08 Aug, 2010, Elvarlyn wrote in the 2nd comment:
I was one of the people who posted extensively in the thread you refer to, and I may have even been the first one to bring up the notion of MUD developer pooling (in that thread, obviously not a new idea in the grand scheme of things).
The frustration I have when looking at the MUD community is that it appears to be a hobby where everyone wants to lead and few want to contribute to the work of others. The ease with which one can now acquire a pre-existing codebase, rename it, host it and have it listed on the various mud-listing sites has turned running a game from a labor of love requiring significant fore-planning, commitment and dedication into something one can throw together almost on a whim. Like a forum where every member simply creates a new thread for their every thought without bothering to check whether it has already been dealt with, the MUD community feels to me like it drowns true innovation and professionalism under an endless tide of mediocrity.
Now, to address your ideas. You seem to be suggestion that the MUD community come together to try to build a MUD that appeals to everyone by having multiple-muds within one. Personally, I can't say I'm wild about this idea. It seems like if you did manage to bring together a significant amount of developer talent with this objective, a better strategy would be to simply begin a fixed number of separate projects (each with a fixed, target demographic) and juggle the skill competencies of the developers between them.
The point I was trying to get across on TMS is that the hobby would be in much better shape if the 19,000 virtually identical MUDs out there were replaced with a handful, each with dozens of coders, builders and writers. Obviously it's a pipe dream.
The frustration I have when looking at the MUD community is that it appears to be a hobby where everyone wants to lead and few want to contribute to the work of others. The ease with which one can now acquire a pre-existing codebase, rename it, host it and have it listed on the various mud-listing sites has turned running a game from a labor of love requiring significant fore-planning, commitment and dedication into something one can throw together almost on a whim. Like a forum where every member simply creates a new thread for their every thought without bothering to check whether it has already been dealt with, the MUD community feels to me like it drowns true innovation and professionalism under an endless tide of mediocrity.
Now, to address your ideas. You seem to be suggestion that the MUD community come together to try to build a MUD that appeals to everyone by having multiple-muds within one. Personally, I can't say I'm wild about this idea. It seems like if you did manage to bring together a significant amount of developer talent with this objective, a better strategy would be to simply begin a fixed number of separate projects (each with a fixed, target demographic) and juggle the skill competencies of the developers between them.
The point I was trying to get across on TMS is that the hobby would be in much better shape if the 19,000 virtually identical MUDs out there were replaced with a handful, each with dozens of coders, builders and writers. Obviously it's a pipe dream.
08 Aug, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 3rd comment:
donky said:
So the idea that this post inspired me to, was more along the lines of what a self-starting pre-existing team could do.
Namely, the idea of giving a MUD a greater presence through skinning it.
Namely, the idea of giving a MUD a greater presence through skinning it.
We are already seeing this happen - but of course the skinning is handled at the client end, so it's often the players who are doing it rather than the mud owners. And I think there's frequently a lack of communication between the players and staff in regard to clients, outside of the initial client recommendation. As a result, client customisations such as skins don't really get propagated or discussed much outside of client forums.
I think this will start to change though. It was actually one of your posts that finally got me to take an interest in which clients my players were using, and that's led me down a path that's had a big impact on the way I present my mud (so thanks for that!).
I've also been trying to get other mud owners interested in customised interfaces, but as I mentioned on TMS, the response seems to be fairly luke-warm. Of course several of the larger muds have already made some pretty decent progress in this field, but this is usually closed development, rather than something that can be customised further by the players, or adapted to other muds.
donky said:
Of course, just changing the description of the world is only going to get you so far. Other threads have discussed that different implementations of MUDs may appeal to different players, in terms of why some players log out almost immediately. So, one publishing may have a pure-text based interface. One might have a default of colour usage, another a default of no colour usage. One might have an LP feel, another a DIKU feel.
I can see the value in supporting different interfaces, but I think it would be better handled through in-game configurable options. In theory a customised client could automatically set these options upon connecting.
donky said:
Going back to skinning the theme of a MUD, a question might be what to do about players in the different worlds? Well, they might be prohibited from communicating with players who logged in through another interface. There might simply be different realms, rather than any thematic skinning.
An early design for my mud was based around three classes, each having a different perspective of the world, with creatures, objects and locations having dynamic descriptions tailored to the viewer. Thus for example when I draw my "plasma gun", another player might see me draw "a wand of fireballs", and so on. With appropriate skinning you could probably do the same, although it could end up being a lot of work.
I don't think it would be necessary to prohibit communication though, and providing different realms would effectively result in splitting the playerbase among multiple muds that were very similar other than theme. I suppose one could argue that a certain group of commercial muds already do this with a fair degree of success, but personally I would rather have those players interacting with each other in the same world.
