[MUD-Dev] Usability and interface and who the hell is supposed to be playing, anyway? (Was: PK Again)

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On Wednesday, September 24, 1997 4:29 AM, clawrenc at cup.hp.com 
[SMTP:clawrenc at cup.hp.com] wrote:
>
> Reese reports that being a fisherman, and thus spending ones play time
> sittting about fishing and telling stories is popular with a certain
> set of players.  One could easily imagine a similar scenario for
> musicians sitting about strumming and swapping songs.

Note that you would not actually need a fishing skill or musical instrument 
skill for either of the above. I agree, musicians are a nice thing, they 
contribute vastly to the enjoyment of the world; but why do we actually 
need game mechanics to handle it?

> >> All of us are PROGRAMMERS.
>
> Most of the active list participants are programmers, of which Marian
> (nod) is the most obvious non-programmer.  She's not alone.

She's very programmer-like in her approach to things, however, and I would 
hazard a guess that if she decided she *wanted* to be a programmer it 
wouldn't be too difficult. Part of this is just a basic logical intellect 
and problem-solving ability, as well as the associated knack for seeing the 
way things should probably work. I wouldn't say she's *obviously* a 
non-programmer. ;)

> I've been thinking about this over the w/e.  For me the answer is
> simple:  I agree, it is important, but no, I don't have diddley squat
> to say about it.  I agree that current MUD interfaces suck great big
> hairy warts. I agree that they can be much improved.  I have nothing
> particularly to add there.  Not my main area of interest.  I'm content
> to stand to the side saying, "Yup, over there is a problem!  Anybody
> wanna do this other interesting thing?"

I'm very concerned with such issues, myself, because I tend to do a lot of 
things at once. When I first log onto a new game, I usually have at least 
two other worlds open, as well as a program I'm working on, some graphics 
I'm designing, a web page or three, my mailer, generally a CD player or 
MIDI sequencer to provide background, and innumerable notes plastered all 
over the screen on text editors. (Needless to say, if my machine crashes, 
it ruins my whole day.) When I log onto a game, there are three categories 
I can place it in:

	1. It's a game I know well enough to play without thinking too much about 
it
	(Most TinyMUSH servers, several PennMUSH servers, the SMAUG codebase)
	2. It's a game I don't know very well, but which I can play easily enough
	(Most MUXes, some PennMUSH servers, most Dikus and Mercs, anything based 
on AD&D or WoD)
	3. It's a game I don't know very well, and is time consuming and 
distracting
	(Almost any Cold or LP server, some heavily hardcode-hacked MUSHes and 
MUXes)

Category 3, unfortunately, is where most of my recent experiences fall. 
Which means I stagnate on the same old places and the same old genres, and 
there's little to no change. I just can't drop everything and play a single 
game to the exclusion of everything else, so it's a long and arduous 
process for me to shift a level 3 game up to level 2. If I really consider 
it a priority, I can sit down and learn just about any game in a weekend 
given some decent documentation (hell, I can do this with most programming 
languages, too... although APL took me close to a month), but decent 
documentation in the MUD world is hard to come by.

> I suspect I'm not alone here in the dark.

I wouldn't really call that the dark... more like being under a different 
spotlight. I'm sure a lot of people think those of us who are actually 
concerned with such trivial details as the *players*, who after all tend to 
be more of a nuisance than anything half the time, are the ones in the 
dark. Sometimes I'll run into a player on some game or other and go 'You 
know, maybe it's a GOOD idea to have an interface only the truly 
intelligent and/or dedicated can comprehend'...

=+[caliban at darklock.com]=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=[http://www.darklock.com/]+=
"It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more
doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a
new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by
the preservation of the old institution, and merely lukewarm defenders in
those who would gain by the new one."                      -- Machiavelli
=+=+=+[We are the music makers and we are the dreamers of dreams]+=+=+=+=