured out my universe lore down to unbreakable laws of reality, deity-grade beings, their ideals and goals, the extent of their powers and their defining powers and limitations, how much they can influence the mortal races, where the mortal races come from and their general purpose in the universe. I've got a good bit on how magic works, what fuels it, different methods of magic and so on. I've got the histories of some of the races, though the site documentation will be at the level of myths and legends on that subject. Not revealing all solid truths to the players; that wouldn't leave room for fun speculation.

As far as the placement of cities, nations and so forth, I'm still in the brainstorming stages.

Anyway, I'm hoping the genre isn't too tired and boring, and has at least a hint of uniqueness to it. It's got some definite medieval fantasy in there, but it's a timeframe a bit further past the typical MUD, what with the clockwork and steam technology. There's also some ... hm, not sure how to describe it ... dark gothic genre, maybe? Things like demons, werewolves (Canim, in the case of my world, which are a bit different than your stereotypical werewolf) and so on. Lastly, it's a semi-post-apocalyptic setting, where ruins abound and it's up to the players to rediscover a lot of the lost magic and technology and create/invent their own advancements. I thought that'd be a lot of fun for players. They'll be the ones to discover (or re-discover) new technologies and spells.


Farn. Hi. I want a unicorn.

That is all.


go stab
[Shadgard Stables]
These are the smelly stables.
Obvious exits: out.

Another empty text stable. SAD FACE.



[Shadgard Stables]
These are the smelly stables.
You also notice a uni-horned horse.
Obvious exits: out.

wave horse
You wave at a uni-horned horse.


As far as mining - the mechanic already works. I just need to place some mineable walls in appropriate rooms outside my test areas. The problem is that there's nothing to do with the ore you can mine, aside from sell it. Gemstone's got the forging system one-upping me.

Monks:



att gu
You attack a goliath guardsman with a pair of closed fists!
AAR: 504 - TDR: 200 + d100(45) = 349
A hit for 12 damage!
You follow through with another strike!
AAR: 504 - TDR: 200 + d100(45) = 349
A hit for 12 damage!
You follow through with another strike!
AAR: 504 - TDR: 200 + d100(83) = 387
A hit for 14 damage!
You follow through with another strike!
AAR: 504 - TDR: 200 + d100(26) = 330
A hit for 12 damage!
You follow through with another strike!
AAR: 504 - TDR: 200 + d100(65) = 369
A hit for 13 damage!
Roundtime: 3 second(s).

ki blast gua
You gather your will and focus on conjuring a blast of ki energy at your target's location, your hands pulsating with pearlescent light.
Channeling time: 3 second(s).

A sudden burst of pearly white ki energy envelopes a goliath guardsman!
0 ki damage!


Apparently this is DragonballZ. Gather energy, blast foe, foe undamaged.

Also, the ki blast was a joke, and will not be learnable by players. I might keep it for myself to use on overzealous monk enthusiasts, though.

[joehollywood]

Just to verify that I understand the genre, would you compare it to the somewhat typical console RPG where sword and sorcery is the common form of attack, but there's always that character with a gun, or monkey wrench?

Sort of a chrono triggerish thing where you're fighting some long lost ancient dragon machine on a quest?

Or is that too much focus on the mechanical/technological side?

[Monsoon]

Please implement horses that know how to get to anywhere from anywhere. :D

[Farn]

Just to verify that I understand the genre, would you compare it to the somewhat typical console RPG where sword and sorcery is the common form of attack, but there's always that character with a gun, or monkey wrench?

Sort of a chrono triggerish thing where you're fighting some long lost ancient dragon machine on a quest?

Or is that too much focus on the mechanical/technological side?

