[MUD-Dev] Little Touches (was Bay Area Press re: UO, the good the bad and the Ugly)

[Todd McKimmey]

Thought this might be better suited to a thread of its own -- it might
include a bit of the backstory thread as well though more of an ongoing
history...

Some players love 'the little touches' other players just ignore them...
however they are definitely one of the few things that, in general, few if
any players will reject or complain about. I've found on the few 'little
touches' I've put into LegendMUD have been well received. Some examples
currently in the running code:

We have skills for playing and singing -- they're mostly just prerequisites
for other skills but have uses in quests and the like. However on a whim one
day I added the ability to serenade a person, going so far as to add the
song title. The RP'ers loved this. I even added an incentive to use it. If
the serenade was exceptionally successful, it had a chance of broadcasting
the serenade across a system wide channel and gave a small boost to the
singer (or player's) prestige stat.

Another thing that's currently in our running code is the ability to
diagnose. We have a few different surgery skills, rather crude and
functional, but merely looking at a person only gave their damage condition.
Now seeing as doctors might know a little bit more about someone by
examining them, they are now able to diagnose a person. It currently has no
in-game effect (though I would someday like to add one), but it gives
detailed, more prose-like messages. For example:

> diagnose Boffo

You take a few minutes to examine Boffo.
Boffo looks injured, but the damages aren't major. You notice a few open
wounds that could use some immediate treatment. Judging from the marks
around his neck, you conclude that someone was attempting to choke him
sometime recently. With a little bedrest and perhaps some tender loving
care, he will be better in no time.

It does give a bit more information (if they have the 'choked' affect, which
does have in-game consequences) or whether or not they're bleeding, but it's
mostly just icing on the cake.

I was, up until recently, working on a major skill rewrite for Legend. I've
since moved on due to time restrictions and some other projects I wanted to
take on, but here's something added to the 'bard' path of skills that I
thought might apply to this topic:

Adding to the 'play' and 'sing' skill, once one achieved high enough success
in those skills, they could learn a 'composition' skill. As they composed
their own songs, they could perform them -- often at a higher rate of
success than just anything off the top of their own head. As this skill
progressed to a certain point, they had the option to 'publish' these songs.
Upon publishing, anyone with the play or sing skill could attempt to perform
these songs, and credit, in the form of money, was paid to the original
composer (there were rules to be made for this, so as to prevent
gold-farming freely).

Composers who also knew the 'perform' skill could write small plays. The way
I currently have it mocked up, they could even set it up with multiple
participants. The composition would be just a series of lines written down,
or stage direction (carried out as 'says' and 'emotes' respectively). The
players would be responsible for the order of the lines, but through a small
series of commands, they could alternate performing with single commands and
the play would come out as written. Of course if the players themselves
rehearsed, they could embelish and add to the performance of the piece (or
alternatively, speak out of turn and screw the thing up!).

The play compositions could also be published after reaching a certain skill
level. The clincher here is that it added in a real-time history to the
artistic community in the game.

Very few people have seen the above play/compose/perform skills, as I never
really got the time to iron out all the little ins and outs and actually
implement the durned things. But those who did responded quite positively. I
think it's little touches like these that really stand out against the
backdrop of the stock MUDs that are out there.

I'd really be interested in hearing some of the other 'little touches' that
people have incorporated into their own games, and the player response.

-Todd





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