08 Aug, 2010, Cratylus wrote in the 4th comment:
A character exchange protocol would allow muds to send data to each other about
visiting characters…participating muds would have to have standardized agreements
on character schema and maxes and so on, with a receiving mud ultimately deciding
on the permanence of a visiting character and/or whether to gimp hero-level visitors.
This, along with robust intermud chat, would go a long way to establishing a mud-of-muds,
a federation far more feasible than a for-real consolidation of fiefdoms under a
few traditionally-run muds.
Doubt even that will happen though. That takes work and cooperation between people with little
incentive to do either.
-Crat
http://lpmuds.net
visiting characters…participating muds would have to have standardized agreements
on character schema and maxes and so on, with a receiving mud ultimately deciding
on the permanence of a visiting character and/or whether to gimp hero-level visitors.
This, along with robust intermud chat, would go a long way to establishing a mud-of-muds,
a federation far more feasible than a for-real consolidation of fiefdoms under a
few traditionally-run muds.
Doubt even that will happen though. That takes work and cooperation between people with little
incentive to do either.
-Crat
http://lpmuds.net
08 Aug, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 5th comment:
I think Intermud chat is a great idea for improving communication between muds, and I think it could be further extended to intermud contests (particularly for minigames and the like). At some point I'd really like to add it to my mud.
But transferring characters between muds raises a huge number of problems. I guess you could just generate guest characters for visitors from other muds, but that's a lot of work to save someone the few seconds required to create a character normally. Still, reducing it to just a simple command might well be enough to convince people to "pop over for a quick look".
Converting a character would be tricky unless the muds were very similar. What might be more viable is transferring accounts between muds, or perhaps having cross-mud accounts. Perhaps you could then have agreements between muds whereby a certain amount of progress can be carried over in the form of "advancement credits", which can be spent on quickly enhancing your character.
If I ran multiple muds based on the same codebase then I could allow full characters to jump between them…but if they're that compatible, I might as well just run one mud and combine the playerbases.
But transferring characters between muds raises a huge number of problems. I guess you could just generate guest characters for visitors from other muds, but that's a lot of work to save someone the few seconds required to create a character normally. Still, reducing it to just a simple command might well be enough to convince people to "pop over for a quick look".
Converting a character would be tricky unless the muds were very similar. What might be more viable is transferring accounts between muds, or perhaps having cross-mud accounts. Perhaps you could then have agreements between muds whereby a certain amount of progress can be carried over in the form of "advancement credits", which can be spent on quickly enhancing your character.
If I ran multiple muds based on the same codebase then I could allow full characters to jump between them…but if they're that compatible, I might as well just run one mud and combine the playerbases.
08 Aug, 2010, Ssolvarain wrote in the 6th comment:
KaVir said:
Perhaps you could then have agreements between muds whereby a certain amount of progress can be carried over in the form of "advancement credits", which can be spent on quickly enhancing your character.
Wouldn't you need an objective 3rd party to handle that part, so there can be no question of integrity?
08 Aug, 2010, Scandum wrote in the 7th comment:
Downside of getting 20 people together is that even if you created something useful it'll likely fall apart sooner or later, and then you're stuck again with 30 muds of which only a handful have a decent playerbase.
Another problem of 20 people is that 5 will do all the work, 10 will demand an equal say (some of which will later claim to have been of vital importance to the project), and the other 5 can't even be bothered with the politics.
So a massive collaborative project would need a way to stop excessive cloning, and a robust mechanism that'll give those who do the work the biggest say. And even then it'll be a mess comparable to what happened at mudstandards.
I won't say it can't be done, but it's difficult.
Another problem of 20 people is that 5 will do all the work, 10 will demand an equal say (some of which will later claim to have been of vital importance to the project), and the other 5 can't even be bothered with the politics.
So a massive collaborative project would need a way to stop excessive cloning, and a robust mechanism that'll give those who do the work the biggest say. And even then it'll be a mess comparable to what happened at mudstandards.
I won't say it can't be done, but it's difficult.
09 Aug, 2010, Elvarlyn wrote in the 8th comment:
Scandum said:
Downside of getting 20 people together is that even if you created something useful it'll likely fall apart sooner or later, and then you're stuck again with 30 muds of which only a handful have a decent playerbase.
Another problem of 20 people is that 5 will do all the work, 10 will demand an equal say (some of which will later claim to have been of vital importance to the project), and the other 5 can't even be bothered with the politics.
