[MUD-Dev] code base inquiry

[J C Lawrence]

On Tue, 15 Feb 2000 20:40:47 +0100 
MichelleThompson  <m.a.thompson at mindspring.com> wrote:

> On Wed, 16 Feb 2000, you wrote:

Ahem.  Attributions?

> Simply put: stock muds are a good place to begin.  It is all well
> and fine to say that there are too many of them about, and that
> they are not any good, etc, but people have to start somewhere.
> My husband and I both had our first imps on muds derived from
> stock (different muds).  Since then we have started developing an
> original code base (non-commercial).  We could not have gotten
> there without having had our roots in stock muds.  I will not
> begrudge the existence of another 200 stock muds that did nothing
> more than make a stock mud while my husband and I were on our
> separate muds learning.  Heck, it would not begrudge the existence
> of 3000 stock muds.  Because of the stock phenomenon, we are where
> we are now.  Now that we are not planning on running a stock mud
> again, I will not turn around and say that all stock muds suck and
> that there are too many of them.

Summarising from a slightly different viewpoint:

  Stock MUDs provide a commonality, a universality of method that
makes learning how to play and enjoy MUDs easier for new players.
It creates instant familiarity via two feedback loops:

  1) All MUDs are the same in the major fashions, so the same
understandings can be applied everywhere and confusion and learning
curves are thus minimised.

  2) Stock MUDs learn from each other, implementing the good points
that each one implements on their own, this extending the base
common definition by a process of slow evolution.  In this way the
definition of a "Stock MUD" slowly evolves as new and better, or
easier ways of doing things are found and widely copied and
implemented.  This of course then feeds back to #1 as the field
improves.

  The problem is the same problem shared by all conservative
systems: A high reliance on tradition, glacial evolution processes,
a squelching of inovation and experimentation, and all the
appealling characteristics of rigor mortis in general.  The
enviroment in almost all ways is stultifying.

So, we get the people who love the status quo and play happily
within the bounds of tradition and "stockdom", and we get the
rebels, and the agitators, and the experimentors who rail against
and assault the lethargic halls of orthodoxy and try and change
everything overnight -- and of fourse in the meantime utterly
confusing and alienating the poor new player who's just trying to
get a handle on this new thing and doesn't like finding all his hard
won knowledge turning to quicksand underneath him every time he
turns around.

"Its the Industrial Revolution all over again man!"

--
J C Lawrence                                 Home: claw at kanga.nu
----------(*)                              Other: coder at kanga.nu
--=| A man is as sane as he is dangerous to his environment |=--


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