Sort of. It's going to be mostly sword without sorcery or technology in the beginning, and rather primitive as well. The level of sorcery and technology are going to depend on how much interest and effort the players put into rediscovering and developing them, as they're both "lost arts." There will be tinkering and researching skills of some sort that players can use to check out discovered technological relics and use to reverse-engineer the technology. The magic will be discovered in the usual form of tomes and other ancient writings, as well as an occasional NPC here and there. Critter factions will come into play with this, most likely. I'm also open to the idea of player experimentation, where if a player gets creative enough with their ideas and understands the basics of magic well enough, they might convince me that they've come upon a way to cast a new spell. Sort of "flow magic," for those familiar with Gemstone's magic lore. I'll be sure to warn everyone that this, however, will be rare, and the majority of attempts will end with failure. Someone might end up with a knack, though - who knows?

I don't know about guns. I've never really liked mixing them in with a mostly-swords-and-magic world, for whatever reason. I've got it in my head that gunpowder still hasn't been discovered in this world, or has, but hasn't gotten to the point of widespread use and application. But the monkey wrench, sure, someone could use a tool like that as a weapon, though it'd likely be an Improvised weapon and not something that serious fighters would be wielding.

Things like quests with long-lost ancient dragon machines - yes. There's at least one area I've got planned that has clockwork golems running around technological ruins.

[Farn]

Please implement horses that know how to get to anywhere from anywhere. :D

Mounts are definitely something I've got planned. If anyone has any suggestions as to what the system should entail, please post ideas here. What effects should it have on combat? What restrictions should there be, and what should I try to find ways around? For instance - should I let mounts go into caves and underground? I don't have any experience with horses, but I have this idea in my head that they don't like going into dark or enclosed places.

What about when you need to leave your mount somewhere? Should you be able to tie it up just about anywhere (provided there's something to tie it up to)? Should other players be able to try and steal your horse if they find it out unwatched somewhere? If not, what mechanics should be in place to explain why someone can't just hop onto someone else's horse and ride off (granted with some difficulty, as the horse will likley not trust the stranger if the horse is a well-trained one).

I do plan on there being more types of mounts besides horses with different properties.

[Fallen]

Please don't mix in guns and too much machinery, it tends to water down fantasy.

[Monsoon]

Mounts save time in graphical games. Not sure how they'd save time in MUDs. In MUDs, the trick is knowing the movements more than doing it quickly.

A horse gives advantage in combat, but someone could kill your horse. Or sever your legs.

[Fallen]

Mounts are definitely something I've got planned. If anyone has any suggestions as to what the system should entail, please post ideas here. What effects should it have on combat? What restrictions should there be, and what should I try to find ways around? For instance - should I let mounts go into caves and underground? I don't have any experience with horses, but I have this idea in my head that they don't like going into dark or enclosed places.

What about when you need to leave your mount somewhere? Should you be able to tie it up just about anywhere (provided there's something to tie it up to)? Should other players be able to try and steal your horse if they find it out unwatched somewhere? If not, what mechanics should be in place to explain why someone can't just hop onto someone else's horse and ride off (granted with some difficulty, as the horse will likley not trust the stranger if the horse is a well-trained one).

I do plan on there being more types of mounts besides horses with different properties.

Mounts should effect aiming, if you have aiming systems in place. Daggers and very short weapons should not really be viable on horseback, or attacking others on horseback. Larger edged and blunt weapons should be limited to blows to the legs, horse, and perhaps abdomen of the mounted fighter, and the upper half of a person on foot, but perhaps with a penalty to aimed shots. Obviously, spear and polearm based weapons should be given a large advantage on horseback, and no disadvantage when engaging an enemy on horseback while on foot. Archery on horseback is an issue too.

As for horses and terrain, ideally, you would want multiple types of horses. You would want big, heavy warhorses for open fighting, which could possibly have their own attacks like kick and bite. You would want mules for going into areas of rough terrain, etc. Then you could even do magical mounts, but that is making things overly complicated at first.

There should definitely be an affinity system. The longer you are with a horse, the more it bonds to you, and will react violently to others attempting to steal it.

[Monsoon]

And sell butt-mounted poop bags.

[Celephais]

What's your death mechanic? Is that implemented?

[Farn]

Please don't mix in guns and too much machinery, it tends to water down fantasy.

