[MUD-Dev] thoughts

[Matthew Mihaly]

I have been thinking, tonight, about what the _nature_ of a mud is, or
should be, as regards the simulation of reality. Someone (I don't remember
who) mentioned that he doesn't think something approaching an NLP parser
is necessary at all from the standpoint of role, as the simulation's
boundary does not extend to the realm of entering commands. (I would tend
to agree, as commands are, to me, just codes attempting to tell the
computer what you want done).

I've also been thinking about how I play muds. I don't tend to form very
distinct pictures of things, if at all. They are just vague, either
non-visual or very nebulous, concepts for the most part. When I walk
around, it is the words themselves that are displayed on my screen, that I
see. When I go to Ampitheatre in the Garden of the Gods (the favoured
gathering place of the Gods), I do not picture a lovely Greek-style
ampitheatre with Celani lounging around, and a raised dais of water in the
centre. I just see:
Ampitheatre in the Garden                            (GARDEN6)

That IS where I am. That's my visual picture, for the most part. Sure,
there are times when I make myself visualize something, and for no
particular reason, there are certain rooms that I have very clear pictures
of. 

It's not just the idea of rooms that are mostly removed from visual
imagery though. It's the entire game, for the most part. When I fight,
even though all the abilities I'm doing do various, well-descried things,
to me, I never picture what I'm doing. I see certain text, which embodies
a feeling or concept of some sort, like "Your mind reels as it is battered
by a hammer of psychic force", and I think "eat goldenseal, eat
goldenseal, eat goldenseal".

Hmm. I may not be getting my point across particularly lucidly. I don't
mean that I think those words. It's more as if the MUD is a new structure
of experience. When I watch a movie, I'm drawn in by visual and auditory
sensations. However, when I play a mud, the only direct stimulation there
is is the actual text you are seeing. I feel as if it isn't the
text-as-English that I am experiencing when I'm logged in, but a
meta-language wherein individual concepts, or arrays of concepts, are
represented by the fixed patterns of text.

This is especially true in combat in Achaea, now that I think of it. Your
screen scrolls amazingly fast, and you have to discipline your mind to
pick out the important patterns and toss away the rest. There's not really
time, if you want to be very good, to translate the text you are seeing
into what effect it is producing, and then think "oh yes, smoking slippery
elm is the cure for that". The patterns of text have to TELL you directly
what they mean in this context (this context being finding the correct
cure, for instance). It has, at its highest levels, virtually nothing to
do, from the combatant (not witness') point of view, with imagining
specific actions being performed. It's as if you learn a new language, and
the game becomes a new medium, using its own, unique language wherein the
"words" are made up of english sentences or combinations of sentences.

I find this experience to be very interesting on a philosophical level.
The more I think about it, it really does feel like a unique structure for
your mind to experience. (I'm not talking about combat specifically, just
the sort of impressions I am speaking of generally).

I expect a lot of you will jump up and think I'm either nuts or have no
mudding soul, but I shall ignore your treacherous mutterings and let Pip
deal with you. It does raise the question (to me at least), about the
value of speaking of MUDs generally as simulations, or even just
representations of a visually imaginable reality. (I don't mean that the
idea of MUDs as visually imaginable should be discarded. I just wonder if
perhaps MUDs can also be experienced completely differently.)

--matt





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