[MUD-Dev] [Fwd: Re: brainstormer]

[Richard Woolcock]

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Been invited to participate in a graphical mud.  Having spoken with the
person in charge (Thoric, author of Realms of Despair (Smaug)) I feel
he might be able to make some interesting contributions to this list.
If not, I then I will provide you will updates as to the progress of the
mud as best I can.

KaVir.

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Date: Wed, 08 Jul 1998 23:09:47 -0400
To: scryn at game.org
From: Terri <jade at surfsouth.com>
Subject: Re: brainstormer
Cc: kavir at dial.pipex.com, darker at darker.com
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>X-Authentication-Warning: hometown.idirect.com: derek owned process doing -bs
>Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 13:20:23 -0400 (EDT)
>From: Derek Snider <derek at idirect.com>
>To: Terri <jade at surfsouth.com>
>Subject: Re: brainstormer
>
>On Mon, 6 Jul 1998, Terri wrote:
>
>> Wednesday night, 10 pm. E.S.T.. on ROD. 
>> Important meeting to attend if you're interested in taking mudding into the
>> 21st Century.
>
>Is that everyone that's invited?  BTW... I wrote up a little propsal thing
>that should probably be mailed to everyone involved... take a gander:
>
>
>
>    Proposal for a Multiplayer Interactive Medieval Internet based game
>    ===================================================================
>
>    The idea is to create a "virtual" reality of sorts without any hard
>limits or boundries.  As flexible as possible without compromising speed and
>efficiency.
>
>    The user interface to this environment would be irrelevant.  It could
>start out as a text based interface, and gradually move towards something
>more impressive and marketable.  Ideally it would support whatever interface
>the end user had -- from a simple text interface, to a high end state of the
>art VR interface complete with 3D headset, VR gloves, speech recognition,
>gesture recognition, the whole nine yards.
>
>    The model for this would be a client-server one.  The server would
>maintain the existance of a virtual world in a complex fashion, and the
>client would display a representation of that world based on the hardware
>the user owned.  For the initial text based interface, this is something
>that could be handled by the server, or possibly another process running on
>the server side of things.
>
>    Part of the key to making a full VR based interface possible would be to
>have only the minimum data flow between the client and server.  While at
>first it may seem impossible with current bandwidth limitations, I believe
>this can be easily overcome by the proper design.
>
>    My idea for this would be for everything to be based on an
>object-oriented inheritance model.  You first define all the common base
>elements... your building blocks, and then build everything else from those.
>Rather than describe everything in detail, you describe only the
>differences -- take a sword for example:  you could say that sword 'Y' is
>the same as sword 'X', except that it is a little longer.
>
>    Everything in the virtual world would be relative to something else...
>much how the real world works.  When someone describes something, they
>always say, "it's like this... but..."   No one describes things in absolute
>detail, "It is composed of 50 gazillion electons..."
>
>    When designing something that is a copy of real life, ie: a "virtual
>reality", I believe it is best to try and follow the same trends and
>patterns as real life.  The concept to me is simple and obvious.
>
>    Also, we need to keep in mind that while flashy graphics, cool music,
>sound effects, bells and whistles may make a good first impression, you need
>content to keep the people interested.  It is always good to start with the
>good content, and save the bells and whistles for last, (though it's a good
>idea to keep them in mind while designing).
>
>    It is a person's own imagination which is the most powerful tool.  Hence
>the written and spoken word tends to paint a more vivid and lasting picture
>in one's mind than some flashy graphics.  A very important part of this
>project will be a good story.  It needs to be oozing with good creative
>content.
>
>    Thinking ahead, it would be amazing to have good speech generation, and
>to have NPCs in the game able to hold conversations, to tell stories, to
>reveal important details.
>
>    The key to this project is putting together different technologies which
>already exist, and in fact have existed for many years now.  These
>technologies are becoming more and more refined... and I feel it is time to
>combine them into something amazing.
>
>    Things like speech recognition, speech synthesis, gesture recognition,
>artificial intelligence, a kick-ass 3D engine, 3D headsets, digital stereo
>audio, role playing games, medieval fantasy, mythology, the occult, magic,
>witchcraft, multi-player interaction, the Internet, computers, a dream, and
>most importantly people to take all these things, and make the dream a
>reality.
>
>    I believe all of these ingredients are within reach.  The technology is
>there, and constantly improving.  By the time we are closing in on
>completion, current technology will only be that much better, computer
>systems that much faster, home bandwidth that much wider, and the Internet
>that much more reliable.   As I said, the most important part is the people
>to make this happen.  I believe that we have those people -- ourselves.
>
>    Realms of Despair was a small dream.  I enjoyed playing MUDs while in
>school, and got really involved and addicted to one.  Many thousands of
>people have become addicted to RoD -- it is something to be proud of.
>All this from a small dream... a little hobby I did in my spare time.
>
>    Of course it would have been nothing without the people that helped me
>keep it going, and the players that played it, and encouraged us to keep on
>improving it.  In the four years that RoD has been up, we have touched
>likely over 100,000 people.  The release of the SMAUG code has only brought
>us that much more respect and recognition.  There are close to a hundred
>SMAUG muds out there, and with the release of the next version I can only
>see SMAUG becoming that much more popular.
>
>    I believe that RoD was a great learning experience for all of us.  I
>know I learned more of my advanced coding skills from working on the MUD,
>and it has put me in touch with a lot of great people.  Let us also not
>forget all the dedicated players.
>
>    We must now look towards the future, and see what it holds for us.  I
>cannot forsee the MUD in its current state growing too much bigger.  The
>biggest problems with the MUD are that:  (1)  We cannot make a living from
>running it, and therefore the MUD must come second to making a living.  (2)
>Internet Direct owns the name (Realms of Despair), the domainname (game.org)
>the machine it runs on, and provides the bandwidth -- if we could make money
>from the MUD they'd probably take a big cut.  (3) The DikuMud license
>agreement prevents profitting in any way.  (4) What would stop everyone from
>playing a free mud?  (5) I don't really believe we should profit from RoD
>since that was never our intention in the first place.
>
>
>


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