[MUD-Dev] Introductions and

[Richard Woolcock]

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...)

Actually I do have it so that women get their husbands surname if they get
married - and get their old name back if they get divorced.  I should really
make this optional I suppose, but thats a tweak I can add later.  There are
so many little things I need to add, I don't want to be swamped down with 
them until I have the important stuff coded.

> >> 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! :)

Apart from people giving silly descriptions, I also want it to be very
difficult to tell the difference between a mob and a player - automatically
generated descriptions help this a lot!  I can see the advantage of letting
players create their own descriptions though, but at the moment very few of
my players bother writing anything at all.  One advantage is that if you
look at someone and see they have glowing red eyes, you KNOW its more than
just a made-up description that someone wrote for show...

> 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.
>
> Thoughts on this?

Well I have 111 male names, 152 female names and 955 surnames at the moment.
I will increase these numbers, but there is still the chance of duplicate
names.  Note also that you don't necessarily know people by their full name
either - they might be Fred, Mr Smith, or Fred Smith.  Other than that, you
would have to look at them for more information.  I am relying on the fact
that such occurrences will be rare.

These names are seperate from your 'OOC' (login) name, thus it doesn't matter 
if you want to send your friend an (OOC) tell.

KaVir.