[MUD-Dev] Languages (slightly offtopic, was Text Parsing)

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On 01:22 AM 6/3/99 -0700, I personally witnessed Matthew Mihaly jumping up
to say:
>
>How many of you actually enjoy playing your games,
> or even playing a significant aspect of yours? *raises his hand* 

*waving hands frantically* 

Ultimate Universe ROCKS. That's why I tracked down the author and paid him
way too much money for the development rights. ;)

I do have someone right now giving me input on how much harder things are
than they look. Just like you say watching experts in your game fight is
cool, watching an expert on mine go through it is just as cool -- but the
reality of playing is quite different, as this friend of mine is
discovering! Sure, you know all the commands, you have a kick-ass macro
set, you know precisely how to react to everything. 

But what about the next guy? He sat there and watched me rack up hundreds
of millions of credits, outfit my ship with all kinds of really neato-cool
stuff, and proceed to run roughshod over the enemy until I established a
daily salary in excess of a quarter billion credits a day... and now he's
sitting at this prompt thinking "damn, it sure looked easy when HE did it"
and wondering where to start.

Learning curve. Compress it. Make it shallow. Make it long, but make it
shallow. Personally, I'd like the learning curve to have a height
approaching zero and a length approaching infinity -- you *always* know
what you're doing, but you can also *always* get better at it. 

>You have
>no idea what a rush proper fighting is. You really really do not. 

Check out the documentation at www.ultimate-universe.com/uu-docs.html, and
consider the implications. Download the UUSTART texts -- especially
UUSTART4, which is about PvP especially. Download the UUHELP.ZIP archive
and read the help files. The pure richness of this game is nothing short of
awe-inspiring. Sure, fighting is simple, but it's just on a different
level. You're welcome to download UU204.ZIP and REGISTER.ZIP and run it
locally, if you're under some form of Windows. This version is a DOS
program, last modified in 1995, and it needs a better description of how to
get it up and running -- SYSOP.DOC is the best we currently have. Migrating
it into Windows/internet operation instead of DOS/modem is taking a
loooonng time; I have very little of that running aside from a very boring
telnet server which just prints some diagnostics based on what keypresses
you send. File handling for legacy data is in the works, but a long way
from done.

Here's a basic example, dealing primarily with the idea of how you enter
that fight to begin with. 

You can place several devices on your ship (16-32 in most games; maximum
limited to 40 at present, but increasing to 64 in next major release). You
may choose to place a device called a "Hyper Swap" there. This device
allows you to swap the contents of an extradimensional space with some of
your existing ship's contents. This allows you to have two "modes" of
operation. A common idea is to load up the extradimensional space with
weapons, and then swap it with your "peaceful" devices before entering a
hostile sector. As a result, you only have lots of weapons taking up space
in your ship when you actually need them.

But that sector may contain a device called a "hyperswap trigger", which
will swap the devices BACK when you enter. You could, of course, get a
scanner that will reveal it -- and seeing the hyperswap trigger, you just
leave your hyperswap on the peaceful devices, double-bluffing the hyperswap
trigger into loading your weaponry. 

But you'll need to scan the sector before you enter, and the sector *may*
also contain a sector reflector -- which, when you scan the sector, will
show you some OTHER sector instead. The reflected sector, of course,
probably doesn't have a hyperswap trigger. 

It *could*, instead, contain something very interesting and innocuous which
would lure you into charging straight into the sector. (In such a case, the
sector you're entering wouldn't want to have a hyperswap trigger, since it
would likely just load up your weapons. But the reflector alone could trap
you into wandering straight into the sector's battle forces.) Or, if the
owner just wanted to make a "keep out" sign, he could instead point the
sector reflector at a sector with something exceedingly nasty in it. (Like
a black hole, which there is no TRULY effective defense against --
certainly, you can get a galvanic catapult which will allow you to escape
from a black hole's gravitational pull, but such devices still have a 7%
failure rate. Black holes can be created, but not destroyed, so it is
possible for a universe to be eventually filled with enough black holes
that it's functionally useless. Realistically, this doesn't tend to happen.)