So a massive collaborative project would need a way to stop excessive cloning, and a robust mechanism that'll give those who do the work the biggest say. And even then it'll be a mess comparable to what happened at mudstandards.
I won't say it can't be done, but it's difficult.
Another problem of 20 people is that 5 will do all the work, 10 will demand an equal say (some of which will later claim to have been of vital importance to the project), and the other 5 can't even be bothered with the politics.
So a massive collaborative project would need a way to stop excessive cloning, and a robust mechanism that'll give those who do the work the biggest say. And even then it'll be a mess comparable to what happened at mudstandards.
I won't say it can't be done, but it's difficult.
You could apply that principle to most of human endeavor. For humanity to get stuff done, 95% of people have to swallow their desire to be in charge and actually put one brick on top of the other. You're right about the difficulties, but you're also right in saying they are not insurmountable.
09 Aug, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 9th comment:
Quote
You could apply that principle to most of human endeavor. For humanity to get stuff done, 95% of people have to swallow their desire to be in charge and actually put one brick on top of the other. You're right about the difficulties, but you're also right in saying they are not insurmountable.
Well, uh, yes, but the difference is that the "most of human endeavor" you talk about involves higher stakes than MUDs.
I think the reason many people don't work together to create some Grand Unified MUD is that nobody really cares or wants to, or even sees what the GUM vision is in the first place. (It's unclear to me from reading this thread what the point is, for example.)
09 Aug, 2010, Runter wrote in the 10th comment:
In regard to transfering players..
This doesn't seem to make much sense to me as a mud developer. Wouldn't this be like pepsi printing the coke website on their products for the benefit of cola as a whole?
I for one don't think I would be part of this.
To me it seems this is more fit for third party software ala the client.
This doesn't seem to make much sense to me as a mud developer. Wouldn't this be like pepsi printing the coke website on their products for the benefit of cola as a whole?
I for one don't think I would be part of this.
To me it seems this is more fit for third party software ala the client.
09 Aug, 2010, Elvarlyn wrote in the 11th comment:
David said:
Well, uh, yes, but the difference is that the "most of human endeavor" you talk about involves higher stakes than MUDs.
Sure, but at the end of the day, every project ever was done by people who thought what they were doing was important, while others thought it was a frivolous waste of time.
The guys who made the worlds largest sandwich for the Guinness World Record managed to do so because they didn't all individually begin their own, personal sandwiches so as to have full executive control over the ingredients :P
09 Aug, 2010, Runter wrote in the 12th comment:
Their goal wasn't building the worlds best sandwich. Your analogy was a poor one. If you asked people to make the worlds best sandwich you wouldn't have the same community. And you don't need it. It doesn't take 100 chefs to make a sandwich. In fact, these sandwich developers would likely all have competing ideas of what makes a fine sandwich. Yes, if there were only one option for sandwiches that sandwich would be more popular. That doesn't mean that the lack of success of crappy products merits some strange mosaic of preference.
09 Aug, 2010, Dean wrote in the 13th comment:
I've been following that thread on TMS but I don't have (nor don't care to make one) an account there, so haven't been able to post my views (Even though my partner in crime Necro'd the thread :tongue:).
One thing I've never really seen mentioned anywhere before is targeting Education sectors. I think that, especially when it comes to things like Language, MUDs have great potential given the medium. I vaguely recall an article I read sometime ago, where a university in Australia created their own virtual world for research purposes (The details elude me, though I believe it was socio-economic in nature).
My point being, there are virtually untapped applications for MUDs beyond the gaming arena that if there were to be a community effort™ of any kind, it might be worth consideration. "Here's such and such. Oh, there are also some kickass games using this technology."
One thing I've never really seen mentioned anywhere before is targeting Education sectors. I think that, especially when it comes to things like Language, MUDs have great potential given the medium. I vaguely recall an article I read sometime ago, where a university in Australia created their own virtual world for research purposes (The details elude me, though I believe it was socio-economic in nature).
My point being, there are virtually untapped applications for MUDs beyond the gaming arena that if there were to be a community effort™ of any kind, it might be worth consideration. "Here's such and such. Oh, there are also some kickass games using this technology."
09 Aug, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 14th comment:
On the TMS thread I provided a link to Raph Koster's MMO long tails article, in which he made some interest observations that could be compared with the "biggest" vs "best" sandwich analogy. In particular (emphasis his not mine):
To compare this to the sandwich analogy, it would be like arguing that if 100 chefs each make ham and cheese sandwiches, then the majority of customers will gravitate towards a minority of the sandwiches, with one sandwich dominating the market. But if each chef makes a different type of sandwich, even if the ham and cheese sandwich proves to be the most popular, you'd still end up with more total people eating sandwiches (for example those who don't like ham, or cheese, may be willing to eat other types of sandwich - and they might introduce sandwiches to friends who do like ham and cheese).
