<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="content-type"> <title>An LPC Renaissance</title> <link rel="icon" href="./favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"> <link rel="shortcut icon" href="./favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"> </head> <body> <pre style="font-family: courier new,courier,monospace;"><big><big><big style="font-weight: bold;">An LPC Renaissance</big></big> </big><font size="+1"><br><br><br>This is a long article. My time is valuable, and I presume you<br>feel the same way about yours. I will therefore begin with a<br>summary, then attempt to present my arguments in a structured way<br>to make things as brief as possible, while remaining informative.<br><br>There is horrendous and inexcusable bias toward one lib here.<br>I am its author, so I hope that, even if you don't forgive <br>me this bias, you'll understand it is just pride and not<br>disparagement of others.<br><br><br><span style="font-weight: bold;">Summary:</span><br>* I am working on a way to promote <a href="http://lpmuds.net">LPmuds</a>.<br>* My motivation and reasoning are explained in this article.<br>* The conclusion I've reached is that at this point, I need content.<br>* This means I need help.<br>* I ask for your help, either creating new stuff or donating content.<br><br><br><span style="font-weight: bold;">Section Index:</span><br><a href="#motivation">My Motivation</a><br><a href="#objective">The Objective</a><br><a href="#progress">Progress So Far</a><br><a href="#assessment">Assessment of Viability</a><br><a href="#next1">The Next Step part I</a><br><a href="#next2">The Next Step part II</a><br><br><br><span style="font-weight: bold;"><a name="motivation"></a>My Motivation</span><br>-------------<br><br> Lib coding is my hobby. I really enjoy it, much the<br>way a motorcycle freak spends his free time in the garage, or<br>like a gardening enthusiast constantly in his yard. My code<br>of choice and expertise is LPC.<br><br> It is more fun (for me) to have a hobby shared by <br>many people than a hobby shared by few. With more LPC coders<br>out there ideas and projects can be shared, and this is<br>a fun and cool thing.<br><br><br><span style="font-weight: bold;"><a name="objective"></a>The Objective</span><br>-------------<br><br> I want to lure more people into using LPmud. The<br>more people use it, the more they will see how great it is<br>and either they will create their own LPmuds, or join <br>existing ones. Either way, the continued growth of an LPmud<br>community can build momentum toward a critical mass, where <br>a self-sustaining chain-reaction of continual adoption and<br>innovation can happen without relying on a couple of "movers<br>and shakers" to make things go.<br><br> This objective satisfies my intent, which is to have<br>more fun in my hobby, by having more people participate in it.<br><br><br><span style="font-weight: bold;"><a name="progress"></a>Progress So Far</span><br>---------------<br><br> I've sucessfully revived an old LP mudlib called<br>Dead Souls. It's been thoroughly debugged, updated, and <br>brought in line with the expectations of modern builders. I<br>don't feel any shame in saying it is, hands down, <a href="http://lpmuds.net/lpmud_list.html">the best<br>LP mudlib you can download today</a>. There are some thirty or<br>so development muds currently up and using Dead Souls.<br><br> I've partnered with Tacitus in promoting a site<br>called <a href="http://lpuni.org">LPUniversity</a>, which uses forums and a different<br>mudlib to advance the cause of LP.<br><br> <br><span style="font-weight: bold;"><a name="assessment"></a>Assessment of Viability</span> (where I explain muds are not dead)<br>-----------------------<br><br> Probably the first objection any LP old-timer will<br>have is "what's the point? There are no more mudders."<br><br> From the perspective of the typical LP mud, this<br>probably seems like a clincher. Over the years, LP muds have<br>seen a decline in their playerbase, and one by one many<br>of the old LP muds have quietly winked out of existence. The<br>gjs router is loaded with moribund muds that barely breathe<br>one or two players a day, if that many. Muds, it seems, <br>are dead.<br><br> This, however, is not so. That dust-covered old<br>LP geezer is mistaken. There is a strong and vibrant mudding<br>community out there. More than a thousand muds, certainly<br>thousands of players, with new ones every day. There is<br>a thriving mud landscape out there that the LP dinos don't<br>know about because they're in the old rut of seeing only<br>as far as their intermud network.