23 Nov, 2010, Sanus Compleo wrote in the 1st comment:
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pulse noun:
A. A regularly recurrent wave of distension in arteries that results from the progress through an artery of blood injected into the arterial system at each contraction of the ventricles of the heart.
B. The palpable beat resulting from such pulse as detected in a superficial artery.
Also: The number of such beats in a specified period of time (as one minute).


The name Pulse came to me after a good deal of musing, during a long period of time late one night. At the time, I didn't know quite what it meant to me – although through exploration I find it a name more and more suitable to the project that it has become associated with. Reflection on the word and the meaning itself, seems somewhat metaphorical to the story that has become entwined with the idea, having a Pulse is to still be alive. It is; after some thought, one of the most human aspects we encounter in day to day life. The world of which I will be opening up to you, to explore tonight, revolves around this concept – the concept of humanity.

Pulse is at once, a city and an entire world setting. It would be an acceptable place for a campaign adventure, and a mud setting, i believe. The city itself was built on the planet Earth, hidden away in a remote section of South America, away from civilization and the public eye. Construction began in the very late 19th century, and ended some time in the beginning of the 20th century. Some of the world's brightest and best minds of the era had been called upon to design pieces and parts of the city. In description, it is a megastructure; an entire city built upon a foundation of galvanized steel and concrete. It boasts a good number of support beams rising it some number of hundreds of feet from the sea level, where a flat six and two thirds mile long (And wide) platform is held up in the air.

Atop the first surface, is similarily the first city of Pulse, known as "Level One". Stacked on top of it, much like a high-rise structure, are six additional layers, totaling seven layers. Each layer contains an entire city, transport between the cities and in the cities consists of an elevator system, with manual service entrances, and a shuttling system, to get citizens to and from place to place on the individual layers. It's seven layers were designed to house almost fifteen million citizens (15,000,000). Every need was to be seen to, without the need to import food or goods. The concept of self sufficiency was a key point, and indeed necessary in the construction of Pulse. Vertical farms, designed by some of the most brilliant urban planners of the time, utilize fresh water brought from elsewhere in the city, and artificial lighting in order to grow a good amount of crops, and on some level raise herds of cattle. Mining drills of exceptional size dig down into the Earth to gather valuable materials and minerals, while large platforms on the edge support fishing.

The purpose behind Pulse is clear upon cursory research into the history of the world itself at the time. During the 1930's, a cataclysmic event altered the face of the planet, and indeed it's future entirely. The event itself, and what started it goes into even further into the story, although is presently to be kept secretive. The end result however, would be apparent to anyone who stepped into this new Earth. The sea level had risen some three hundred feet… Now lapping gently at the bottom of the great city, Pulse. This was the city's purpose, and it had been successful in achieving it's goal – The salvation of the human race… or at least a very small portion of it.

It is governed by a council of currently undefined origin (And number), that works in conjunction with a church figure – together they operate as a sort of divine rule. Other worships are strictly heretical in this society, which admittedly will drop a good demographic of people, and likely spark outrage to folks who have offended sensibilities by the way the church folk are portrayed, and how religion in general is portrayed. The have joint-appointed people who work as an 'elite police', as well as witch-hunters, who (From what I hear,) is drawn upon the Inquisition from the Warhammer 40k series. I hadn't known that at the time, and even dubbed them "Inquirers". From what I've seen however, the two groups drop similarities from that. The Inquirers are indeed holy warriors, and one of very few people on Pulse permitted to own and operate a lethal weapon; in fact, they get two. A hand-made revolver, and a longsword.

Money and economy is mostly rather imaginary, companies run for the sake of necessity, and money exists out of habit… I would imagine if a governing body not only imposed itself under complete rule, and did away with money, then things would not be so peaceful. The citizen body is mostly compliant, out of fear and gratitude.

The city is lit, and mostly run, electrically. Large tidal turbines under the base of the city power the entire thing. There is also a complex water filtration system, and a sewer system built under the city. Large "service pipes" which are approximately eight feet by eight feed in width and length dot the city going up through the layers, supplying power and water distribution centers with power and water respectively. Sewage lines even go down through these service pipes, although carefully maintained to avoid contamination and power-outages.

Hospitals, Schools and Universities, even stores are all features of the city. Services and good trading is still in effect, obviously. Citizens are housed in single story apartment plots, more or less. Perhaps larger than single story? I haven't given thought to that as of yet.

