[MUD-Dev] List rituals

[yospe at kanga.nu]

J C Lawrence <claw at 2wire.com> said:

> On Mon, 2 Jul 2001 23:02:37 -0000 
> yospe  <yospe at kanga.nu> wrote:
>> J C Lawrence <claw at kanga.nu> said:
>>> On Sat, 23 Jun 2001 09:35:30 +0200 Ola Fosheim
>>> <=?iso-8859-1?Q?Gr=F8stad?= <olag at ifi.uio.no>> wrote:

>> Character as a seperate entity (in terms of data structure) from
>> a player account - you hate this, J C, but the form is valid...

> I was the early champion of separating the character from the
> player account object.  You may recall that my original reasoning
> for this was to allow a single account (human) to have several
> characters which could then played simultaneously via the same
> login.  If you check the archives you can find various game logs I
> posted showing how I managed this from an interface perspective.

> This was also the early form of the logic that later lead to the
> support of swarm bodies -- a character which has viewports in
> multiple possibly widely separated locations (eg ant colony with
> many ants in various locations, some in variously large groups).

Ah, yes, I do remember this...

>> ... and it has been a recuring theme/thread that could use
>> referencing with regard to the current discussion: characters may
>> not be *entirely* under player control; players may be viewed as
>> a conciousness inhabiting a somewhat
>> instinct/acculturation/emotion influenced body (with the mud
>> itself as the character's endocrine system et al) as a means of
>> controlling some aspects of behaviour.

> Ahh, now that's the bit I wasn't too fond of: the player as
> visitor on a character.  I had no dislike of the abstraction, just
> the step the other way of making the character not an explicit
> possession of the account.  A bit different.  We had some prior
> discussions around having characters essentially be NPCs which the
> player then dropped into and variously occupied, yeah.  There are
> several middle grounds there which have been mentioned several
> times but have failed to ever be really explored:

>   -- Setting your character at task(s) to be performed while the
>   owner is logged out.

Which can be assisted by automated behaviours handled by the server,
or scripts.  I simply argue against *deactivating* the instincts of
the character when there's a human conciousness sitting at the helm.

>   -- Sharing characters on a first-come-first-served basis among
>   several/many accounts (typical GoP model has characters as a
>   stat accrual method for account objects).

I did this with the little Paranoia-like mud I proof-of-concepted a
few years ago (I think it was running for five months in '96... has
it been five years already?) and it had some favorable results.
Player account stats and scores were the objective, and nothing
concrete proved who a player had *really* been in the gameworld.
The recovery area (chat and the like) was like the registration area
for paintball tourneys.  I can pretty much guarantee that, like
mine, most games of this sort aquire a Quake-like impersistance of
character.

>   -- Getting a report upon login of the things which have happened
>   in your character's vicinity while you were away.

Goes with the first.

>   -- Ramifications of leaving a character in-game during logout,
>   and thus variously subject to the predations/activities of other
>   players during logged out time.

Again... always fun, this.

>   -- Scripting of character activity at both the task level and
>   AI-based self-defence/reaction/bot level while logout (eg
>   automated merchant), especially on the account/character group
>   level.

>     eg Bubba has an account on the game.  That account has three
>     characters: a merchant and an accomplished warrior and an
>     accomplished magic user.  While Bubba is logged out the
>     warrior and mage conspire mutually to defend and protect the
>     merchant while the merchant conducts business on Bubba's stick
>     of EQ during Bubba's absence.

Yeah... fun stuff.

>> '95, mixed in with Texas Free Store discussions.  Extensive
>> details on UDP as a protocol, on Firewall issues, on error
>> checking.

> You have any of that traffic to hand?  I have it in some old
> ZMailer archives which are semi-munged and proving very resistant
> to recovery.

>> (What, am I chopped liver?  I was here, I was...)

> Were you on the CC: list?  I thought you came in a little later.

I sent you a little bit I recovered from an old outbox... I know I
have a bit more (And a lot of other stuff beside) on a Jaz disk that
won't be read... also, I may have a tarball (yes, *that* tarball) of
everything up to the point I joined - I joined when it was a
listserve on bug.be, but hadn't been for long.

Both of the above (and more) are on a Jaz, and maybe an old (and
probably recoverable) internal SCSI mac formatted 250MB HD.  Must
see about using a few CD-Rs to long-term store all that stuff...

--



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