[MUD-Dev] Re: Issues from the digests and Wout's list

[clawrenc at cup.hp.com]

In <33833BFF.C3BDD685 at darklock.com>, on 05/22/97 
   at 08:29 AM, Caliban Tiresias Darklock <caliban at darklock.com> said:

>Miroslav Silovic wrote:

>...while it is true that the occasional
>dork will walk around with an object called the 'Gleaming Sceptre of
>Instant Death', it's logical to assume that people like this would --
>in the game world -- be able to acquire things that *look* like
>powerful magic items but are in fact only fancy props. The major
>problem is the abuse of OOC information; for example, when someone
>walks up to me carrying the 'Gleaming Sceptre of Instant Death', I
>can acquire quite easily the object number, owner, and flags of the
>object. Through this, I can determine quite readily that it is just a
>fake; but it is up to me as a player to act as though my character
>has no clue it isn't really magical. 

My take on this is that as an equivalent magic-user/demi-god/whatever
(ie programmer) youinherently have understanding and awareness of if
not access to the base building blocks of reality.  As such, should
you just listen to your senses (ie get object ID, owner, flags etc)
its immediately apparent that the thing is a fake, but should your
ignore your sensibilities (quite common IRL), well, you won't.

>This involves trust, something
>which is given freely in the MUSH world, but almost never assumed on
>a MUD.

*chortle*

Heck, I don't trust the physical universe to behave consistently.  You
expect me to trust other's manipulation of a virtual model of a fake
reality to be consistent?  Nahh.  Anarchy is so much more...lucious.

>I've seen MUSHes (and I dislike this greatly) where commands that
>fail completely do so silently, with no message or other feedback.

Blech.  I prefer the Unix trait: on success shut up, or error report
what broke.

>Would this be preferable to you? I for one don't like it, but it has
>valid concerns behind it.

What are their concerns?  That users would use the presence or content
of error messages to empirically derive data about the world which
they should not otherwise have?

--
J C Lawrence                           Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                           Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------------(*)               Internet: clawrenc at cup.hp.com
...Honorary Member Clan McFUD -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...