28 Jun, 2010, Oliver wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
Let me introduce myself, first of all. My name is Oliver. I work on a MUD called Visions of Conflict (we like to abbreviate to VoC, as per usual MUD three-letter-acronym standards) along with several other people. I serve in the capacity of Coder/Occasional Builder/General Admin. In the past couple months, we've been working to develop the coded infrastructure of our game and we've decided it's time to try to recruit some more members to our team.

This post is probably getting boring already, so I'll move on to the good stuff: why you should work with us. Our project originated because every member of it is a long-time MUDder who has been relatively dissatisfied with the MUDs that we've played in our lives. While we're very capable of realizing what awesome features they've had, often-times the negative features outweigh the good ones. With this in mind, we decided that the only acceptable alternative was to create our own game. Our MUD will be heavily roleplay-enforced, but we're very keen not to allow our game to experience the negative side effects of that paradigm. Allow me to list a few of the neatest features our MUD has/will have/will not have.

Mechanics-Specific:
- Fifteen completely original classes, several of which have very neat mechanics and flavor. There is a strong balance between casting and melee classes.
- A system wherein players can learn a finite number of (generally quest-specific) abilities outside of their class called "prestige abilities."
- A redone, practiceless skill system where each skill/spell has a rating between 0 and 25.
- A redone, intuitive, and EXP-less levelling system based off cumulative skill ratings (rather than EXP) to ameloriate the repetetive hack and slashing of EXP-levelling (and better simulate actual character progression).
- No permdeath. We think this is bad because permdeath inevitably ends up in people being afraid to die. When people are afraid to die, they're afraid to kill. When no one is in danger of being killed, IC death becomes a joke.
- An innovative death system that incorporates roleplay and other players when a PC is killed.
- No required pre-creation Staff Approval of players. Waiting to be approved is boring and we know this.

Roleplay-Specific:
- A completely original world and world-lore.
- A dynamic introduction system in which you can introduce yourself as whatever you want, or remember players as anything you want.
- An intuitive, perspective-specific emote command that supports targeting of multiple specific players or objects.
- Five major (and several minor) cities, each with detailed culture and their own coded, completely player-run governmental organizations.

Of the above, only the class coding and world-building are not yet complete, though both have begun and are actively being developed.

While we know that every facet of our game is not unique (and I have not advertised our game as the Hottest New MUD), with the combination of ideas, implementation, and (possibly most crucially) help from a cohesive team of developers and players, we're confident that it will evolve to become something that is different from every other MUD.

If you are interested in becoming involved with the project, please– contact us. It's very likely that we can find something you can help with, whether it be coding, building, web design, conceptualization, et cetera. We would love to let you use any of the skills you possess to positively impact our game.

If you're interested, log on at omen.genesismuds.com, port 6010. If you would rather talk over an IM client, I can be reached over AIM at Carrillo129, over MSN at Carrillo-129@hotmail.com, or you can email the entire development team at visionsofconflict@gmail.com. Thanks for the time you took to read this. :D
28 Jun, 2010, Oliver wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
As a side note, if you log into our MUD and are interested in examining a public changelog, use 'help updates' and 'help old_updates_2' to see a mostly-complete list of updates.
28 Jun, 2010, Kline wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
Hi, thanks for a well written ad, hope you get some assistance!

I was curious about your intro system. How do you handle two parties referencing a third if they can both remember them as completely different things/names, and the third can introduce themselves as such? Like if I had Bob, Tom, and Sally.

Bob tells Sally, 'Call me Jim'. Sally remembers Bob as James.
Bob tells Tom, 'Call me Jacob'. Tom remembers Bob as Jason.
Sally and Tom wish to talk about 'Bob'; how will they know Jim/James/Jacob/Jason are the same?

It sounds very interesting; just trying to see how you'd handle this since you said it is so open :D.
28 Jun, 2010, Evan wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
Hi, I'm part of the "we" that Oliver refers to. For the purpose of your example, the short answer is that they won't unless they're paying attention. If they choose to be forgetful, like misremembering people on purpose, they may not be able to adequately compare notes later on.

However, we do have a short description system that makes it easier to identify characters. At creation, you pick a short description like "a blond man with blue eyes" and everyone sees you as that until you introduce yourself. Also, because we're roleplay enforced, we do require descriptions for all characters on our game. So, say that Sally and Tom do have a bit of trouble remembering what name was given where, if they can remember his physical attributes, it might be easier. You can also update how you remember other people by just using the "remember" command to give them a new name.
28 Jun, 2010, Oliver wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
Kline said:
Hi, thanks for a well written ad, hope you get some assistance!