I don't plan on guns, and the machinery that does exist will be mostly in the form of mysterious ruins. Some machinery may still be running in some places, but it'll be of the "Odd, I can't believe this stuff is still running" persuasion and will likely be partially-functioning or running with a certain quirkiness, adding an element of danger to overcome.

While players will be able to pick up some machinery skills, there won't be any mass production of machines or technological empires springing up. Most technological feats by players will be accomplished with the aid of magic, and will be quite primitive.



Mounts save time in graphical games. Not sure how they'd save time in MUDs. In MUDs, the trick is knowing the movements more than doing it quickly.

A horse gives advantage in combat, but someone could kill your horse. Or sever your legs.


I was thinking about having a certain number of areas you could have your mount know, so you could be lost out in the middle of nowhere and tell your mount to go back to a specific area, and they'd take you there (with a chance of failure, depending on the type of mount and its training).

Some ideas I had for different mount types:

Horses: Highest stamina, most intelligent. You can have the highest number of memorized areas with a horse, so they're great for traveling to several different places automatically. They also move somewhat fast (for mounts) and can go the longest without slowing down.

The Big Dog/Wolf: Mediocre intelligence, stamina and speed, but can perform their own attacks during combat. So every now and then if you attack something while riding, your mount will attack the target as well. You can also dismount during combat to have the mount attack your target more often. Possibly more willing to enter mount-unfriendly locations like caves, and can perform some climbs (you'll want to dismount first) that other mounts cannot.

The Big Flightless Bird: Fastest mount, average intelligence and stamina, seldom attacks during combat. Good for traveling shorter distances, when you want to get somewhere really fast.

I think there will also be some rare mount types out there, like a dragonesque beast, though not as large as a typical fantasy dragon, and no flight.

I'm not sure about the bird. It seems sort of silly, but eh. Just brainstorming.

[Farn]

What's your death mechanic? Is that implemented?

No death mechanic yet. It's going to be a more serious death mechanic, in that when you die the first time, you have to make a decision. Resurrection is a miraculous occurrence in this world, and when it does happen (which all players will have the opportunity of choosing upon their death, along with the option of perma-death and rerolling), there will be consequences.

For instance, one method is that you're brought back as a sort of pseudo-undead. You no longer have to eat, and you don't bleed, but you also don't heal normally and there are certain things you'll have to do to maintain your body's health, heal yourself when injured and so on. You'll also be clearly marked, so many NPCs will be suspicious and might not trust you.

I'm also entertaining the idea of something like, if a player learns enough about necromantic-type magic or finds a certain spell, and lives long enough to not have died once by that point, they could use magic to turn into a lich-type being.

Of course, there will be options for the "good guys" as well that don't want to walk the paths that smack of "evil," but I haven't worked those ones out yet.

[Monsoon]

Breakage? Droppage? Economy balancing?

DRAGON BONES

[Fallen]

>>I think there will also be some rare mount types out there, like a dragonesque beast, though not as large as a typical fantasy dragon, and no flight.>>

Wyverns or Wyrms.

[ElvenFury]

Griffons, giant lizards, emus, amazons and polar bears are a few mounts that I think would be cool

[Monsoon]

amazons
Snoo-snoo?

[Farn]

There should definitely be an affinity system. The longer you are with a horse, the more it bonds to you, and will react violently to others attempting to steal it.

I plan on this.


Breakage? Droppage? Economy balancing?

DRAGON BONES

Breakage - Probably. There may be a few rare artifacts that are unbreakable, but for the most part, weapons and armor will be stuff you buy off the shelf or have a player/NPC make for you anyway, and so can be replaced easily enough. Still, breakage to the point that an item can't be repaired isn't the only breakage that will occur. Often the item will break, but still be in a state in which you can bring it to a blacksmith to be repaired. Magical items will be harder to repair, so it's better to do consistent upkeep then letting things get to the point of breaking and then repairing them. Anyway, this is all still in the brainstorming stages, but I'm hoping it'll help with the game's economy.