<br><br> A couple of URL's should be a wakeup call. First,<br>take a look at <a href="http://www.topmudsites.com">http://www.topmudsites.com</a> and scroll down<br>to the mud list. Connect to any of the top 10, or top 20, or <br>top 40, and tell me that mudding is dead. Consider also that<br>not only does the "top" list there go to 100, some of these<br>are *commercial* muds. People *pay* to be players.<br><br> "A few fools a community does not make," you might<br>say. Poke at a different site. Go to <a href="http://mudconnector.com/mud_listings.html">http://mudconnector.com/mud_listings.html</a><br>and connect to a few of the muds listed there. There's life<br>in muds, baby. Just because your mud is stagnant doesn't<br>mean everyone else has a foot in the grave.<br><br> What you are seeing is that LP muds have given up.<br>Like Detroit in the 80's. No innovation, no keeping up with<br>the market. Of course the LP intermud is a graveyard. The<br>world passed us by. Diku, once in ascendance, is now supreme.<br><br> But it doesn't have to stay that way.<br><br> LP muds are fabulously flexible and easy to learn<br>compared to the most popular types of muds out there. The mud<br>scene is largely composed of Diku and its derivatives, not<br>because of technical superiority or ease of use, but because<br>the fragmented LP community forgot to keep innovating. <br><br> The Diku muds have a dramatic advantage: since all<br>are written in C, for the most part anything written in one<br>will work on any other. There are vast repositories of<br>"snippets" that Diku admins consult...and by plugging this<br>here and that there, they can have a playable mud with <br>dozens of areas in a day. Or less.<br><br> Their disadvantage is that to do really fancy stuff,<br>they need someone highly skilled in C. As you know, that is<br>not so for LP muds. Just a fair knowledge of LPC is needed,<br>and this is an order of magnitude (at least) easier than<br>becoming mud-code proficient with C.<br><br> Dead Souls 2 has been specifically designed to <br>compete with Diku. It is super easy to install, and it has<br>an "On-Line Creation" system that lets you bypass line<br>editing when creating rooms, npc's, objects, etc. The big<br>stumbling block for beginners, the ed line editor, is now<br>just a minor inconvenience, if anything. It's heavily<br>documented, and I've gone as far as setting up a newbie-<br>friendly I3 router to support new adopters. It even comes<br>with a Windows version.<br><br> DS2 is poised to be the killer app that swings mass<br>interest back to LP, and this renaissance of LP adoption<br>is what I seek, to foster new development and innovation.<br><br><br><span style="font-weight: bold;"><a name="next1"></a>The Next Step, part I</span><br>---------------------<br><br> Why do people write/run muds? If they just did it<br>for the technical pleasure, they'd just never open. The<br>majority of mud admins out there do what they do because<br>it's fun to run a game (or at least, they thought it would<br>be) and a game without players is, well, not much of a<br>game.<br><br> A mud's success is most often measured in its<br>playerbase. Therefore, I have to consider this in my<br>LP Renaissance project. If people decide on an LP codebase,<br>or specifically DS2 as a lib, it's not usually because they<br>like me personally, or because the box it came in has a <br>cool dragon on it. My personality is insufferable, and there is <br>no box. The reason people would adopt is that they think they can <br>make a successful mud with it, and this most often means<br>lots of players.<br><br> My job, then, is to convince potential adopters that<br>players will come. So, what do players want? Good gameplay,<br>fun challenges, interesting areas. In short, players are<br>here to be entertained.<br><br> However, the stock Dead Souls 2.1 mud doesn't have<br>much in the way of areas. There are a few sample domains,<br>sure, and this is enough to demonstrate the basics of what<br>Dead Souls can do. But to really sell Dead Souls as a viable<br>option, it needs knock-em-dead areas. Areas that, when a<br>curious potential adopter installs and logs into their<br>test DS mud, makes them go "WOW!".