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<h1>Engine Requirements Overview</h1>
<h2>Updated 9/8/2006</h2>
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<ul>
<li> <a href="#fantasy">The Fantasy Game</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#levels">Levels and Experience</a></li>
<li><a href="#classes">Character Classes</a></li>
<li><a href="#wrap">Wrapping Up</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li> <a href="#heroic">The Heroic Game</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#goals">Story Lines</a></li>
<li><a href="#interaction">Player Interaction</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#tech">The Tech Game</a></li>
<li><a href="#thoughts">Final Thoughts</a></li>
</ul>
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<h2><a name="fantasy">The Fantasy Game</a></h2>
<p>The fantasy engine moderates a game about the accumulation of
personal Power by the player for his or her game character. Personal
power is typically measured by combat prowess, but can also be measured
by the breadth of skills the player accumulates. Since skills are
usually intended to enhance the players prowess in combat, it becomes
evident that, ultimately, combat prowess is the measure of the power of
the player.</p>
<p>Combat prowess involves the ability to hit foes in combat
(attack), the ability to damage foes which are hit, the ability to
avoid being hit by foes in combat (armor), and the ability to withstand
damage done by foes when hit. Maximizing these abilities is done
primarily through items of armor, items of weapons, armoring skills,
damaging skills, and improvement of vital statistics such as health,
strength, dexterity, and other attributes important to both skills and
the long-run development of other vital statistics.</p>
<h3><a name="levels">Levels and Experience</a></h3>
<p>The fantasy players power will tend to remain static for a
period equal to their time at a given numeric Level of achievement.
Levels are, therefore, a fair measure of the power of a player. When
levels are gained or lost, however, power will tend to rise and fall
respectively. This is due primarily to the fact that the reward of
gaining in the numeric level of achievement will always take the form
of new skills or attributes which contribute to the combat prowess, and
therefore the power, of the player. The player who gains in levels will
be instantly granted a greater ability to withstand damage done by
foes, greater access to skills, a greater ability to use their existing
skills, and a greater ability to hit foes in combat. An advanced level
also opens up the player to the availability of more powerful items of
armor and weaponry. Players will also, from time to time, gain new
skills automatically by advancing in level. Lastly, gaining a level
will grant the player tokens of credit in the form of Training Points
and Practice Sessions, which can be spent to improve vital statistics,
or to gain new skills All of these things amount to the ability to
improve the players power.</p>
<p>Higher levels of achievement are awarded in the fantasy game
for the accumulation of a number of Experience Points sufficient to
qualify the player for the higher level. Experience points may be
gained or, usually through carelessness, lost. If a player loses a
sufficient number of experience points, they may also be demoted to a
lower level of achievement.</p>
<p>Experience points, in turn, are gained in many ways. The most
common way is through the Demonstration of the players combat prowess
over the computer-animated denizens of the world through combat. A
player who defeats a foe in combat will gain experience points
proportional to the foes own power and combat prowess. A player who
defeats a weak foe will not be awarded any experience points, while
defeating an extremely powerful foe will yield the greatest experience
point award. Experience points may also be gained by the exercise of
the players non-combat powers, which is discussed in the next section.</p>
<p>Either way, experience points, typically gained through the
exercise of combat prowess through actual combat, are applied towards
the gaining of levels. The gain in levels is then accompanied by
greater combat prowess, which allows the player to more easily defeat
foes in combat, and continue the cycle of gaining personal power.</p>
<h3><a name="classes">Character Classes</a></h3>
<p>Variety being the spice of life, numerous ways have been
devised to vary the ways, means, and types of ways in which a player
can gain in power. Some players may wish to focus primarily on ensuring
that they can withstand the attacks of other foes, even at the expense
of an improved ability to deal damage. Some players may wish to focus
on developing their power through items of armor and weaponry, even at
the expense of a better set of skills. Still other players may want to
focus entirely on skills as a means of maintaining combat prowess, even
if it means their native combat prowess is quite weak. To accommodate
these differing philosophies of play, the game engine affords players a
choice in several Character Classes</p>
<p>Character Classes are divided into several basic types, each
of which embodies the different philosophies of accumulating and using
power. The basic types include:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>The Fighter, with strong native combat prowess, and broad
access to items of armor and weaponry, but extremely weak in power
through skills.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The Mage, who is weakest in native combat ability, and has
almost no access to items of armor and weaponry, but which has the
broadest and most formidable selection of skills for doing damage and
avoiding the attacks of foes.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The Cleric, who embodies the defensive philosophy, being
weak in the ability to deal damage, but strong in the ability to
withstand and recover from it. This class also includes evil clerics,
who approach the Mage in their modus operandi, but still harbor the
general clerical weaknesses of low attack ability and stronger armoring
abilities. Evil clerics are most likely to use their skills to
approximate the more direct healing mechanisms enjoyed by the Good
cleric, which also keeps them under the general Clerical umbrella.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The Bard embodies the philosophy of strength in numbers.