But, of course, there exists the sector reflector detector (one of my
favorite device names for pure linguistic charm)! And, since navigation is
so important to a spacefaring culture... sector reflectors are illegal. So
if you have such a detector, you can report the offending sector to the
authorities, who will then charge the sector reflector's owner a large fine
*and* remove the sector reflector later. Then you can see what's really in
the sector... provided you get there before the owner has installed another
sector reflector, which may very well happen, but even then you can just
report him again. 

And I haven't even gone into sensor dampers, navigator negators, autopilot
snares, port locators, planetary devices, mine launchers, toll stations...
all told, there are over five hundred devices. Individually, these are
useful. In combination, they're nearly infinite in possibility. It's
between 508!-468! and 508^40 (or 508**40, or pow(508,40), or whatever you
prefer). Yeah, for a basic example, the above is pretty complex... but
really, it *is* a basic example in the context of this game!

>I'm not trying to brag. I'm
>fully confident of the quality of my combat system, because frankly I
>_love_ fighting in Achaea. It is not a game. it is a sport. 

Well, see, I don't like sports. They strike me as rather pointless and
boring. That's why I spent so much time on my computer to begin with; all
the other kids wanted to play football and basketball and baseball and all
these team-oriented things. 

It is worth noting that Ultimate Universe uses a concept of commodities
brokering to gain funds. The single biggest complaint about this is that
it's very tedious and very time-consuming. The only alternative is to work
on behalf of the government, tracking down and destroying enemy forces.
You're rewarded more richly for this, but it's expensive *and* dangerous
*and* tedious. You literally *must* begin the game by trading commodities;
just like in most combat MUDs, you *must* begin by running around and
killing a bunch of weak monsters. 

This is the sort of thing that's high on my list of "things to fix". While
you can do any number of very interesting things to achieve a nearly
infinite variety of goals, you MUST begin by wandering from port to port
buying and selling tons of raw materials. That sort of
single-point-of-entry offends me on a basic level. You should experience
the richness and variety of the world immediately, as soon as you enter it.
Right now, there's a period of time you *must* spend "paying your dues".
Once you have a good understanding of the game, this period of time lasts
less than twenty minutes with a new ship. But your first login? It's just
not obvious enough. 

And to make matters worse, maybe you haven't even been told of this
POSSIBILITY yet... the only thing you're *guaranteed* to be told on
entering the game is that the galaxy is at war and you're supposed to help
out. But you're too *weak* to help out. I'm thinking about a new way to
handle this initial period; if you start out capable only of trading, maybe
that's acceptable -- if you're told that UP FRONT. 

Taking over someone else's development has good points and bad points.
Sure, you know you have product, but you also inherit all of its bugs and
ideosyncracies... for better or worse.

>Sorry if this sounds self-promoting. It's not meant to be. 

It should be. If you're not proud of what you're building, why build it?
Self-promote all to hell, my friend! Be proud! Be vocal! Sure, I don't
think *I'd* like it, but I can appreciate your pride in it! Hell, you
probably think the same thing about my stuff! :)

>I just hear most of the
>posters here talking as if certain things are a given (like player vs.
>player combat being crap), and frankly outside of Achaea and Avalon, I have
>never seen a combat system that even compares in terms of the rush.

I always find that combat systems are more tedium than excitement. I prefer
to go for suspense. And I haven't even *mentioned* the availability of SHIP
defenses... you think taking a *sector* is tough? Heh. Heh heh heh heh.
Dead man switches, trap door retreats, device bay missiles, device
chameleons, homing signal jammers, surveillance feedback emitters... and my
personal favorite, EXPLOSIVE SHIP DECOYS! BWAHAHAHAHAHA! 

-----
| Caliban Tiresias Darklock            caliban at darklock.com 
| Darklock Communications          http://www.darklock.com/ 
| U L T I M A T E   U N I V E R S E   I S   N O T   D E A D 
| 774577496C6C6E457645727355626D4974H       -=CABAL::3146=- 


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