It's a bit of a silly analogy, but I think the underlying point has merit, and I can see how it would apply to muds. If everyone created a WoW clone then people would just gravitate towards WoW, and those who don't like WoW-style gameplay wouldn't have an outlet. But by offering a wider variety of games, the mud community on the whole appeals to a broader audience, which brings more attention to our games and therefore brings in more total players.
I think this actually meshes pretty well with the concept behind MudQuest - that in order to be listed, each mud must offer something innovative or original. MudQuest seems to have ground to a halt, but I still think the idea of a closed mud list has some merit.
Quote
You see, as long as the network as a whole continues to grow, then a rising tide lifts all boats. The tail chunk slowly gets taller and longer. Even niche games start to grow. But if there are no niches meaning, the games on offer are all pretty similar to one another then the growth of the network can be capped. In effect, too many DikuMUD clones limits the total population of MMO players. People gravitate to the shiniest best one, and the tail starts to die off. The winner takes all, effectively monopolizing the audience.
The great promise of user-created MMOs in this case would be variety. The more varied the array of worlds on offer, the more online worlds in general will grow even the clones. But if we all just start making class-and-level hack n slash fantasy games, then theres only one winner: World of Warcraft, or whoever supplants it. The tide of social networking always pulls towards the center.
In this sense, stuff the industry considers fringe is probably in many ways keeping the dominance of WoW from being even more impressive than it already is."
The great promise of user-created MMOs in this case would be variety. The more varied the array of worlds on offer, the more online worlds in general will grow even the clones. But if we all just start making class-and-level hack n slash fantasy games, then theres only one winner: World of Warcraft, or whoever supplants it. The tide of social networking always pulls towards the center.
In this sense, stuff the industry considers fringe is probably in many ways keeping the dominance of WoW from being even more impressive than it already is."
To compare this to the sandwich analogy, it would be like arguing that if 100 chefs each make ham and cheese sandwiches, then the majority of customers will gravitate towards a minority of the sandwiches, with one sandwich dominating the market. But if each chef makes a different type of sandwich, even if the ham and cheese sandwich proves to be the most popular, you'd still end up with more total people eating sandwiches (for example those who don't like ham, or cheese, may be willing to eat other types of sandwich - and they might introduce sandwiches to friends who do like ham and cheese).
It's a bit of a silly analogy, but I think the underlying point has merit, and I can see how it would apply to muds. If everyone created a WoW clone then people would just gravitate towards WoW, and those who don't like WoW-style gameplay wouldn't have an outlet. But by offering a wider variety of games, the mud community on the whole appeals to a broader audience, which brings more attention to our games and therefore brings in more total players.
I think this actually meshes pretty well with the concept behind MudQuest - that in order to be listed, each mud must offer something innovative or original. MudQuest seems to have ground to a halt, but I still think the idea of a closed mud list has some merit.
09 Aug, 2010, Scandum wrote in the 15th comment:
A good analogy would be all car companies coming together and pulling their resources to build a flying car.
The point of working together would be to create something that's entirely too much work as a solo project. For the project to work it'd be important to split up the work into driver, game, world, and client development. Possibly development can be fragmented even more.
The problem remains how to avoid cloning, though a personal use only license would work.
The point of working together would be to create something that's entirely too much work as a solo project. For the project to work it'd be important to split up the work into driver, game, world, and client development. Possibly development can be fragmented even more.
The problem remains how to avoid cloning, though a personal use only license would work.
09 Aug, 2010, Runter wrote in the 16th comment:
I would argue that's what teams who make individual games do already. Sure. You might want to get a team together. This is different from some super project being required that can solve the problems the mud community has.
09 Aug, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 17th comment:
Scandum said:
A good analogy would be all car companies coming together and pulling their resources to build a flying car.
For the analogy to hold up, that would need to be the only product offered by all car companies. Therefore if you can't afford the flying car, or can't obtain a flying licence, or are afraid of heights, etc, you're forced to find another means of transportation, such as a bicycle, public bus, etc.
The point is that if there's only one product, you either take it or leave it - while if there's a variety of cars, or muds, you can appeal to a wider audience. If someone doesn't want to fly, they can take a regular ground car. If they've got kids, they can get a larger car. If they like to drive offroad, they can get a 4x4. If they're on a tight budget, they can get a microcar. And so on and so forth.