I was curious about your intro system…


Thanks, first of all. :D

And like Evan said, basically, they won't. If one character introduces himself as two different things to two different people, those two different people will both think he has a different name. If Sue tries to talk about her new friend Jacob, and Joe's telling her about his new friend Joey, they're going to think they've got two separate friends.

I really like the way this works, in practice, because then you have the very realistic capability to 1) pose as someone else IC, 2) give an alias if your character wouldn't give out his real name, 3) remember people as who you suspect they might be, if they haven't given you their intro.
29 Jun, 2010, Koron wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
Evan said:
Hi, I'm part of the "we" that Oliver refers to. For the purpose of your example, the short answer is that they won't unless they're paying attention. If they choose to be forgetful, like misremembering people on purpose, they may not be able to adequately compare notes later on.

However, we do have a short description system that makes it easier to identify characters. At creation, you pick a short description like "a blond man with blue eyes" and everyone sees you as that until you introduce yourself. Also, because we're roleplay enforced, we do require descriptions for all characters on our game. So, say that Sally and Tom do have a bit of trouble remembering what name was given where, if they can remember his physical attributes, it might be easier. You can also update how you remember other people by just using the "remember" command to give them a new name.

If short descriptions are static after creation, it might be useful to store the information for later recall, so "remember Tom" returns "Tom is a blond man with blue eyes." This should remove the pain of the players actually having to keep track, which quickly becomes impossible. If this is what you meant by "if they can remember his physical attributes," I guess you can disregard this post. ;)
29 Jun, 2010, Evan wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
Koron said:
Evan said:
Hi, I'm part of the "we" that Oliver refers to. For the purpose of your example, the short answer is that they won't unless they're paying attention. If they choose to be forgetful, like misremembering people on purpose, they may not be able to adequately compare notes later on.

However, we do have a short description system that makes it easier to identify characters. At creation, you pick a short description like "a blond man with blue eyes" and everyone sees you as that until you introduce yourself. Also, because we're roleplay enforced, we do require descriptions for all characters on our game. So, say that Sally and Tom do have a bit of trouble remembering what name was given where, if they can remember his physical attributes, it might be easier. You can also update how you remember other people by just using the "remember" command to give them a new name.

If short descriptions are static after creation, it might be useful to store the information for later recall, so "remember Tom" returns "Tom is a blond man with blue eyes." This should remove the pain of the players actually having to keep track, which quickly becomes impossible. If this is what you meant by "if they can remember his physical attributes," I guess you can disregard this post. ;)


Already accounted for that. All you'd have to do is type "whois Evan" and it would say "You remember Evan as a blue-eyed man with blond hair."
29 Jun, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
Kline said:
I was curious about your intro system. How do you handle two parties referencing a third if they can both remember them as completely different things/names, and the third can introduce themselves as such?

That was the issue I had as well, when I added an introduction system in my previous mud, and I found it got confusing for the players. I ended up changing it so that people had to introduce by their real name - although they could choose to introduce by forename, surname, or both, so you could still have the situation where someone knows you as "John" while another person knows you as "Mr Smith".

This approach used less memory, too, as it only required a couple of bits (I didn't waste the other bits either - they were used for other things you might know about the person, such as crimes you'd witness them commit, favours they owed you, etc). Memory usage is probably far less of a concern these days though.

However one big advantage of being able to 'tag' someone with a name is that you don't need to wait for them to introduce themselves. If someone mugs you in the street, you can tag them as "the mugger", ensuring that you'll recognise them again the next time you see them.

There were some really nice discussions about such systems on Mud-Dev in the past, including how you could support disguises, fame, different degrees of recognition, etc - so that someone who'd only seen you once might not recognise you after you got a haircut, while a close friends might recognise you even through a disguise. These were based on the idea of dynamic descriptions rather than static ones, however. There was also some talk of expanding the same system to inanimate objects.

There are a lot of cool possibilities for an introduction system, and in some ways I regret discarding it.
29 Jun, 2010, Evan wrote in the 9th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
This approach used less memory, too, as it only required a couple of bits (I didn't waste the other bits either - they were used for other things you might know about the person, such as crimes you'd witness them commit, favours they owed you, etc). Memory usage is probably far less of a concern these days though.

However one big advantage of being able to 'tag' someone with a name is that you don't need to wait for them to introduce themselves. If someone mugs you in the street, you can tag them as "the mugger", ensuring that you'll recognise them again the next time you see them.

There were some really nice discussions about such systems on Mud-Dev in the past, including how you could support disguises, fame, different degrees of recognition, etc - so that someone who'd only seen you once might not recognise you after you got a haircut, while a close friends might recognise you even through a disguise. These were based on the idea of dynamic descriptions rather than static ones, however. There was also some talk of expanding the same system to inanimate objects.


