[MUD-Dev] RE: www.innbetweenworlds.com

[Klimon]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bruce [mailto:bruce at puremagic.com]
> Sent: Friday, March 30, 2001 11:44 PM
> Subject: Re: [MUD-Dev] RE: www.innbetweenworlds.com (was: Mud 
> Timeline)
 
> It's been a long time since we've spoken!

Heya Bruce, how goes it?  :) That's both you and Scott in the past few
days, you know I stopped by the Core the other day looking for the
both of you :) I couldn't find any websites relating to what you guys
are working on, was hoping you were skulking around.  :)

> I was curious as to how this site of yours would distinguish and
> differentiate itself from some of the extant resources such as
> MUD-Dev, MERA, Raph's homepage, some aspects of Pan (once that is
> rolling), and even Imaginary Realities?  (And I'm sure that I am
> missing many others, but that's a nice sampling to get started
> with.)  The original goal, to promote a set of commercial muds,
> isn't well-served by existing resources very well; but the remainder
> of the potential site features seem to be fairly well-addressed
> already within the community.

Agreed.  Focusing on the "commercial" MUDs was my initial main goal, I
was offering the rest as extra suggestions, in some ways, it matters
not to me, I've paid for the domain and the hosting for the next year,
so I'm going to use it somehow, I thought I would put it to work for
the community.  Of all the places I contacted, I heard back from one
game and one individual.  I'm happy to set up a mailing list just to
discuss how best to put the domain/site to work for the commercial
MUDing community.  Drop me a line at ian at klimon.com, and I'll add you
to the list.  I think that if the site gets up and running under the
idea of serving the more commercial end of the spectrum, some of the
resources which may be well-served by other areas of the community,
may spring up as ancillary to the main focus of the site.

> Also, what would the terms and conditions for working with your site
> be?

The thought is that there would have to be some supply of content
(owned by the originator), eventually, perhaps sharing in the hosting
cost.  I've already paid for it this year.  :)

> Would it host exclusive content such as what Skotos has on their
> site?

No.

> If so, is that something that is really beneficial to the 'industry'
> and community surrounding these games, rather than just another way
> of driving traffic to one's site to increase the profile of one's
> own games?

Probably not, but see above.  ;) But increasing the profile of any of
these games is a good thing. :)

> Or would it be something more like Imaginary Realities where you
> still maintain the rights to your writings and are free to
> re-publish them elsewhere as you wish?

Correct.

> I have another post that I'm working through on the topic of next
> generation codebases (I don't think there are any successful ones
> currently or within the last couple of years)

I'd like to share with you what we've been working on (and would be up
if not for the damn network issues ;) We think its a bit different,
but could be wrong.  ;)

So to reiterate, if anyone is interesting in talking about how
innbetweenworlds.com could serve the commercial end of the MUD
spectrum, please drop me a note at ian at klimon.com and I'll add you to
the mailing list.  :)

One final note: Let's assume for a moment that there are 10
"commercial" MUDs out there.  Assume also that they are each running
their own codebase for their primary game.  (And forgive me if this is
happening somewhere, I haven't found it.)  What would be the harm in
getting the engineers from those ten games together to talk about what
they've done wrong and right and discuss laying a foundation for a new
engine.  With good source control and an engineer willing to take the
lead (I'm not an engineer, so I'm not suggesting myself), you could
have 10 teams of coders working on a solid commercial engine that any
one of those groups could use.  Maybe its a pipe dream, but I can't
imagine that it wouldn't be worth sitting down and chatting about.
Maybe their current engines are "good enough," but with increasing
competition for graphical MUDs, wouldn't it be worth putting the time
in discussing it?

Okay, shoot me if I'm wrong.  ;-)


--------------------

Ian C. Klimon
Design Lead

ian at timegatestudios.com

TimeGate Studios, Inc.
6001 Savoy, Suite 400
Houston, TX  77036

http://www.timegatestudios.com/ (TimeGate Studios, Inc.)
http://www.kohan.net/ (Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns)

--------------------

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