Even if you were somehow able to get every mud developer to work together on one mud, no matter how well you designed it, there would always be people who didn't like it. And if there were no other muds available, those players would leave the mud community and play other games instead. In short, I think this would actually do a lot more harm than good.
For those who advocate the merging of muds: How many of you would personally agree to shut down your own mud, and move (along with your staff) to work on someone else's mud?
What about client developers? What if it was decided that CMUD should be the future client for everyone - would you stop distributing TinTin++, Scandum, and put all your efforts into improving CMUD?
09 Aug, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 18th comment:
Speaking of being lost amongst the noise, I'm getting a little confused as to what exactly is being proposed here. It looked like we were talking about skinning MUDs, and now we're talking about flying cars.
09 Aug, 2010, Elvarlyn wrote in the 19th comment:
Apologies to the MUDbytes community as a whole for derailing this thread with my incredibly flawed but oh, so delicious sandwich analogy. I plead hunger.
I don't run a MUD, I work on someone elses so I guess 'yes.'
Were I the head coder, would I shut down Lithmeria to go work on someone elses MUD?
No, no I wouldn't.
Does this make my position hypocritical?
No, I don't believe it does. Lithmeria has a year and a half of development behind it by a full time, 9-5 (closer to 8-1am) coder, a completely custom codebase written from scratch, hundreds of lore files, thousands of unique rooms and so on and so forth. I was not intending to suggest in the original TMS thread, nor above that top-end MUDs with thousands of man-hours labor behind them should all be rolled together. I'm not advocating for God Wars II: Achaea of Isildurmageddon or something. Still, as elitist as it may sound, I believe the vast, overwhelming number of MUDs listed do not have anywhere near that amount of work put into them. Furthermore, I think many of the people who open a MUD now days do so knowing that they will likely only have a few hours a week to tinker around with their code or design areas. My position is that if those people instead looked around and found a place contributing to a project similar to the one they themselves wanted to begin, the hobby would be in better shape.
KaVir said:
For those who advocate the merging of muds: How many of you would personally agree to shut down your own mud, and move (along with your staff) to work on someone else's mud?
I don't run a MUD, I work on someone elses so I guess 'yes.'
Were I the head coder, would I shut down Lithmeria to go work on someone elses MUD?
No, no I wouldn't.
Does this make my position hypocritical?
No, I don't believe it does. Lithmeria has a year and a half of development behind it by a full time, 9-5 (closer to 8-1am) coder, a completely custom codebase written from scratch, hundreds of lore files, thousands of unique rooms and so on and so forth. I was not intending to suggest in the original TMS thread, nor above that top-end MUDs with thousands of man-hours labor behind them should all be rolled together. I'm not advocating for God Wars II: Achaea of Isildurmageddon or something. Still, as elitist as it may sound, I believe the vast, overwhelming number of MUDs listed do not have anywhere near that amount of work put into them. Furthermore, I think many of the people who open a MUD now days do so knowing that they will likely only have a few hours a week to tinker around with their code or design areas. My position is that if those people instead looked around and found a place contributing to a project similar to the one they themselves wanted to begin, the hobby would be in better shape.
09 Aug, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 20th comment:
Quote
Furthermore, I think many of the people who open a MUD now days do so knowing that they will likely only have a few hours a week to tinker around with their code or design areas. My position is that if those people instead looked around and found a place contributing to a project similar to the one they themselves wanted to begin, the hobby would be in better shape.
Yes, except that it then becomes a responsibility to other people, rather than something to mess around with on your own time.
Random Picks
Various reasons I took from it:
Now, the general sentiment that it would be a good thing if MUD developers worked together to create something of value is not a new one. But I think it is a simplistic and unrealistic one for many reasons. So the idea that this post inspired me to, was more along the lines of what a self-starting pre-existing team could do.
Namely, the idea of giving a MUD a greater presence through skinning it. What if, in much the same way as games can have their text localised dynamically for the player they are displayed to, a game could have its text theme-ified. Now, the MUD might be connectable as Luran on one IP address and Raksem on another. I would just add that these names are randomly generated for the purpose of illustration, not because I am necessarily promoting any random generation at all. Anyway, with a suitable set of authoring tools, there might be numerous themed versions of the MUD published.
Of course, just changing the description of the world is only going to get you so far. Other threads have discussed that different implementations of MUDs may appeal to different players, in terms of why some players log out almost immediately. So, one publishing may have a pure-text based interface. One might have a default of colour usage, another a default of no colour usage. One might have an LP feel, another a DIKU feel.
Going back to skinning the theme of a MUD, a question might be what to do about players in the different worlds? Well, they might be prohibited from communicating with players who logged in through another interface. There might simply be different realms, rather than any thematic skinning.