In my IT experience, it is utterly common and standard to have servers
classed in terms of "development" and "production".

"Yeah we can bring those down anytime, they're dev. But not too long.
The developers really bitch after a couple of hours."

and

"Don't you dare even breathe near the production servers!"

"Production" doesn't even have a hint of alpha, in my experience. They're
systems with end-users conducting the business the systems were put
together for.

I'm of the opinion these categories should not be especially
strict in their expected values, but I think "production" should be
among the accempted synonyms for "we are open for players
and rarely go down for maintenance or major upgrades".

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net

I agree.

I can think of quite a few more GENREs than are listed.
Not sure SUBGENRE is all that useful.

GAMESYSTEM is one that's especially important to mushers and to some extent those seeking combat muds.
I'd suggest some possibilities to populate it be D&D, AD&D, Fudge, Rifts, Final Fantasy, Vampyre, Homerules, etc.

I high suggest that anything related to GENRE allow a list of values. Nobody that has crossover material likes to have to choose to say their game is "sci-fi" or "western" if they have elements of both (Firefly comes to mind).

One of the jobs I had a while back was doing data organization, and our boss insisted we have only a single "category" value for every article in the database. Guess what? The majority of articles were in category "misc" because they couldn't belong to multiple categories.

I'll toss Arduin, and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay into the GAMESYSTEM list, just because the books for those are on the shelf near me. :)

Probably easiest to just omit it if your game is not alpha or beta since muds don't really fit the terminology. I'm weary of loose definitions because that could make things very difficult on the crawler's side.


What genres do you think are lacking? My idea was to make genres as broad as possible, and subgenres as narrow as possible. So someone interested in fantasy can view all fantasy muds, while there's still the option to search by subgenre for Dragonlance muds. I should probably get rid of the Fan Fiction genre, and maybe add "Modern" for muds that are set in modern days, though I don't know of any that don't qualify as either sci-fi or fantasy.


I added:

"GAMESYSTEM"   "Custom", "d20", "D&D", "Final Fantasy", "FATE", "Fudge", "Fuzion", "GURPS", "Hero", "Megaversal", "MEGS", "Risus", "Savage Worlds", "Storyteller", "Tri-Stat dX", "True20", "Unisystem"

Couldn't find info about the Rifts, Vampyre, or Homerules systems on Wikipedia. Wasn't AD&D changed back into D&D in the 3rd edition? Also not sure if "Custom" should be an option, possibly custom systems should simply omit the gamesystem var?

Cross-overs, games with several genres in parallel worlds, …


I'm assuming your worry is technical about parsing things, and not about loose definitions in general…

A firefly mud would list itself as genre: sci-fi, subgenre: firefly. It's not perfect, but I think it's preferable to over-categorization by muds like: "Western, Pirates, Space Cowboys, Civil War, Canibalism"


Moral of the story, never add a 'misc' category? ;) But if you can think of any muds that don't fit the current 6 genres I'd like to hear about it.


Thanks, I'll have a look at those.

I added a "WORLDS" option so muds with multiple worlds are kind of covered. Multiverse might be a genre name, but it'd make more sense to me to force a mud to pick a real genre.

It's not my intent to provide an exhaustive list, nor should I think be the protocol's. If I create a mud based on BESM (Big Eyes Small Mouth) or TFT (The Fantasy Trip), I'm going to put that in there. If the list crawler doesn't grok it, then they need to either ignore it, substitute something, add it, or process it as is.

Edit: BTW, HomeRules, HouseRules are oft-used synonyms for unpublished homemade role-playing games.

Actually, if you allow multiple selections on sub-genre, I'd probably classify a Firefly MUD as Fan-Fiction:Sci-Fi/Western. :)


No examples off the top of my head, although "Mystery" might be a distinct genre from "Horror", as a MUD set in Sherlock Holmes' London would be very different from CthulhuMUD.

I'm kindof thinking in terms of how the local library or bookstore typically shelves things. Although we probably don't need a Cooking of Self-Help genre. *wink*


Thanks, I'll have a look at those.

I know there used to be a Warhammer MUD out there… if you find an Arduin-based MUD, let me know. It's one of my favorite off-the-beaten-track paper RPG's, mainly for things like this:

Phandelume's Ritual of the Binding Night:
This ritual requires 3 hours and 45 mana points to complete. Once done, a one-square-mile area up to 20 miles distant, so long as the wizard can actually see it by any means, will be covered by mystik shadows causing total darkness which is impenetrable by any non-magikal light or flame. All arcane light is reduced to but one-quarter its normal effectiveness. All within the area of night must save versus "Mage Fear" and will find that they cannot leave the area covered by the magik darkness. No strenght is strong enough to batter a way out and no magik of less than OP 15 can affect its dark hold upon its target area for the 9-hour duration of its existence. No save versus this inability to leave or the darknening of these shadows is possible. This duration may be extended by 20 minutes per 10 mana points put into the initial ritual. It does nought else, no harm nor injury, yet is one of the most feared of all the ancient magiks. This ritual requires 33 weeks and 9,900 G.S. in materials to learn.

So, boom! You pop that over a city and anyone inside that doesn't make their save goes mad with terror, and they're all trapped together for half a day. Sounds like fun to me! *grin*

ALPHA, BETA, STAGNANT? ;)

More seriously, perhaps it could be something like:

CLOSED-TESTING, OPEN-TESTING, FULLY-OPERATIONAL

If the general public can't connect then the mud falls into the first category. The second category means it's open to the public, but that the owner doesn't consider it fully playable. The third category means the game is fully playable, even though it's likely still undergoing changes.


