What would you change?

Old MUME discussions.

Moderator: Builders

Forum rules
The posts in this forum should be related to MUME.
Locked
Timodeus
Arata
Posts: 301
Joined: Sun Feb 24, 2008 9:20 am
Location: Germany

Re: What would you change?

Post by Timodeus »

One slight correction to the above: We do not have a real shortage of builders at the moment. It's just that we could give basically anyone who wanted one some sort of job. ;)

Apart from the "getting build for ages zones" we have some 15+ zones that get build actively at the moment.

Quests do not really call for a buillder, but more for both Va and Vm. A very good builder (Mb or Ms does not matter if no SECURE things are involved) who knows the game and can come up with balancing issues etc himself can replace most of the Va part, but there's no way around Vm-involvement at some stage. You can count at least an afternoon at least of code and testing for very simple quests. And very simple quests often have the problem they are usually not really interesting and often not worth the effort (short of doing like two or three dozen of them and that's already a rather large project again).
science
Posts: 70
Joined: Wed Aug 13, 2008 7:00 pm

Re: What would you change?

Post by science »

It seems like it would be pretty easy to automate some of the quest difficulties. Then you just add a keyword to the zone and attaach it to a person. Like a textfile format:

mob_id : trigger text regex : Said response : action in muddle script or something. : pre-test in muddle

examples:
hunter_13311 : has arrived : Hi, are you interested in helping me hunt the deer? : nil : #if (@user.level < 10)
deer : is dead! : nil : #if (@deerquest=1) @a=@a+1

And then you could make automated tests against it
set @user.level=10
room_id: text said : expected thing said

2442221 : has arrived from the west : interested in helping?
set @user.@a = 10
2442221 : has arrived from the west : thanks for your help

Then these 'quest info files' could be loaded by the c-code and parsed into pure-muddle when the system boots.

If we're going to compete with WoW, we should try adding some new fun features, etc. More coding! More changes! More mume!

I, of course, will keep pushing a) email/web connectivity so that friends can stay connected and become closer, and b) unique "events" that happen in the game (scheduled darkness, bonus pk days, bonus basic eq @ pk death days, etc. All easily justifiable in terms of game events)
Caerroil
Bug Hunter
Posts: 214
Joined: Sun Feb 24, 2008 12:25 pm
Location: Sweden

Re: What would you change?

Post by Caerroil »

Science the problem with your suggestion is that it would require a significant amount of effort from people that there is a significant lack of already (that is people with C-code access and time to spend on MUME).
science
Posts: 70
Joined: Wed Aug 13, 2008 7:00 pm

Re: What would you change?

Post by science »

At least it would be a one-time "framework" effort, which would add up to much more than it when used to make thousands of quests.

Are there more people who know/care to write in C that can be promoted? Is C-code access always a dangerous thing, or hopefully there can still be security/logs/restrictions on the ainur that would be dealing with it?

Who is currently in charge of the "vision" for the direction for Mume? Is there a vision for future changes? Seems like Ilie, from the previous work (over a year ago now) on adding nosneak/etc? Is he active on the boards?
Timodeus
Arata
Posts: 301
Joined: Sun Feb 24, 2008 9:20 am
Location: Germany

Re: What would you change?

Post by Timodeus »

We can do stuff like that in mudlle, no need for c.

The problem with frameworks is that it sounds very tempting to create one but it'd create a lot of "framework quests" that share many similarities. I'm not sure if that's good.

I once thought about a very flexible way to create "kill that" or "get object" quests and I think if we added like half a dozen or so quests with that thing we would not have too many...
science
Posts: 70
Joined: Wed Aug 13, 2008 7:00 pm

Re: What would you change?

Post by science »

I agree on both points... Perhaps "custom" quests could still be made, but it would really flush out the interaction, epsecially for newbies, to have quite a few kill X, or retrieve X quests.

I'd like to see it useful as a way to gain xp at lower/mid levels, similar to how WOW has treated quests. Many of them are boring, but not as boring as killing boars over and over! :) It adds variety...
brin
Posts: 3
Joined: Thu Nov 05, 2009 11:02 pm

Re: What would you change?

Post by brin »

If I ruled MUME for a day I would like to take it back to its Lord of the Rings origins. There is a too much powerful magic that allows players to dominate battles and move great distances across the game. I don't remember the books being THAT focused on spells. A greater focus on healing and other Cleric spells that aid players and less on those that skew the game in favour of high level mages.
Andróg
Posts: 204
Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2008 10:10 pm

Re: What would you change?

Post by Andróg »

brin wrote:If I ruled MUME for a day I would like to take it back to its Lord of the Rings origins. There is a too much powerful magic that allows players to dominate battles and move great distances across the game. I don't remember the books being THAT focused on spells. A greater focus on healing and other Cleric spells that aid players and less on those that skew the game in favour of high level mages.
Implementors working on "a completely new kind of spell system that fits Tolkien's world better" is practically an urban myth by now. ;)
Locked