[MUD-Dev] Re: Standard Mud Room Format?

[Michael.Willey at abnamro.com]

     ____________________Reply Separator____________________
     Subject:  [MUD-Dev] Re: Standard Mud Room Format?
     Author:   mud-dev at kanga.nu ("T. Alexander Popiel"
     <popiel at snugharbor.com>)
     Date:          8/19/98 11:27 PM

>In message:  <E0z9Hsk-0002NX-00 at mail.kanga.nu>
>             plateau <plateau at mail.tcbi.com> writes:
>
>>Anyway, I began to think of all the different MUD editors
>>already available, and started to wonder if there weren't
>>some type of "standard format" from which to import rooms,
>>spells, mobs, etc.
>>
>>Sure, most muds are in some way "different" from the others,
>>code-wise, but they all share certain characteristics: most
>>rooms have descriptions, they are usually connected to each
>>other by the 10 basic exits (n/s/e/w/u/d/nw/se/ne/sw) as well
>>as other links ('enter bushes').
>>Most have titles for their areas, and some share similar
>>flags such as 'nomob', 'safe', etc.
>
>Methinks you've been dealing with Dikus a lot (they're the
>primary ones to have the 10 basic exits concept in the driver;
>elsewhere it's just convention or completely ignored), but
>that's beside the point... ;-)

[Trying hard not to sound too "religious" here...]

  Coming from an LP background, I'd have to agree.  There are
almost as many ways to communicate this standard information
there as there are LP muds, and that doesn't even start to
address muds where some of your standard characteristics are
meaningless (I'm not entirely sure what you mean by area titles
or "nomob" and "safe" flags) or where much more than that is
considered standard information.

  If you were interested in making an off-line object builder
work on an LP, I'd suggest that instead of modifying the builder
to generate LPC for a particular mud, you instead save this
standard information to text files and rely on a "virtual
object" interpreter within the mud to transform those text
files into LP objects.  If you packaged an interpreter for
one of the more popular LP driver/mudlib combos (MudOS/Lima?)
with this off-line tool and documented it well enough that the
end users could easily modify it for their own muds then I
think your idea would work for LP muds as well.  I'd also
suggest either making the tool flexible enough for users to
add and change the standard characteristics or making source
code available for users to add & change them on their own.

If you don't think this is called for, consider a typical
weapon on Dreamshadow.  Multiple calls to set weapon damage,
each with the amount, damage type and dependent axiom category
and level of the damage.  (Axioms have to do with the metaphysics
of our multiple cosm theme.)  Multiple calls to give the weapon
different descriptions and monetary values at differing axiom
values in each category.  A call to set the skills used to
attack and defend with the weapon.  Certainly an extra level
of detail not common amongst all muds, and a separate level
of detail that it AFAIK unique to us.  We might be interested
in a tool like you're describing, but only if we could modify
it for our particular needs.  Otherwise it makes even more work.

Good luck with your project, and I hope this is of some use
to you.