Droppage - I'm assuming you mean on death. Probably not. It encourages PvP for the point of stealing everyone's stuff, and I don't want that. Also, it would stink to die due to simple bad luck or a network hiccup and lose all your stuff.

Economy balancing - I can only hope. I've got an economics major friend (who played Gemstone for years as well, so she gets the environment) who is willing to help me out here. I'm also open to suggestions from everyone here.

Dragon bones - There will be dice you can get. Does that cover it?

[Monsoon]

No! I want the chance to win millions!

[Fallen]

>>>Economy balancing - I can only hope. I've got an economics major friend (who played Gemstone for years as well, so she gets the environment) who is willing to help me out here. I'm also open to suggestions from everyone here.>>>

You need automated silver sinks that are implimented from the start. Them not being ridiculously tedious would be nice as well. You also have to basically put a stop to any serious farming. You can't let people strip mine an area for treasure, then wonder why the market is flooded with (insert currency here).

Soulbound items are *a* fix for the economy, but they also tend to rip the guts out of any sort of relic system. Everyone just upgrades to the newest thingie once it is out, and the old thingies are useless. See WoW.

[Farn]

>>I think there will also be some rare mount types out there, like a dragonesque beast, though not as large as a typical fantasy dragon, and no flight.>>

Wyverns or Wyrms.

Aren't wyverns typically portrayed as winged? I might use 'wyrm.'

[Monsoon]

Can banks offer interest?

[Fallen]

Aren't wyverns typically portrayed as winged? I might use 'wyrm.'

Yes, though they are usually the "stupid" or animalistic version of dragons. Perhaps as a cap-stone mount they could be used with limited flying abilities, or at the least, you just hover above the ground, and have buffet like attacks. Think War Griffins.

Hell, just use Griffins.

[ElvenFury]

The Drizzt books had giant lizards that could see in the dark and crawl on cave ceilings, if you need an idea for a subterranean mount.

[Farn]

One idea I'm playing with is that, considering the town's in a bad way right now as it is, the town won't be buying a lot of things from the players, or if it does, town NPCs will pay really low prices for things. So the players will be encouraged to sort of set up their own economy. Instead of selling all that ore you mine to the town NPC, you'll be trading it to blacksmith players ("you turn some of it into a sword for me, and keep the rest of the ore for yourself") or turning it into gear yourself. Blacksmith says to the farmer, "Hey, I'll repair and reinforce your farming gear if you give me some of your harvest so I can eat."

I don't know. It might not work, and it of course requires players to be taking up the different trades. This is why I'm asking for help.

[Fallen]

The Drizzt books had giant lizards that could see in the dark and crawl on cave ceilings, if you need an idea for a subterranean mount.

Yeah, Drow mounts, basically. They were implimented in GS to an extent with the Rhoska-Tor area at the Wavedancer. We (Tower peeps) drew up a bit of documentation on lizard mounts, but I have no idea if it will ever see the light of day. It would be great to see them in some form or another in a game that will actually code mounts, though.

[Farn]

Can banks offer interest?

The bank will likely require a fee on each transaction for their service of safeguarding your money for you. Only one bank - no competition. They can do that.

[Fallen]

Ooh. What about private ownership of homes? It would be GREAT to see a system like that started right from the beginning, where you could choose to store valuable items and what not, but at the risk of burglary. You could make homes as complicated as you want, but they should definitely be considered.

[pabstblueribbon]

One idea I'm playing with is that, considering the town's in a bad way right now as it is, the town won't be buying a lot of things from the players, or if it does, town NPCs will pay really low prices for things. So the players will be encouraged to sort of set up their own economy. Instead of selling all that ore you mine to the town NPC, you'll be trading it to blacksmith players ("you turn some of it into a sword for me, and keep the rest of the ore for yourself") or turning it into gear yourself. Blacksmith says to the farmer, "Hey, I'll repair and reinforce your farming gear if you give me some of your harvest so I can eat."