<br><br> *That* is what sells a codebase. *That* is what can<br>make or break a lib. I am deeply proud of the work I've<br>done under the hood, but I do not fool myself about my<br>level of creativity or imagination. I'm smart enough to<br>know that I am great at lib work, but mediocre at content<br>creation.<br><br> And I've worked too hard on Dead Souls to resign<br>myself to mediocrity in one of its most vital aspects: gameplay.<br><br> To move forward, DS2 needs fun, exciting, *thrilling*,<br>stock areas. The current defaults are "just fine". They show<br>you how to do things, and things work properly. But that isn't<br>enough. When someone tries out DS2, I don't want them to say<br>"gee that was easy to install, and everything works properly."<br><br> I want them to say "This is GREAT!".<br><br> I therefore ask for your help. If you are a good<br>builder, please join my effort. It's your contribution of an<br>inspiring, exciting area for Dead Souls that will greatly<br>enhance its appeal and adoption. <br><br> In contributing to a Dead Souls area, you will be<br>ensuring that your work will live on, beyond just one mud. <br>Rather than have your work locked away in a single mud, and<br>hoping that mud doesn't fail, you can be sure that thousands<br>of people enjoy how you've expressed your creativity.<br><br><br><span style="font-weight: bold;"><a name="next2"></a>The Next Step, part II</span><br>---------------------- <br><br> This second part is closely related to the previous<br>issue. Let's assume that Dead Souls 2 is the vanguard of an<br>LP renaissance, and what is good for it is good for LP in<br>general (obviously this is tortured logic, but please humor me).<br><br> As wonderful as DS2 is, its Achille's heel is content.<br>Content, content, content. It isn't enough that DS2 is <br>technically superior in any way to any other lib. This advantage<br>is meaningless if people aren't attracted to it in the<br>first place. And the attraction for adopters is players. And<br>the attraction for players is content.<br><br> The request I'm about to make may well be unprecedented<br>in its bald, shameless effrontery. If you've read this far, though,<br>you can probably tell I've lost a lot of those normal behaviors<br>people associate with prudence.<br><br> The request? I want your mud.<br><br> Now, don't get me wrong, if you've got players and they<br>have fun and you run a game, I ask nothing of you. Ignore what<br>I said.<br><br> But there are a few out there that I'm speaking to. The<br>ones who can't really explain why their mud is still open, since<br>they haven't seen a serious player in months or years. The ones<br>that actually closed a mud, and maybe have a backup burned onto<br>CD, probably never to be played again.<br><br> You know who you are. Your content is great, and was once<br>enjoyed gratefully by many people, but now rather than collect <br>players, it collects dust. You're either flirting with closing<br>it, or closed it already.<br><br> I ask this of you: if nobody is gaining benefit from<br>that work, if all it will do is go to Old Mud Heaven...give it<br>to me. <br><br> What I want to do is build a showcase mud. I want to<br>provide potential adopters an example of what a Dead Souls mud<br>can be...with players and active creators and everything. I<br>don't just need content for the default Dead Souls distribution,<br>I also need content to run a Dead Souls Showcase that attracts the<br>kind of attention and energy that can make it an engine of<br>progress for LP.<br><br> I resurrected Dead Souls. Download it and see for yourself <br>how much effort and dedication went into it. You'll know I have<br>the skill and insane determination it takes to convert your<br>code, and make your mud breathe again.<br><br> Obviously you will admin your content, if you want. And<br>the Intellectual Property is yours...you wrote it, you have<br>copyright.<br><br> What I want is not to take credit for anything. What I<br>want is to have a towering beacon of LPC goodness that can<br>call to new adopters, and serve as a source of potential <br>players and creators for the Old Guard.<br><br> Don't just say "Sounds neat. Hope it works." Help<br>me. I need your contribution. I can't do all this on my own.<br><br>- Crat<br><a href="mailto:cratylus@comcast.net">cratylus@comcast.net</a><br></font><font size="+1"><span class="sb_messagebody"><br></span> </font><big> <br><a href="../index.html">Dead Souls Homepage</a><br><br></big></pre> </body> </html>
