[MUD-Dev] Re: Fun vs Realism [ Was: OT: Sid Meier ]

[Adam Wiggins]

On Sat, 25 Jul 1998, Markku Nylander wrote:
> 	Brad and Caliban have an excellent point here. I'd like to turn the
> 	question around and ask this: How do you make _creating_ the world
> 	challenging (= fun) to the _seasoned coder_ (implementor, game
> 	designer, whatever)? The reason I ask is because I've followed the
> 	discussion on this list and to me it seems people are aiming for
> 	more and more complex (internal) designs (total world persistence,
> 	object behaviour simulating laws of physics etc.)... how do you
> 	hide all that behind the user interface and keep the game playable?
> 	If you coded an intricate and ingenious MUD engine that simulates
> 	the real world perfectly, would you want to plop a simple Diku
> 	interface on top of it, i.e. if a player was carrying a plate mail
> 	and wanted to wear it when carrying a torch and a sword, would you
> 	let a player to do Dikuish 'wear plate' or would they have to
> 	'drop plate; extinguish torch; put torch into backpack; sheathe
> 	sword; remove backpack; drop backpack; remove belt; drop belt;
> 	remove chainmail; take plate; wear plate;	take backpack...'? 
> 	Does it keep you motivated if the players go "OOooh" over the
> 	twinkie ANSI color coded auction channel that took you five
> 	minutes to code, but think the event-queued-limb-hit-and-damage-
> 	permanent-injury-and-scarring based	combat system you spent	three
> 	months implementing sucks big time?

Absolutely.  The more complex the stuff you can do gets, the harder it is
to keep it playable.  I've seen more than a few poor implementation of
"hands" on LP muds; rather than try to battle the interface for these, I'd
rather just have a plain ol' inventory, lame as they are.

I posted quite a few examples of how my server handles this sort of thing
(keeping base mechanics playable) in my early days on the list, so you can
check the archives from a couple years ago.  A quick example of the sort
of things we did:

% wear coat
You pull on a quilted undercoat.
% wear shirt
You pull on a chainmail shirt.
% wear plate
You strap on a breastplate.
% wear gauntlets
You pull on a pair of gauntlets.
% remove gauntlet
You remove your right gauntlet.
% remove coat
You remove your left gauntlet.
You remove your breastplate.
You remove your chainmail shirt.
You remove your quilted undercoat.

In the case of your example (that is, "hands"):

% eq
You are wearing a backpack, holding a sword in your left hand, and holding
a torch in your right hand.
% open door
You sheathe your sword.
You open the door.
% kill goblin
You draw your sword.
[..combat..]
The goblin collapses to the ground in a bloody heap.
% search corpse
You find three jade pieces in the goblin's pockets.
% get jade from corpse
You sheathe your sword.
You get three jade pieces from the goblin's pockets.
% draw
You put three jade pieces into your backpack.
You draw your sword.

etc.  This let us do all sorts of fun stuff with equipment and limbs,
while keeping the thing playable.  Honestly - we, the programmers, are the
ones that have to use the interface more than anyone else - why shouldn't
we want to make it usable?

Adam