I don't know. It might not work, and it of course requires players to be taking up the different trades. This is why I'm asking for help.

A game I played a long long long time ago had a purely player run economy. Owning certain 'rooms' allowed you to build industries which would do various things from just producing ore to refining it over time. I dont think this is the best way to go, but it was a very interesting game and the competition for land and the roleplay it ENCOURAGED was absolutely awesome. Trade agreements for certain commodities, embargoes, all that. Each city had several fixed positions IE minister of state and of course the Emperor. There was a list of powers within the city that could be granted or removed to make each position tailored for what you needed that position to do.

Skills and controlling a section of land ala Risk to allow for commodity production would be the best choice imo, course its now an RTS and an RPG at the same time, and some arent interested in that.

Eh. Rambling.

Anyways, every single item broke down into a large commodity list. From its beginning commodity to the combination of refined commodities plus perhaps other commodities to make an item or a whole new commodity. You could find items out in the game world but they weren't as good as player made stuff.

Anyways, with this commodity system each town had a 'tradesman' that you could sell or trade commodities with. The minister of state had to set it though. Commodity, number buying, number selling, how much coin to buy, how much coin to sell. The shops were player owned but it got kind of tricky and I thought they could have been done better (ie stages for your government when you reach certain metrics to upgrade the storage or protection against thieves stall > market place > bazaar).

[Farn]

Ooh. What about private ownership of homes? It would be GREAT to see a system like that started right from the beginning, where you could choose to store valuable items and what not, but at the risk of burglary. You could make homes as complicated as you want, but they should definitely be considered.

Good idea. I'll likely have some kid of monthly fee, or perhaps have an unused house have its contents pawned off and the structure leveled if it's unused for too long and contact can't be made with the owner. I don't want a bunch of unused homes popping up all over the place and cluttering up the town.

But yeah, homes that can be used as storage. That'll work. I'll just make homes janitor-proof. They'll probably start off as storage only, and I'll get around to custom decor, extra rooms and amenities later.

Now - housing districts separate from everything else in town, or not? Hmm. I think I may just dedicate existing areas of the town as housing districts. Then perhaps add a toggle option, something like DisplayHomes, so you can turn it off if you want and not see "You also notice a house, a home, a cabin, a shack, a shanty, a mansion, a tower, a hovel" in rooms. I think that should work pretty well. Thoughts?

[ElvenFury]

You could have it simplified, so "You also notice some homes", and then you have to look at the homes to get the complete list.

[pabstblueribbon]

Oh, I forgot to add that a cosignment like shop that was open to the public and allowed you to list a good at a certain price or item would really help trade between players.

[Monsoon]

Dibs on a spiderpig!

[Farn]

You could have it simplified, so "You also notice some homes", and then you have to look at the homes to get the complete list.

Aha, there you go.


Oh, I forgot to add that a cosignment like shop that was open to the public and allowed you to list a good at a certain price or item would really help trade between players.

Sounds like a good concept. I'll probably set it up so there's a way to do it in-game as well as a searchable format on the site.

[pabstblueribbon]

Good idea. I'll likely have some kid of monthly fee, or perhaps have an unused house have its contents pawned off and the structure leveled if it's unused for too long and contact can't be made with the owner. I don't want a bunch of unused homes popping up all over the place and cluttering up the town.

Simulate real life with upkeep. Instead of a fee, IE money based, make it more player economy friendly with having to repair them with skills IF you have the right commodity there with you. It of course COULD turn into money based if you lacked the commodity, skill, or time to do the repair.

Randomize the different things that can go wrong with a house, roof needing fixed (thatch or whatever), bricks crumbling, which sets off a chain of events that will result in the thing being condemned and leveled.

Every so often have a behind the scenes mechanic that goes around and applies one of these instances to housing.

I like sandbox style games that say okay, here are the parameters, now its up to the players to drive it.

[Farn]

By the way, when I mentioned a monthly fee for in-game housing, I meant an in-game fee, not something the player would pay to me. I don't ever plan on charging players any real money for anything.