There's the crossover subgenres mentioned by DavidHaley. For example Star Wars muds would be Science Fantasy (crossover of Science Fiction and Fantasy), World of Darkness muds would be Dark Fantasy (crossover of Horror and Fantasy), etc.

A "Punk" genre might be worth adding as well - I know there are some cyberpunk muds out there, and there may be some steampunk muds as well.

I'm thinking the same thing, anything over 10 options should probably be an open list. I think I'll list the most well known / popular systems and add an "etc" like I did with SUBGENRES.


The main problem I see with multiple sub-genres is that someone will likely abuse it. It's perhaps better dealt with by the listing site, which could list a link to the firefly subgenre in the 'fan-fiction' and 'western' subgenres.


That would currently fall in the 'historical' genre, and "Mystery" might better work using "gameplay - Adventure" for muds that focus on questing, exploring, and puzzles.


How about "ALPHA" "CLOSED BETA" "OPEN BETA" "FULLY OPERATIONAL" ?


Star Wars is more sci-fi than fantasy though, and I assume the same goes for World of Darkness muds, not to mention that the Horror genre implies it has fantasy influences. A good directory would handle the 'star wars' and 'world of darkness' subgenres though.


I'd say that's better handled by the listing site. It's ultimately a subgenre of sci-fi, and I'm leaving subgenres entirely open cause there are just too many of them.

What's the difference between alpha and closed beta?

I kind of think this issue is being overthought…


Fantasy of the LotR type – which is what people associate with the "fantasy" genre – is rather different from the fantasy associated with horror films like 'The Ring' etc.


If the genre option is open to begin with, I'm not sure it's really necessary to have subgenres.

The genre option is closed, the subgenre option open.

Gaw, this just seems like a perfectly good idea implemented in the worst way.

Had I been here earlier, I certainly would have cast my vote toward the open-ended, extensible way of doing this..

You said, "Don't underestimate the appeal of an elitist protocol."

Elite to me would imply: clean, efficient, easily extensible, adaptable, etc.

I can see good reasoning for your method. Most muds have rooms, areas, are in these various stages of development, are either pay to play, pay for perks, or free to play, etc… But this kind of design paradigm only promotes sameness, repetition, and stagnancy. Why will I take my mud in a new direction, experiment with new kinds of gameplay and mechanics, when the protocols muds utilize don't promote roomless movement?

My points exaggerated a little bit here, but… You get the gist of what I'm saying?

In software development terms, "Alpha" is still purely in development in all respects. "Beta" is feature complete, but still being tested and balanced. "Production" is fully operational, all (known) bugs have been fixed, and the system has been balanced with respect to the conditions present at launch.

"Closed" beta generally means the feature set has been locked, but only a select audience has been invited to help finish testing the product. Typically, the folks you invite to your closed beta are known to the development team, or have been very enthusiastic supporters of the product who have convinced the development team they want to help, rather than just getting a free preview.

If the publishing world (which co-opted these terms) worked like the development world, we'd see MMO's going back and forth from alpha to beta as they play-tested and decided certain features were lacking or unneeded.

Alpha is a feature-complete release, but is usually tested internally. In mud terms this would be a version which is running online, but which only the staff can play.

Beta is a version which has been released to external users for further testing, either being available to the general public (open beta) or to select customers (closed beta).

From a general player's perspective there's no real difference between pre-alpha, alpha and closed beta, because in all three cases they can't actually play the mud. That's why my proposal simply combined them into "CLOSED-TESTING" - the player might be interested in reading about it on the website or joining the forum discussions, but they know that they can't actually play anything yet.

Forgive me Quix and KaVir for asking a rhetorical question without making my point clear (for indeed I had already given definitions for the terms, albeit a few pages back): the above is exactly what I was driving at.

Since this is a protocol meant for listings, I'm not sure I see the point in making distinctions irrelevant or at best tangentially interesting to players. As I said I think this issue has been far over-thought by now. What's wrong with plain old alpha, beta, production?

EDIT: fixed mbcode

Nothing is "wrong" with it, but that categorisation is of more interest to developers than players, so you need to decide who the target audience is. If the game is open beta then the player can connect and try it out, but if it's closed beta they can't - the most they can do is read the website and participate in forum discussions, exactly as if the mud were in alpha or pre-alpha.

Thus I would argue that from a player's perspective, there are three important categories:

CLOSED-TESTING: Pre-alpha, alpha or closed beta. The player can't connect, they can only read about it.

OPEN-TESTING: Open beta. The player can connect and play, but they should be aware that it's not a finished stable product, and may undergo major changes without warning.

FULLY-OPERATIONAL: The player can expect the game to be fairly stable and fully functional, although they should still accept that newer features may have issues.

Scandum's proposal of "ALPHA", "CLOSED BETA", "OPEN BETA" and "FULLY OPERATIONAL" would provide the best compromise, I think, providing information which is of interest to both players and developers.

I much prefer 'production' or 'stable' over 'fully operational' – they are more standard terms. An open test is after all 'fully operational', it just might not be operating in the way that is the 'final way'.

I agree that for testing, the only thing that players care about is closed or open.

I think a good reason for including alpha would be that alpha muds might still want to list themselves with the hiring builders and/or coders flag set.

For the final stage we now have the suggestions: "LIVE" - "PRODUCTION" - "STABLE" - "OPERATIONAL" - "RUNNING" - "FULLY OPERATIONAL".

I think LIVE is the best one as per: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_re...