This class is designed primarily to be attractive to groups of other
classes, meaning that the bard gains in power by joining his strength
with others. The bard is natively weak in both attack and defensive
abilities, but tends to have powerful skills which will tend to enhance
groups of other players in their own abilities.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The Druid, like the Bard, embodies the philosophy of
strength through external assistance. In the case of the Bard, this
assistance comes from other players. For the druid, it comes from other
computer-automated creatures in the game, whose assistance the Druid
can solicit through skills. This makes the druid not unlike the evil
cleric in some respects, but without the evil clerics ability to
empower him or herself through items of armor. This is made up for in
the druid class by an enhanced ability to withstand damage dealt by
foes through the druids weak armor.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The Thief is both a weak mix of all of the other classes,
with moderate access to items of armor and weaponry and moderate native
defensive abilities, and moderate access to combat skills. The strength
of the Thief, however, comes from unique access to abilities found in
no other classes. Thieves have unique access to monetary wealth, with
which the favors of other players can be gained. They also have unique
access to the areas of the World in which the players live. Unlike the
other classes, a thief has mechanisms to go to places and to get into
things which no other class has. Thieves also have the unique ability
to pass through the world without being detected, which assists in
their ability to access the otherwise inaccessible.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>The Character Classes above do not only embody certain
philosophies in the accumulation of power. They also embody certain
fantasy arch-types. These arch-types, made popular by books such as
Lord of the Rings and games such as Dungeons and Dragons, are the basis
for the most popular forms of fantasy role-playing. For this reason,
the immersion of the player into the role that they have selected
becomes an end in itself, and a secondary goal beyond the primary one
of the accumulation of combat prowess. To further this goal, certain
other means of gaining experience points by the use of non-combat
skills which are designed to enhance role-playing, are devised and put
into practice. These alternative means of gaining experience through
role-playing can include things such as a Thief stealing, or a Druid
planting trees and communing with nature, or a Cleric converting
infidels to religion, or a Bard performing for a crowd.</p>
<h3><a name="wrap">Wrapping Up</a></h3>
<p>As was stated in the overview, the fantasy game is about the
accumulation of personal power for the players character, usually in
the form of combat prowess. The mechanisms employed, namely Skills,
Levels and Experience Points, as well as the restrictions imposed in
the form of Character Classes, forms the basis of most fantasy Muds.
Alternatives have become to emerge which attempt to remove the
intermediary goals represented by levels, the measure of progress
represented by experience points, and the restrictions and role-playing
benefits of character classes. These alternatives operate in many
different ways, but they all still boil down to the fundamental game
missions of accumulating personal power, usually combat prowess.</p>
<h2><a name="heroic">The Heroics Game</a></h2>
<p>The heroics game will essentially be an engine whereby
classless/levelless players take on goals assigned by the system on
behalf of a faction. The goals in turn form part of a grand story that
the player is an active participant vital to its success. The
game only ends when the story does, and even then, may end only with a
hook into the next heroic tale.</p>
<h3><a name="goals">Story Lines</a></h3>
Each player that plays the heroics game will select a
superhero with the appropriate superpowers, and will select a secret
identify by which they will be known to the public world.
<h3><a name="interaction">Player Interaction</a></h3>
<p>Players must play an active role in each others attempts to
pursue their own story lines. </p>
<p>Players should be set only to go unconscious on death. </p>
<h2><a name="tech">The Tech Game</a></h2>
<p>The tech/sci-fi engine will facilitate a game whereby the
players travel to different planets in space ships in order to
accumulate wealth. The wealth can be accumulated through the trading of
goods, the accomplishing of goals or quests, or through piracy. The
wealth is then used to upgrade the players technology; e.g. better
ships, better weapons, better components, which will aid them in more
easily acquiring more wealth.</p>
<h2><a name="thoughts">Final Thoughts</a></h2>
<p>CoffeeMud may seem like an enormous conglomorated mess of
swirling classes and algorithms exploding forever into a void of chaos.
Strangely enough, it was designed that way. There are several design
principles that are followed to make the codebase generally Better.
These principles include Playability, Flexibility, Isolation, and
Integrity.</p>
<p>Playability is the easiest to explain. A feature does not
remain in the Engine if it is not Fun, or somehow detracts from Fun.
This may sound like a vague rule, since people will disagree on what is
fun. However, it is quite certain that if even the proponents of a
feature agree it does not ultimately make the game more fun, it will
not be included on the feature list. Often this means other
considerations fall away under this rule, with Realism being the most
common. However, in the end, it is never forgotten that CoffeeMud is a
game, not a real-life simulation.</p>
<p>Flexibility is also easy to understand. Whenever possible, any
feature becomes better if, while having a Common-Case Default behavior,
it also includes the ability to have that behavior altered through
parameters. Sometimes these parameters take the form of "coffeemud.ini"
file entries, or of object parameter strings as in behaviors or
abilities. Sometimes flexibility is accomplished simply by not having a
feature impose itself unless the builders include something in their
worlds to activate it. This last method often has to be tempered
against Integrity, but that is a delicate balance that is preserved in
the end.</p>
<p>Isolation is a strictly code-base principle. What is means is
that, each class in the code base interacts freely with it's own
methods, freely with the core classes, and freely with the interfaces.
They interact rarely with other classes in the same package, and they
never interact directly with any class outside their package (except,
as mentioned, through public interfaces). This principle has served the
system very well, as it generally means that the functionality of
spells and behaviors, items, or mobs, can all be found within their own
java source. This makes maintenace easier, but it also adds to the
Flexibility of the codebase by making it possible to add and remove
classes with minimal impact to the system.</p>
<p>Integrity is a prominant design principle of this codebase.
What it means is that, whenever possible, the codebase requires as
little work as possible by the world designers to bring codebase
features to the players. The codebase contains everything within itself
the materials necessary to implement all of its features. The Common
Skills are a great example of this. A player can build his own armor
because the character class provides armormaking skills, not the
builder. The player can get the materials to make the armor because the
rooms provide the resources, not the builder. Implementing the feature
only requires rooms (which every map will include), and nothing more
for the builder to do to make armorsmithing possible for players.</p>
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