[4a6c1]

l
[Shadgard Stables]
These are the smelly stables.
You also notice a uni-horned horse.
Obvious exits: out.

mount horse
Invalid command.

take horse
You pick up a uni-horned horse.

l
[Shadgard Stables]
These are the smelly stables.
Obvious exits: out.

flex
Invalid command.

glance
Invalid command.

inve
You are holding a uni-horned horse in your right hand.
You are wearing a ash gray leather satchel, a short-sleeved black linen blouse with bone buttons, some black oilcloth trousers, a pair of point-toed ash gray doeskin boots.

hug horse
Invalid command.

l

jump
Invalid command.

'I found a unicorn!
You exclaim, "I found a unicorn!"

'And I am super strong!
You exclaim, "And I am super strong!"


Disclaimer: I r halping expariment codingz

[Celephais]

In addition to the upkeep, taxes wouldn't seem unreasonable on property.

[Fallen]

By the way, when I mentioned a monthly fee for in-game housing, I meant an in-game fee, not something the player would pay to me. I don't ever plan on charging players any real money for anything.

Nothing wrong with having a pay pal donation link if you ever do put up a web page for the game.

[Farn]

Thanks for pointing that out, Jihnas. I fixed the 'get' verb to not effect critters.

Also, you can use the 'hands' command to see what's in your hands, like the Gemstone 'glance' command.

[4a6c1]

No prob. Cool game. Tons of potential.

[Latrinsorm]

Horse + hands + Jihna = Rated: M

[4a6c1]

Der.. What else is Unicorns for???

[pabstblueribbon]

Thanks for pointing that out, Jihnas. I fixed the 'get' verb to not effect critters.

I wonder why you wouldnt implement a weight system to keep you from picking up objects that you cant possibly carry?

I mean you might want to have pets you can pick up and whatnot and it would transcend across all items if you gave them a weight value.

[Farn]

I haven't gotten around to implementing weight restrictions. Critters are now ungettable by default. If I get around to putting in pets that one might want to pick up and cuddle, I can easily add a tag to their code that will allow them to be gettable.

[joehollywood]

is it supposed to be dark in the stables now?

[Farn]

Nope. Fixed now. I wonder if I broke something while 'fixing' some of the lighting issues with light-giving items and movement. Let me know if it happens again.

[Farn]

Something I'd appreciate opinions on:

Should certain town shops, buildings and so forth close at certain times? For instance, places like the bakery and blacksmith shop would close during the late/wee hours, but the bank and pawnshop would be open 24 hours. I plan on shifting up the NPCs attending the shops, at least - they need to sleep sometime. Would having some shops close entirely during certain hours be a welcome dose of realism, or would it be too counterbalanced by inconvenience? The high-importance buildings would always be open (like the bank and pawnshop mentioned above).

Also: I hate when I pick a name that I think is unique, only to find it's been used in some popular or semi-popular work somewhere already. I was thinking of using the name 'Graymist Castle' for one of my locations. The top several Google items for a search on Greymist and Graymist don't show anything besides being the name of a WoW murloc tribe, so that doesn't bother me too much. Anyone know if it's been used in some obscure literature somewhere? It somehow sounds familiar to me.

[Monsoon]

Or have their idiot son/daughter run it during the night? Heh.

[Farn]

Hah. If I were the owner of a shop, I wouldn't put an idiot in charge of taking care of business while I slept.

[Monsoon]

Okay. Instead of stupid, ugly?

[Fallen]

I would set it up as a bias system. Certain shops are open during the day, offering certain goods and price breaks for certain races. During the evening, other shops open with other goods and biases.


Graymist is the name of an area on Teras.

[Farn]

Not a bad idea. I could use the night-loving/shadier races as the late-evening/early-morning shopkeepers.

Except I'm going to add "Dark Elf" as the sixth race, and make them hated by every NPC everywhere. By some strange coincidence or divine conspiracy, there will be no shopkeepers among them to give their fellows a break.

