[MUD-Dev] thoughts

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On 12:19 AM 6/4/99 -0700, I personally witnessed Matthew Mihaly jumping up
to say:
>
>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. 

My perception changes, based on what game I'm playing. 

On Cajun Nights MUSH, I have a real sense of location and description. It
matters to me whether it's windy, raining, or dark -- even though these
have no game effect. They make a difference in how I act and in what my
in-game mood is. 

On Realms of Despair, I read descriptions primarily to scan for things that
look like they can be manipulated. Once I know an area well enough to
recall what can and can't be manipulated there, I stop reading descriptions
in that area. 

On Ultimate Universe, descriptions don't even exist. There is an ordinal
number for location, and a terse list of what's in the location. My primary
concern is to scan for anything dangerous or unusual, and to investigate
thoroughly upon noticing something unusual... it tends to be evidence that
someone has mucked around to try and protect something interesting. 

>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".

To use the same group of games, on CN it is more or less necessary to the
game that you involve yourself in the actions and statements of others. On
RoD, yeah, same basic thing you describe here; lots of words with little
meaning. On UU, there is no such text: everything is very dry and technical
and usually only informs you of a possibility. (Example -- "Battle debris
strikes specialty bay area." Translation -- your ship's device bays *may*
have been damaged in this battle. You have to look in order to find out
whether any were. If you know, however, that your device bays are
well-enough armored that damage is impossible... you don't even bother.)

>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 seems like a very long and convoluted way to say "If it doesn't mean
anything important, I ignore it, and after a while I don't even see it."
The human brain is good at this. This is, in fact, primarily what the human
brain *does*: figure out what's important enough to spend time processing
and filter out everything else.

>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. 

I can scan the galaxy in UU at a rate of approximately 100 sectors a
minute. Obviously, I cannot *possibly* read every sensor display -- I look
for specific things which trigger a "look closely" response. Such things
include but are not strictly limited to black holes, sector mines, attack
drones, and planets. Most everything else gets ignored.

>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. 

I think you're raising a very good point. Many combat MUDs are designed by
builders and developers who want to create an immersive experience, and
played by players who want a fast-action experience. There's a difference
in expectation there. That difference in expectation leads to a difference
in effort, which in turn leads to a difference in perception of quality.
The builder looks at his area and says "it is a masterpiece of flowing
language and powerful imagery", whereas the player looks at the same area
and says "all of the mobs are wimps, none of them carry any decent items,
and there aren't enough of them to keep you busy through an entire repop
cycle". The area may, in fact, be a truly impressive place to look at! The
builder may have been perfectly successful in HIS design goals! But from
the player's eye, this area is utterly worthless -- because there is a
fundamental failure to recognise why people play the area to begin with. 

It is a very religious issue as to whether the builder was wrong by not
doing what the players wanted, or the player is wrong for missing the point
of the area. 

I think both are at fault, to an extent; look at Quake 2. The level design
is *beautiful*. Stick it in god mode and wander around just looking at
things. Ignore the monsters themselves, deny yourself the twitch response,
and just watch their actions and animations. Sure, you get close to a wall
and it's all pixellated. But who cares? Look out across that room. Look at
the lighting, the shadows, the textures, hell... the design is seriously
impressive. You *can* have it all. Whether one person can *do* it all is a
different matter. ;)

-----
| 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=- 


_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev maillist  -  MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
http://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev