03 Sep, 2010, Igabod wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
I'm not actually doing any projects at the moment, but I was just letting my mind wander for a while and I thought about the frustration of playing a rp enforced mud that says you must have a name that fits the character race but the racial names incorporate punctuation such as apostropies and hypens yet the mud only allows letters.

So I was just wondering why it is that none of the muds I've played have done anything about this, even the highly popular ones I've come across.

Is it just too much work to change this in the code? Or has nobody noticed this flaw except me?

For a great example, look at any star wars themed mud. A huge percentage of the alien races use apostrophies in their names. The most notable in my mind is the chiss race, as in Mith'raw'nuruodo aka Admiral Thrawn. I've played a LOT of swr muds, many which included the chiss race, but none which allowed punctuation. Mithrawnuruodo just looks wrong to me, and it would be pronounced incorrectly without the punctuation too.

Are there any codebases out there which do allow punctuation in names? Even in a limited fashion?
03 Sep, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
It would be an incredibly easy thing to change in a codebase that doesn't allow it. It's actually something I've been wavering on in my own mud, because the little bit you gain out of that is something Im not sure is worth the headache of having to deal with even more possibility for people being tools with abusing names.

Maya/Rudha
03 Sep, 2010, Igabod wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
I see no reason to take away the possibility from the players who aren't douche bags. One suggestion I could make for it would be to allow players to put punctuation in their names only after they earn a certain amount of rp points or whatever function you have in place of that. That way you know they're not gonna be douches about it because before they can even earn rpp they have to conform to the rp rules anyway right?
03 Sep, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
Any system like that can be easily gamed, though. Aetolia had that for a while and it basically amounted to people giving it to buddies for nothing and thus made it a fairly meaningless system.

The couple of MUDs Ive been on that could have that kind of thing in regards to names wouldn't allow it from character creation as it were, but Imms/admins could change it for you which seems reasonable enough to me.

Maya/Rudha
03 Sep, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
Igabod said:
Is it just too much work to change this in the code? Or has nobody noticed this flaw except me?

The first muds I played were MOOs, and that's when I started using the name K'Vir. When I moved on to DikuMUDs I had to change it, but by the time I created my own mud I preferred KaVir anyway, so I just left it as it was.

It would be rather annoying to see names like — or '-'-'-'-', but it shouldn't be a problem for muds with naming policies - it could even be automated to some degree.
03 Sep, 2010, Tyche wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
Igabod said:
Are there any codebases out there which do allow punctuation in names? Even in a limited fashion?


TeensyMud allows pretty much anything except numbers.

So Rya%^(()(^%@$AlllTh~```uiahs'''d would be a legal name

Actually it will transform it into a proper name, the above becoming…
Rya%^(()(^%@$Alllth~```Uiahs'''D
03 Sep, 2010, Kaz wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
Tyche said:
So Rya%^(()(^%@$AlllTh~```uiahs'''d would be a legal name


Even with unbalanced brackets? Shameful.
03 Sep, 2010, Mudder wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
I just feel bad for the other players that have to type out these crazy ass names quickly in a PK situation. It becomes the crazier race name you have the bigger your PK advantage.
03 Sep, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 9th comment:
Votes: 0
Mudder said:
I just feel bad for the other players that have to type out these crazy ass names quickly in a PK situation. It becomes the crazier race name you have the bigger your PK advantage.

Most modern muds allow you to abbreviate names, so if it was just apostropies and hypens I don't think it would be too bad. Blind players might have trouble though.
03 Sep, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 10th comment:
Votes: 0
Tyche said:
So Rya%^(()(^%@$AlllTh~```uiahs'''d would be a legal name


I can hear a screen reader choking already.

Maya/Rudha
03 Sep, 2010, Tyche wrote in the 11th comment:
Votes: 0
Kaz said:
Tyche said:
So Rya%^(()(^%@$AlllTh~```uiahs'''d would be a legal name


Even with unbalanced brackets? Shameful.


Well in the Arcturus 5 system, there's a humanoid race that sports a blowhole on their forehead. The ( indicates the sound of blowing bluish snot out of that hole, and ) is a wheezing intake. % and $ are low and high whistling noises through the blowhole, while @ is a farting noise. ^ is a pirate-like Arrr! made through the mouth; ~ is similar to the sound of making raspberries. ` and ' are the clicking of the lower and upper mandibles respectively. ;-)

Rudha said:
I can hear a screen reader choking already.


I propose a thematic screen reader modification would be order then. :-)
03 Sep, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 12th comment:
Votes: 0
Tyche said:
Well in the Arcturus 5 system, there's a humanoid race that sports a blowhole on their forehead. The ( indicates the sound of blowing bluish snot out of that hole, and ) is a wheezing intake. % and $ are low and high whistling noises through the blowhole, while @ is a farting noise. ^ is a pirate-like Arrr! made through the mouth; ~ is similar to the sound of making raspberries. ` and ' are the clicking of the lower and upper mandibles respectively. ;-)

Now that's just begging for an MSP soundpack…
04 Sep, 2010, Igabod wrote in the 13th comment:
Votes: 0
Rudha said:
Any system like that can be easily gamed, though. Aetolia had that for a while and it basically amounted to people giving it to buddies for nothing and thus made it a fairly meaningless system.