[Fallen]

Excellent.

[Farn]

Recent work:

When an item is dropped, it will be safe from the janitor for at least 60 seconds.

If you enter a combat command (attack, press, etc.) without specifying a target, the game will automatically target a hostile critter in the area for you if one is present.

Critter actions are now restricted by darkness when appropriate. Certain critters may have specific actions they can perform even in darkness, and some critters may be completely unhindered by darkness.

In addition to existing effects, a successful 'press' attack now also prevents the target from leaving the area for the duration (roundtime) of the attack.

Trash containers don't mysteriously empty themselves:



l in barr
In the barrel you see some various bits of garbage, a wooden torch.

A canim pulls a cart into the Commons, setting it down near a wooden trash barrel. He picks the barrel up with a grunt, empties the contents into his cart, places the barrel back on the ground and hauls his cart away.

l in barr
In the barrel you see some various bits of garbage.

A new Cryomancy spell that temporarily increases the DF of the target weapon:



hands
You are holding a short sword in your right hand.

cryomancy edge sword
You gather your will and focus on conjuring a coating of ice, your hands glowing with a pale blue light.
Your short sword is covered with a layer of razor-sharp ice.

hands
You are holding a ice-covered short sword in your right hand.

Note it changes the look of the item as well. Neato. Yeah, I realize it says 'a' instead of 'an.' I'll worry about that later. Messaging when it's out of charges:



attack
You attack a shambling zombie with a short sword!
AAR: 6 - TDR: -50 + d100(66) = 122
A hit for 17 damage!
The coating of ice around your short sword shatters.
Roundtime: 4 second(s).

And lastly, just because I can, there's a "players currently online" counter at the top of the website at all times.

I've been having fun.

[joehollywood]

Yeah, you've been having fun...till that stoopid dragon destroyed everything...

Oh and where are the giant fluffy bunnies for us to slaughter?

What kind of text RPG is this?!

[Farn]

I've been working a lot on critter AI today. I've set up different templates for different critter types. For instance:

Common Humanoid AI: Effected by room lighting. Wanders around in its designated areas. If any hostiles are in the room, it will keep attacking until it's at 25% or lower health, at which point there's a chance it'll try to leave the room, even if hostiles are still present.

Humanoid Guard AI: Effected by room lighting. Never leaves the room it's in, and attacks any hostiles present.

Common Construct/Undead AI: Uneffected by room lighting. Wanders around its designated areas. If any hostiles are in the room, it will keep attacking until all hostiles are dead or it is destroyed.

This makes creating critters much less of a chore. Just give them a common template and, when necessary, add in a few custom moves (like the ghoul stare that immobilizes).

I've also worked more on factions. Critters that are hostile to all will not attack their fellows of the same core faction anymore (so zombies will stop trying to kill each other).

Outside the gates are Shadgard hunters and animated scarecrows. All players start out neutral with the Shadgard faction, so the hunters won't attack players unless the player manages to mess up his or her faction with Shadgard (not currently possible, but will be soon). You can go out and hunt the scarecrows (whom are hostile to all) and occasionally a hunter might pop by and help you battle them. I had fun sitting back and watching the two teams fight, personally. It's kind of creepy at the same time. There will always be more scarecrows than hunters in the area, so you won't have to worry about the hunters "hogging" all the scarecrows.

Anyhow. I'm pretty excited at how well it's all working out.

[Farn]

I've re-worked the basic combat equation. AAR and TDR are now both die rolls along with an added d100 on each side (so defense is now a roll instead of a flat number). An attack result over 0 results in a hit.

So if your general combat plus wielded weapon type combat skills add up to 15, your AAR/TDR would be d15 + d100. This makes it so that no matter how much skill someone has compared to their opponent, there's never a point where someone is so good that they always dodge and always hit, or so bad that they'll never dodge or hit. Keeps things a bit more interesting and realistic, in my opinion.

