[MUD-Dev] Re: The Future of MMOGs... what\'s next?

[shren]

On Mon, 8 Jul 2002, Damion Schubert wrote:

>> Now, if you've seen the toolset released by Bioware, you can
>> agree with me that creating a world with that tool is really
>> easy. I am building a persistant world for NWN myself and I can
>> make new areas in a matter of minutes. Adding content is easy and
>> can be done in whatever fashion you like. I even got to spend 20
>> or 30 minutes creating a single item and tweaking all its values
>> to my liking. But you can also drop standard items into your
>> world with a single click and build such content in 5 minutes. It
>> all depends to you, the server builder. And I see great power in
>> that toolset.
 
> The toolset is an absolute dream.  I give them mad props for the
> toolset.

I got to spend my first long session with the toolset last night.  I
have a large single player campaign in mind, that I think I'll be
working with on and off for a year or so.  (It's not long, but it's
somewhat open ended.)

3D design has always been my barrier to entry.  I've no knowledge or
desire to gain knowledge on how to render and align textures and
boxes and such, which has kept me from writing levels for things
like this before.  NWN has a good compromise between ease of use and
detail that leans a bit towards the ease of use when it comes to
laying out areas.  The two areas I designed took minutes to lay out
the geography.  I threw in some encounters and added the area
transitions, which took a few hours to both learn to do and do, then
got to playing around with scripting, like adding a trigger that
kicks the player up to 1000 xp if they're not already there.  (The
encounter system falls apart at the bottom end and top end of the
scale.  At the bottom, even "very easy" encounters that usually
scale to the player are hard.  The built-in campaign babies the
character through first level - I lack the patience for that.)

One amusing anticdote.  The first NPC I wrote was a crow, who
"caws!" and flys away at high speed when he sees the player.  The
second, third, and fourth were a cleric and his henchmen gathering
thier stuff to leave a cave they had been exploring.  I missed the
fact that I had modified the default scripts.  When I logged into
the player client to check the placement, the cleric took one look
at me, said "caw!", and ran away.  The "save as" button in the
scripting editor is your friend.

I also wrote an amusing little trap - a bunch of goblins on a small
island in a lake in a cave, with bows.  Between them and the
player's approach path is a searchable corpse.  Player sees corpse.
Player thinks loot.  Player clicks corpse.  Character runs up to
corpse and opens the inventory.  Goblins shoot Character while he
rifles the body, as auto-approaching the corpse puts the Character
in LoS.  Amusing.  I might as well exploit the fact that most
characters will lack a ranged attack at this point in the game.

  

--
<a href="http://www.shren.net/.nail.html">
The client needs a tool built. He sends you a description of a nail...
</a>

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