[MUD-Dev] Dynamic muds

[Eli Stevens {KiZurich}]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ryan
> Sent: Monday, September 20, 1999 1:05 AM
> Subject: [MUD-Dev] Dynamic muds

[snip ...]

> I want it [Ryan's LPMUD]
> to be of high quality, and something I think that affects
> the quality of room descriptions are those that are dynamic. Most of you
> appear to be mud administrators or hardcore players, but
> this is aimed at people who build lots of areas for muds. Are
> truly dynamic
> rooms, in your opinion, worth spending the extra
> effort? In dynamic, I mean that the description changes with day/night,
> seasons, etc. It obviously requires extra work, but not an
> entire re-write. I want to make sure that, when my mud does go
> alpha on the
> internet, that builders will be willing do to this and
> not be daunted by the task.

The topic of dynamic room descriptions has come up on the list before, most
recently starting with the post (I do not know offhand of any other times it
may have been discussed, but it may very well have):

http://www.kanga.nu/archives/MUD-Dev-L/1999Q2/msg00227.html

As a result of that discussion, I was asked to write an article for an
online magazine containing a variety of articles pertaining to MUDs.  The
article is archived here (please note that I do not have any admin
experience, and am only tinkering with my own custom codebase[1] ATM):

http://imaginaryrealities.imaginary.com/volume2/issue6/dynamic_descriptions.
html

However, since you seemed to be more concerned with keeping builders up to
standard, those may not interest you much (I am very interested in how you
were planning on implementing such things...  :).

IMHO, you should strictly enforce your quality standards.  If someone does
not want to put in the time to do the work required to make a decent area,
do you really want them producing areas for your mud?  For me, the answer
would be no.  A huge but sloppy gameworld is not something that I want to be
associated with (and it sounds like you feel the same).

As a player, being able to picture the world around me would be an immense
help when trying to immerse myself.  Anything that eases immersion (and then
hopefully roleplay) is, in my book, a big plus.  :)

I wish I could offer you some real experience, but I cannot.  Just stick to
your guns, and maybe dynamic room descriptions will be to MUDs what colored
lighting is to 3D shooters.  Heh.  :)

Silence is going to work on his DynaDesc class...
Eli - mailto:c718157 at showme.missouri.edu

[1] - I use the term "custom codebase," but when I look at the ratio of
ideas to actual code, I think I need to start calling it my "custom
ideabase."  :)




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