[MUD-Dev] (no subject)

[Mik Clarke]

Marian Griffith wrote:
> 
> On Sun 21 Nov, Travis Casey wrote:
> > On Friday, November 19, 1999, Jon A. Lambert wrote:
> 
> > A lot of the people who set up "stock" muds seem to be builder
> > wannabes -- they don't want to design a *new* mud, they just want to
> > build some areas, and maybe add a few classes and races.
> 
> Which is very odd, because quality -building- is probably as difficult
> as coding, if not more so. Of course I could not code my VCR if my li-
> fe depended on it, but I do not claim to be the average wannabee ;)

I think thee may be a 'market' for a server that can be easily
configured and made to do cleaver things by people who cannot program.
CthulhuMud was started by a bunch of kids and some Cthulhu fans.
Until I came along, there wasn't anyone there with any significant
programming skill, yet they were building quite happily.  Even now,
from 30-40 regular players that are only 2 or 3 that can program (and
neither of the other 2 are gods yet).  Programming, especially C type
MUD programming, seems to be a dieing art.  Which is a big problem for
the offspring of Merc as it is almost impossible to create a 'non-stock'
version without doing a lot of programming.

> > > The only thing that CoolMud lacks is the attentions of a mud game
> > > designer.  There are even fewer of those than there are mud coders. >:->
> 
> > Yep... I'll note that all the popular mud codebases seem to be stuck
> > in the late 70's or early 80's, as far as RPG design goes (speaking,
> > as I usually am, in terms of paper RPGs).
> 
> My guess is that this has to do with the fact that players have their
> expectations of muds,  as have people interested in putting a mud up.
> It is like designing a new house.  Everybody knows what a house looks
> like  so you can not be too different,  or nobody is going to buy it.
> With muds it is the same. Even if you would create a radically diffe-
> rent mud,  nobody would be interested in it,  because  they would not
> recognise it as such.

Yeah, there are a few player reviews of CthulhuMud on the mud
connector.  Almost all of them describe it as different and
unconventional.  Guess
they have seen a few to many stock ROMs...

I'm also not sure how many distributed ROM descended coded bases there
are that still have active development.  CthulhuMud and Smaug are about
the only ones that come to mind.  Yet the download sites are full of
ROM, Merc and Diku offerings.  To my mind there should all come with
a little rider saying that there has been no significant code updates
within the last 2 years of so.

Mik



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