This means critters will actually have a chance of hitting player characters now, though there still aren't any death or healing mechanics yet. For now, players can use the 'healme' command to restore their health back to full (to prevent the "so-and-so has been defeated" messaging from always coming up).

I don't think I'm going to put in stances, but I may put in some more custom moves to allow increased defense and something similar to the "stance-dancing" technique. For instance, a 'parry' move where your TDR goes up 50% (pulled that figure out of thin air) for the roundtime duration.

I'm also planning on something similar to Gemstone's force-on-force, where the more recent attacks you've endured, the lower your defenses go.

[Fallen]

I will be popping into this MUD come November, Farn. Did you get that Dark Elf race coded?


Except I'm going to add "Dark Elf" as the sixth race, and make them hated by every NPC everywhere. By some strange coincidence or divine conspiracy, there will be no shopkeepers among them to give their fellows a break.

[Celephais]

Adding a d100 to both AAR and TDR is a bit redunant. From a math/statistic prespective.

You've essentially implemented a weighted roll, which is something I think is very good, but you've still created hard caps where someone can always be out of reach. d100 - d100 still creates a -99 to 99 range or the equivelent of making it 100+ to hit and then rolling a middle weighted d199.

GS implements an "Open" roll system for some mechanics, which is akin to what you're trying to do, but the way they do it (as far as I know) is allow for continued rolling if the value falls in a certain range. Here's an example mechanic.

AAR - TDR + d100(Open) = Result

Say the roll is 6-95 then you just let it stand.
If the roll is 1-5 it's a critical miss, roll again and subtract the value.
If the roll is 96-100 it's a critical hit, roll again and add the value.

On critical rolls, if the value is 96-100, roll again and continue subtracting/adding the value.

This is a simple way to increase the die range infinitely and keep it weighted to the center, no one is truely ever safe (If you need a 200+ roll to hit someone, you've got a 1 in 400ish chance).

AAR 10 - TDR 150 + d100(Open) 97 + 96 + 72 = 125
The measly rat catches you unprepared and naws on your ankle!

AAR 200 - TDR 30 + d100(Open) 2 - 98 = 74
Distracted by some errant thought your swing goes wild!

[Farn]

Adding a d100 to both AAR and TDR is a bit redunant. From a math/statistic prespective.

You've essentially implemented a weighted roll, which is something I think is very good, but you've still created hard caps where someone can always be out of reach. d100 - d100 still creates a -99 to 99 range or the equivelent of making it 100+ to hit and then rolling a middle weighted d199.


I thought I had it set so that there wouldn't be any chances of impossibility.

We've got Mister Pacifist, with 0 combat skill. He rolls d0 + d100. Then we have Mister Warrior, who has a total 1000 combat skill. Mister Warrior rolls d1000 + d100.

Mister Pacifist says warriors are dumb oafs by definition. This angers Mister Warrior, who swings his axe at Mister Pacifist.

We'll calculate Mister Warrior's AAR first. First we'll see his d1000. Let's say he's not lucky this time, and rolls a two. Then we add in his d100. His streak of bad fortune continues, and he rolls a twelve. His total is thusly 2 + 12, which equals 14.

Now let's calculate Mister Pacifist's TDR. He rolls a d0, so that's ... 0. Okay, now we roll his d100. Hey, he got a seventy-three. So, his total is 0 + 73 which equals 73.

Now we'll plug the numbers into the equation, for Warrior attacking Pacifist.

AAR: 14 vs TDR: 73 = -59

So it looks like Mister Warrior, despite having a ludicrous total combat skill amount of 1000, still managed to be evaded by Mister Pacifist who has absolutely no combat skill at all, and runs off during Mister Warrior's roundtime and lives to see another day.

The added d100s are to keep things interesting while combatants are still in the lower skill levels. For instance, two combatants with 0 combat skill would be guaranteed a miss on each attack, which would be silly. Two combatants with low total combat skill levels, such as 5 vs 7, would end up with very low single-digit results each time and result in very little damage, which would make things very tedious.