[MUD-Dev] Introductions and

[Matt Chatterley]

On Tue, 18 Nov 1997, Mike Sellers wrote:

> At 10:05 AM 11/18/97 PST8PDT, Matt Chatterley wrote:
> >> Hi there, thought you might be interested to know that I had a go at the
> >> player recognition system I was talking about before I lost access.
> >
> >Oo..
> > 
> >> Description is currently determined by gender and age - so you might be
> >> 'a handsome elderly gentleman' or a 'pretty young teenage girl', etc.
> >> However, to get around the problem of 'silly names', each player gets a
> >> random first and surname when they connect (over 100 first names for
> >> each gender and almost 1000 surnames means duplicates are unlikely).
> >
> >Now this, is a VERY interesting twist! Does the player get to choose a
> >'connection' or 'account' name to log in under, and then have the 'game
> >name' assigned, or is the 'game name' synonymous(sp?) with the 'account'
> >name?
> 
> This *is* interesting.  Given that we randomly generate character stats all
> the time in games, I'm surprised randomly generating names isn't more
> prevalent.  After all, how many of us got to choose our names? :)  (And I
> suppose for a fee, you could go to city hall or whatever and register to
> change your name if you wanted...)

Heh! Fascinating perspective - and you're quite right too. We have some
choice in our name, as we can simply lie about it, ditto in the game. I
really do like this. Richard was at one time toying with 'parentage' of
some form - are you still thinking of this, and would you pass family
names down? 
 
> >> Players descriptions are also determined automatically, although players
> >> can chose their eye/hair colour when they create their character, and 
> >> these basically sum-up the appearance.  Character descriptions are still
> >> a long way from completion though.
> >> 
> >> I'd be interested to hear any of your player-recognition ideas - 
> >> particularly on how you intend to generate descriptions.
> >
> >This is another interesting area actually, and the first point I'd keep in
> >mind, is that if you are aiming at a very rp-centric game, fully automated
> >descriptions are probably a bad idea (note: for the benefit of anyone in
> >the audience, rp-centric mainly refers to Tiny-derivs, but could
> >technically be anything. Most tiny-derivs have player-written descs, but I
> >know at least one which does not).
> 
> Perhaps you could let people write their own descs as a function of their
> level/rank/score in the game?  Or, perhaps better for RPing, keep the desc
> automatic, but include a bit more spice if the character is powerful in the
> game, where this 'spice' accentuates the character's most powerful
> attributes.  Frankly, if I never see another desc along the lines of
> "flaming red hair and lips to match, ice blue eyes that at once chill your
> soul and inflame your desire..." (ugh) that'll be fine with me! :)  

Heh. This reminds me of what you might consider the 'cardinal rules' of
descing, in all aspects (descing objects, rooms, and players). Personally
I find the biggest rule is:

Do not tell a player what their character is feeling, doing, or
thinking, unless you are *absolutely sure* they they will be
feeling/doing/thinking this.
 
A good example is making a statement like '.. and you find her very
attractive.'. The character who is looking at said attractive female thing
of undescribed qualities and nature may be a gay man, or a straight woman
(although this *does not* mean they can't find a woman attractive!), but
may also be a member of another race who finds her race repulsive and so
on. Such statements must either change dynamically to suit the situation,
or not be put in at all.

> While we're talking about names, how do you propose to deal with
> name-collision?  I've never really liked the fact that all names in typical
> MUDs must be unique.  It seems like you could easily allow for multiple
> name instances by keying off the combo of character name and player name
> internally.  The only problem comes up in areas where, for example, I want
> to talk to "Joe" or send game-mail to "Joe."  If there are a dozen Joes out
> there, how do I know which one I want?  Even in the scheme described above,
> you could have several "Joe Doe" characters.  I suppose you could list
> further, publicly known information for each, such as occupation, general
> area where they live ("Joe Doe of Tos, who is a merchant"), or in a
> graphical environment, a picture of them -- anything to help other players
> differentiate their Joe from all other Joes.

Hmm. Interesting. I suspect I'd answer this thusly:

Out of character communiques must go c/o the account name, which solves a
huge problem.

In character communiques might function using addresses, telephone numbers
and such, since Richard is in a fairly modern environment (aren't you?).
It is actually something I like the sound of - you can't just send someone
mail and label it 'ic', because you need to actually know all their
details.

Regards,
	-Matt Chatterley
	http://user.itl.net/~neddy/index.html
"I shall never believe that God plays dice with the world." -Einstein