[MUD-Dev] FAQ: Personality Clash

[JC Lawrence]

On Mon, 22 Dec 1997 08:17:52 PST8PDT 
Ling <K.L.Lo-94 at student.lboro.ac.uk> wrote:

...deletia...

> JC Lawrence

> Occupation: Contract programmer.  
...etc...

Preferred:

--<cut>--

J C Lawrence

Notes:

  MUD-Dev list owner.

  All postings as list owner are identified as such.

Occupation: 

  Contract programmer for 15+ years, ex-school teacher, printer,
  sailor, fisherman and other sundries, small time SF&F, writer,
  dinosaur, philosopher.  Self taught.

Addresses: 

  claw at null.net (work)
  coder at ibm.net (home)
  Please use these in preference to all other addresses.

Personal details:
  
  Started MUDding in '84 on Shades, SX MUD (MUD1/MUD2), and still
  heavily influenced by same.  Was a part of the IOWA project with
  Pip Caudrey.  Been working on a MUD server on and off since '85.
  Major inspirations in chronological order: Shades, MUD2,
  Transputers, Marcus Ranum, Uber, Unter, LP, Aber, Tiny*, Northern
  Lights, MOO, Stephen White, LambdaMOO, a large bunch of IBM's OS/2
  developers, Cool, Interlude (neat!), Dave Engberg, C++, Cold, Mike
  Cowlishaw, Legend, ColdX, Greg Hudson, MUQ, BeOS, Inferno, Limbo.
  Self-educated in pure math, english literature and religious
  philosophy.

Server: 

  Unnamed, but last referred to as "Murkle".  There are several
  increasingly sarcastic acronymic expansions of "murkle" that are
  left up to the reader to discover.

Server features:

  Written in C++.  Compleatly persistent world achieved by
  transactional persistant store.  Event driven heavily
  multi-threaded lockless server design.  OO internal programming
  language ala Python/C.  Server has no prior knowledge of the game
  mechanics it is hosting.  DB (persistant store) is disk based and
  contains a full rollback feature for crash recovery, bug hunting
  and logging.  Same rollbacks allow for limited time travel by
  users.  Free user programming allowed.  No logical difference
  between mobiles, NPCs, and players.  Players may control multiple
  bodies simultaneously.  Swarm-type bodies as possible.  Players are
  heavily abstracted from their characters, which are heavily
  abstracted from their character bodies.  Players connect to
  accounts, from which they select characters to play, which in turn
  control bodies.  Thous shalt not repop, and thou shalt not reset.
  No global namespace in game, players and characters all have
  individual private namespaces.  

Game features:

  Particle based energy-centric resource economy drives and limits
  the game world.  Magic is merely a side-effect of the particle
  economy.  Permadeath.  Free PK.  Extremely high magic world.  No
  particular interest in RP.  GoP-centric.  Players and mobiles may
  freely steal bodies from each other.  The goal is to re-attain
  godhood.  Resolution of control from body toward player is
  generally not possible.  Violently fluid programmable combat where
  very minor items and affects can be devastating.  Skill webs.  No
  real levels.  A human should never have to wait for a machine --
  there is no waiting.  Heavy use of unstable positive feedback loops
  for populations and NPC behaviours.  

Scenarios:

  Bubba and the Crystalline Tree

  The Great God GooGoo and his holy relics

  Castle Krack, the Elven Forest, and the Sceptre

  UggUgg's mana fight

  Orc breeder/fighter/nobles

  Mobile population migrations

  A farcical justice system

  Trash collectors (TC's)

  Bubba digging the Panama Canal

  ...many others...

Signature: 

  J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
  ----------(*)                              Internet: coder at ibm.net
  ...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...

--<cut>--

Aside: The wand is always in the signature, and has always been since
'85 when I copied/stole it from one of the MirrorWorld developers (?)
who used "-------*" in his signature once he wizzed on Shades.


--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
                                           Internet: coder at ibm.net
----------(*)                        Internet: jc.lawrence at sun.com
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...