[MUD-Dev] The MLI Project

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On 01:38 AM 2/25/98 +0000, I personally witnessed Niklas Elmqvist jumping
up to say:
>
>The problem with using a Quake-like graphics engine for a MUD is the
>connotations it bears with it -- players tend to PK each other by default 
>(as they do on a regular Quake server). 

That would be a little difficult under the differing rules. It should be
obvious -- once the player gets into the game -- that this is not really
Quake, that the rules are different here, and that rapidfire PK just isn't
going to work. Obviously, in a fantasy-based MUD, you're not likely to have
rocket launchers and railguns; the weapons you do have will be something a
little tougher to use on other players, mainly because the other player
will probably see you coming. There's also going to be the difficulty of
the flatter playing field (PK is a deadly, deadly pursuit), although
certainly there will be SOME sort of experience/levels/advancement. I
certainly don't think, for example, that a player ought to respawn
someplace in the near vicinity when killed; rather the player should lose
some amount of ability and respawn at some central location. It will be a
pain in the behind to get killed, and a real chore to kill anyone else.
Basically, you'll be most able to attack what is interested in attacking
you, and the easiest way to get into combat is to wait till you're attacked
and just defend yourself. You'd also enjoy some measure of ability to flee,
even when many MUDs wouldn't let you, because you'd have the option of
finding and using escape routes that the MUD engine would generally ignore
under the logic "he's fighting five things, he can't get away". 

The rapidfire PK player will also quickly exhaust the supply of players in
the dungeon, and need to move on. 


Life is cheap in standard Quake. You die, you respawn, and in twenty
seconds you can reverse the entire trend of the server. In a MUD setting,
things wouldn't work that way. Yes, some people will still be PK, and
they'll go out and do this sort of thing anyway... but that's just life,
you know? As soon as the player gets killed, and goes all the way back to
some central location, and has to hurry back out to the dungeon where he
was killed so he can get revenge, he'll get it through his thick skull that
it's not too easy to do this sort of thing. Some people will still do it.
Some people won't. Different strokes, you know?

The major concern I have is how to handle that sort of thing (PK/Non-PK) in
the engine. I think possibly the best way to do this is to mark AREAS as
PK/Non-PK, so if you aren't interested in it, you just don't go there.
Making the entire overworld non-combat, however, is not such a great idea.
Which leads to another question: should combat be possible in the overworld
environment, or should combat gate into a Quake-style engine a la the
combat mode in Final Fantasy? How would this be represented in the
overworld engine to other players?

>That is, first-person shooters in
>multiplayer settings have been around so long (in an internet sense, that
>is) that most players would shoot or slash at anything that moves,
>especially if the MUD gameplay is as fast-paced as in a "normal" shooter.
>(Okay, not a serious problem, and the players would most likely get used
>to it after a while.) 

I don't expect the MUD gameplay to be that fast-paced at all. I just expect
the dungeons and whatnot to be more immersive and visually stunning; the
text descriptions of most MUDs don't really do it justice. How many people
read descriptions on MUDs? Generally you walk into a room and look straight
for things to kill.

>Another problem with the Quake engine is that it does not work well with
>large outdoor areas, 

Which is exactly why I think a different engine needs to be used for the
overworld. There are holes in both methods, which is why I suggested using
a combination engine to shore up the weaknesses -- Quake, for example, is
very hard to have a conversation in. Real time combat in an engine like
Diablo's or Warcraft's is so... dissociative. It's not like you're IN the
battle, more like you're DIRECTING it from afar. There's the possibility
that you could provide the *option* of keeping dungeons in the
overworld-style engine (which many people seem to like), of course, but it
would be imperfect and annoying.

>Hmm, yes, but the problem we're facing here (as you point out with the
>blob representing the smell of a pile of horse manure) is that we're
>trying to represent sensory perceptions with visual aids, something which
>really can't be done. 

Well, it can, but it's always going to be a pretty sad substitute... ;)

>In a text MUD, you can simulate this by simply 
>stating "you feel an overpowering stench emanating from that pile of
>horse manure in the corner". In a graphical MUD, we can get around a part   
>of the problem by saying that special senses such as "detect magic" really  
>is just an extension of normal vision, but until we get smellcards in
>addition to the soundcards we already have, the sense of smell will be
>hard to reproduce in a computer game. ;)

Which is something of a shame, since smells are more emotionally evocative
than anything else...