[MUD-Dev] The 'Socialiser' problem

[Nathan Yospe]

On Sun, 10 Aug 1997, Greg Munt wrote:

:On Sat, 9 Aug 1997, Nathan Yospe wrote:

:> On Sat, 9 Aug 1997, Greg Munt wrote:

:> :Seperating the game into two is a possibility. However, this falls into 
:> :the 'two muds in one' trap. In some aspects, it can appear rather 
:> :contrived, and only existing as a means of attracting pure Socialisers.

:> I suppose so. I never really thought of that as a bad thing... I have
:> competitive chess and bridge, two competitive tetris style games, and
:> various other online competitions worked into the shell, along with at
:> least one (so far) mud and the chatrooms. The shell also accesses admin
:> accounts, which are _not_ player accounts plus stuff... there are three
:> kinds of admin account... the coder account is a protected access to the
:> unix shell with its own source control system... the builder (admin level)
:> account gives access to the game building facilities on several levels,
:> ranging from the golem (essentially, build as character that points and
:> redescribes objects) to the softcode source level editor...

:Hmm. This is interesting. You seem to be developing some kind of virtual 
:OS, rather than a simple mud. Do you see the possibility of providing 
:more than one mud through this system as feasible? I think that the 
:competitive games do add something special to this. I guess I was 
:thinking purely of conventional OOC features from a stock TinyMUSH, 
:rather than something that is a fully-featured part of the software (I'm 
:reluctant to call it a 'game'). Do you see this sort of functionality as 
:becoming more popular? (I know that Neil Robertson is/was working on 
:something similar...)

Its not an OS, its just that the shell is... well, maybe "OS" is a good
way of describing it. The shell process is seperate, and can link an
account to any of several active game processes (and negotiate protocols
for them, and handle communication between them...) and, yes, multiple
muds are feasable. And, as I have decided that Reese is quite right about
telnet needing replacement, I quite think this sort of thing could become
popular... especially as I will be releasing the shell software as a
seperate piece from Physmud++, and it will have the advantage of being
quite easy to link to... Who is Neil Robertson?

:> Pages can (of course) be blocked, and do not communicate any information,
:> save that "(shell acount name) has paged you". There is no way to ID the
:> in game id of whoever you have paged, as you are paging the shell acount.
:> Its minimum disruptions... sort of like a "call me when you can" message
:> when at work.

:Sorry. I am used to the TinyMUD definition of 'page'. You don't know how much 
:it hurt, having to say that :)

*merciless laugh*

"You? We can't take you," said the Dean, glaring at the Librarian.
"You don't know a thing about guerilla warfare." - Reaper Man,
Nathan F. Yospe  Registered Looney                   by Terry Pratchett
yospe at hawaii.edu   http://www2.hawaii.edu/~yospe           Meow