[MUD-Dev] Re: Levels versus Skills, who uses them and when.

[Adam Wiggins]

On Wed, 13 Jan 1999, Koster, Raph wrote:
> Quest XP is a classic tactic. XP for merely visiting rooms (or for
> visiting specific rooms), which we always termed "explore XP" is a nice
> tactic too, until the rooms become known.

Well, if you put the rooms at the right spot, I don't see any problem
with them becoming known.

That said, MUME took a slightly different tack.  Let me see if I recall
correctly (probably not).  You aquire "travel points" as you move around
the map.  Advancing a level requires both experience AND travel points;
one cannot "make up" for another.

Which raises another thought: how about just having experience broken
into a number of major categories.  Advancing a level in any given
class or guild requires different amounts of experience in each category.
For example, advancing in the paladin's guild might cost 100 combat
exp, 120 travel exp, 150 charity (donating equipment and money to good
causes) exp, and 60 puzzle (solving adventure-gamish puzzles) exp.
You could get even fancier - a ranger or a druid might require a certain
amount of nature exp, which is gained by befriending wild animals,
learning about plants and trees, or merely time spent in foresty areas.

> [And yes, right here someone
> is going to say they implemented remembering every room visited, or
> every room remembering who visited it, and don't have that problem, and
> once again I'll shudder at the data storage their mud entails. Am I the
> only one who is paranoid about memory usage?]

Well, *I* don't worry.  RAM is way too cheap to bother worrying about
these days.  I certainly can't remember the last time I used a desktop
machine with less than 128 megs.  I certainly wouldn't bother buying
a dedicated mud server with less than 256, and I'd probably rather go
with a gig or two.  With that in mind, no I don't consider it a big
concern.  Besides, you can always have the server start uping the
decay rates on memory-type data like the above if you start to hit
your memory limits.
However, you *should* decide where to spend your RAM (and code, for
that matter).  Remembering huge amounts of data about who did what
and when should have a pretty clear benefit within your game.  I
don't see any point in doing something like that just because it seems
neat.

Adam W.