The couple of MUDs Ive been on that could have that kind of thing in regards to names wouldn't allow it from character creation as it were, but Imms/admins could change it for you which seems reasonable enough to me.

Maya/Rudha


I see no way for it to be easilly gamed on a mud where the RP points are given out by the imms for submitted logs or witnessed sessions. And if the imms are the ones giving it out to friends then those imms should be fired.


Mudder said:
I just feel bad for the other players that have to type out these crazy ass names quickly in a PK situation. It becomes the crazier race name you have the bigger your PK advantage.


All smaug derivatives allow you to type the first couple letters in so Mith'raw'nuruodo wouldn't need to be typed in full, just type out Mith.
04 Sep, 2010, Mudder wrote in the 14th comment:
Votes: 0
I've learned hard and fast in my PK career that abbreviating names, while usually convenient, leads to big problems.

Many mobs have multiple keywords that can be used to refer to them and at times a short three or even four letter abbreviation can refer to both the player and the mob. Imagine fighting a player, he flees, you hit an extra command (like murder xxx) while chasing and it hits a mob instead.

So yes, almost all muds allow you to abbreviate, but it is not a practical solution to the PK problem in my experience. :cool:
04 Sep, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 15th comment:
Votes: 0
Mudder, your problem could just as well apply to a name like Mithrawnuruodo or any longish name. The other characters (assuming they're very standard punctuation) aren't really adding to the complexity here. Why is it that much harder to type Mith'raw'nuruodo than Mithrawnuruodo? Why is it harder to type Mith'raw'nuruodo than Mithrawnuruodoilkirtnamablablabla?
05 Sep, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 16th comment:
Votes: 0
David, I do hope you realise that any of those examples is going to be a pain to type in a situation where you have to be quick about it.

I think the easiest way to handle short names or aliases as it were, is just to check for the name, and if that fails, see if the argument provided is a substring of anything in the room currently. You might want to anchor it to the start of the name to prevent some unexpected matches, though.

Its trivial to strip the punctuation for matches, if you wanted to. That may be beneficial for blind players relying on a screen reader.

Maya/Rudha
05 Sep, 2010, Sharmair wrote in the 17th comment:
Votes: 0
Allowing added characters in the name is really a trivial matter, as (in SMAUG anyway) there
is added code to RESTRICT what a name can be. So you would just tweak that to not be so
restrictive. The SMAUG code I work with allows apostropies and hypens (and numbers with a
cset option) in addition to letters. There are some rules though with what can be where and
what letters can be capitalized.

Mudder said:
I've learned hard and fast in my PK career that abbreviating names, while usually convenient, leads to big problems.

Many mobs have multiple keywords that can be used to refer to them and at times a short three or even four letter abbreviation can refer to both the player and the mob. Imagine fighting a player, he flees, you hit an extra command (like murder xxx) while chasing and it hits a mob instead.

So yes, almost all muds allow you to abbreviate, but it is not a practical solution to the PK problem in my experience. :cool:


Though I highly doubt any of this would be anything more then a minor inconvenience, in SMAUG
(and maybe other codebases) all these issues can be solved with just adding two characters to
your abbreviated name. 0. (zero-period) before a name always refers to a player (PC). As an
example 0.mith with that name given.
05 Sep, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 18th comment:
Votes: 0
Rudha said:
David, I do hope you realise that any of those examples is going to be a pain to type in a situation where you have to be quick about it.

Ah, yes, thank you, that was kind of, sort of, exactly, precisely the point I was making to Ssol. :smile:

As I said, the difficulty of typing is not a problem specific to punctuation alone. Therefore the argument that punctuation is bad merely because it makes names harder to type is somewhat poor, because you can easily construct names without punctuation that are hard to type.
05 Sep, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 19th comment:
Votes: 0
That's true enough, but it does increase the complexity and makes them more difficult for players to remember. There's some psychology writing on that kind of thing I can dig up, but the less familiar a word is - and that can be one of the ways it is different - the more difficult it becomes for someone to remember correctly. Inversely, its worth noting that players whom are used to MUDs where this occurs are probably going to remember those names with greater ease; I suppose the net effect would be that the learning curve for new MUD players, or players new to that kind of thing, would be increased.

Personally I suppose I'm somewheres in the middle. Normal punctuation in names is generally fine if kept "sane", but speaking of keeping something sane, that whale-creature example posted earlier is a good example of something far too complicated, I think.

Maya/Rudha
05 Sep, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 20th comment:
Votes: 0
Well, I'm not arguing in favor of punctuation. All I'm trying to say is that names can be unfamiliar and hard to type without punctuation. If you were playing a game where people gave their characters Thai or Indian names, it would probably take some time to get used to it. As with anything, punctuation used with reason and moderation is ok, but it can be used unreasonably. (I think we're agreeing on that point.)
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