Features, and instances like this, are what prompted us to work on a system like that. We had played on a MUD with a very limited introduction system, and I personally had played on another MUD with an extremely advanced introduction and disguise systems that let players do exactly what you've described. That kind of flexibility is what we're looking to have once we've finished fleshing out the possibilities of what the system is capable of, and new ideas come up every day we discuss it.

Right now, we're actually working on making mobiles compatible with the system, so that you're even capable of getting their introductions (in certain cases) and remembering them if you need to know something specific. This could be useful in quests, hiding items, and I'm sure other ways once we've gotten to the point where we're ready for testing. There's a lot of work left to do, but we're ready to do it.
20 Aug, 2010, Evan wrote in the 10th comment:
Votes: 0
Hey everybody, we're still looking for motivated, skilled builders. We have a new form of contact, however.

Oliver: saire@visionsofconflict.com

Evan: athron@visionsofconflict.com

We also now have a website and forums set up at http://www.visionsofconflict.com.
20 Aug, 2010, Evan wrote in the 11th comment:
Votes: 0
Sorry for the double post, but the website is actually currently under construction but new information is being added every day
22 Aug, 2010, Elvarlyn wrote in the 12th comment:
Votes: 0
Evan said:
We also now have a website and forums set up at http://www.visionsofconflict.com.


Will the Lore be going up on the Website soon? It all comes up as 'under construction' for me and I wants to read it. :cry:
22 Aug, 2010, Oliver wrote in the 13th comment:
Votes: 0
Elvarlyn said:
Evan said:
We also now have a website and forums set up at http://www.visionsofconflict.com.


Will the Lore be going up on the Website soon? It all comes up as 'under construction' for me and I wants to read it. :cry:


Yessir! Check back in a couple days, please. I'll be trying (I'm the coder/web admin) my hardest to get some substantial lore/world information up by the middle of this week.

Also, if you're interested in our project, I would encourage anyone to make an account on our forums. They're a good way to get in touch with everyone who's involved, and an awesome way to let us know that you're interested. You can contribute to lore discussions, mechanics ideas, etc. in the various threads we'll be putting up as we go along.
22 Aug, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 14th comment:
Votes: 0
I'm curious: do you have the lore written up yet, or at least conceptualised, or is that still being worked upon?

Maya/Ruidha
22 Aug, 2010, Oliver wrote in the 15th comment:
Votes: 0
Rudha said:
I'm curious: do you have the lore written up yet, or at least conceptualised, or is that still being worked upon?

Maya/Ruidha


Conceptualized: yes, almost completely. The things that are not fully conceptualized are, generally speaking, 50% complete. We are at a working level for all of our lore, but we'd like to add some more depth to some of it.

Written: some of it yes, some of it no. Right now, I'm in the process of writing up lore for stuff that we have fully conceptualized. I'm also in the process of updating the website to show things that we already have written.

Any other questions I can answer? I'm totally game.
22 Aug, 2010, Cratylus wrote in the 16th comment:
Votes: 0
Oliver said:
Any other questions I can answer? I'm totally game.


Where is that elephant taking that shark?

-Crat
22 Aug, 2010, Oliver wrote in the 17th comment:
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My friend, the elephant is not taking the shark anywhere. They are in cahoots.

Jack Handy said:
Contrary to what most people say, the most dangerous animal in the world is not the lion or the tiger or even the elephant. It's a shark riding on an elephant's back, just trampling and eating everything they see.
22 Aug, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 18th comment:
Votes: 0
Its just that since the emphasis in the MUD is roleplaying from what I gather from your post, a cohesive and interesting setting and background becomes an important part of the MUD, I think. Since the website doesnt have one unless I missed it, perhaps you could post a summary for the benefit of those interested?

Maya/Rudha
22 Aug, 2010, Oliver wrote in the 19th comment:
Votes: 0
Rudha said:
Its just that since the emphasis in the MUD is roleplaying from what I gather from your post, a cohesive and interesting setting and background becomes an important part of the MUD, I think. Since the website doesnt have one unless I missed it, perhaps you could post a summary for the benefit of those interested?

Maya/Rudha


Yeah. I totally get what you mean. For the sake of redundancy, though, I'm going to hold off on that for now– because within a couple days, I'll be posting the Theme, Theme/History, Theme/Setting, and Theme/Magic pages on the website. Together, I hope they'll be a fairly comprehensive concentration of information that shows what our background will be like.
23 Aug, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 20th comment:
Votes: 0
Well, if its something you plan on posting on the site, by all means you don't have to duplicate it here. If you could give an update when you have it up though, that'd be great :)

Maya/Rudha
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