This, is where I reach my problem. As of now, I'm the only real developer on this, and mapping out the city is a difficult and arduous task; most of the difficulty lies in my own understanding of what a modern city needs – specifically my lack of understanding. I would; if the folks of Mudbytes would be so kind, like to have some thoughts in the planning stages of this mud, not building but planning and story planning. More information can be supplied if asked for, in fact I would like to encourage that very thing! An important note: This thread is not for recruitment purposes, it is merely to discuss the concepts and ideas of the city, Pulse
23 Nov, 2010, jurdendurden wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
Very often I've read books where the author knows in detail the technology/science behind what he/she writes about, when the author is clearly not of that sort of background. How, I've wondered from time to time, can they know so much about a subject they supposedly know so little about?

My only guess is through extreme "cram" studying about the subject. I would probably utilize the heck out of google for a few days, pour over some architectural blogs, articles, papers, and other things related. I'd read on Wikipedia about famously built cities or even just buildings (like the Burj Khalifa… the semi self-sustaining, largest building in the world… you might be able to "borrow" some ideas from).

And then of course… you can go by pure fiction. Since it is a game, you can always bend the rules of reality and create a city infrastructure based on your own design. You might even be able to incorporate magic somehow in the mix if you wanted.
23 Nov, 2010, Sanus Compleo wrote in the 3rd comment:
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That sounds remarkably like what I've been doing as of late, however it would be very nice to have some outside ideas and perspectives on this; it's a very large project of thought before it can become a large project of any other sort. I want to hear some of the ideas of people who are more experienced in what I am trying to do more than anything, but I thank you for your input and appreciate it greatly! I've not heard of the Burj Khalifa, and I'll have to look that up! I suppose I can supply a base list of what I have so far for the entire city, though I'm sure that I'm missing key things. Not only that, but it's hard to get all of these things to fill out a map!

I would like to say now, since I did not think to include it in my first post, any and all ideas are welcomed and will be considered… (Within reason of course, ;)!)
02 Jan, 2011, Sanus Compleo wrote in the 4th comment:
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I love how this thread didn't get a single post for so long. Good stuff.
03 Jan, 2011, Idealiad wrote in the 5th comment:
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With all due respect, I think the reason your post didn't get much response is because it describes a somewhat vague concept, and you close by saying you don't have much experience in what you're trying to describe, which makes me wonder how much work you're actually willing to do on this project, and you want to collaboratively build the concept with the community here. But you have hardly any posts in this community yourself, you've given hardly any feedback like this on other people's projects, so you have no social capital that would encourage people to help you with your ideas.

So what this ends up being is a thought experiment about designing a SF city, and you haven't really made any direct connections to how this would work in a mud. For that I think you're in the wrong forum. I would try a SF forum or newsgroup, there's a lot more of this worldbuilding kind of discussion there.

Again, I realize the tone of this post is somewhat condescending or whatever, I hope you take it in the honest spirit it's intended.
03 Jan, 2011, Sanus Compleo wrote in the 6th comment:
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I'm not easily offended and I'm fairly good at sifting out constructive criticism from condescension, but I had expected at least one post since November :P. Honestly, is that so much to ask? Yeah. It was a vague post. I was tired that day.

Edit: I feel embarrassed re-reading through that, actually. blub.
03 Jan, 2011, chrisd wrote in the 7th comment:
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Sanus Compleo said:
I had expected at least one post since November

In that case you should've included something for people to argue about and/or flame you over. :smirk:

It's not really clear to me what you're looking for, but if you want to produce a game it's my opinion that you should initially focus on getting the fundamental design and code done before you start going in-depth into the world/lore. You've got yourself a nice, comprehensive idea for a world there and you could spend the rest of your life fleshing it out into a scientifically correct alternate reality, but if you actually want to get something finished I think you have enough to start with.
03 Jan, 2011, Cratylus wrote in the 8th comment:
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Quote
I'm not easily offended


Ok, let's see about that.

Quote
The name Pulse came to me after a good deal of musing, during a long period of time late one night.


You're pretty specific about a 300 foot sea level rise precipitating apocalypse. Now, it might well do that…since
a billion homeless people is a situation that would stress any homeworld of 6 billion. There are problems with
this premise though:

1) Is a 300 foot sea level rise even possible? The amount of water unleashed on the surface to just rise 3 meters
is mindboggling, 30 meters incomprehensible…but 90 meters? This is a big planet…it takes a LOT of water to do
that. Is there really enough frozen stuff in glaciers and Antarctica to even do the job?

2) If there really is enough ice on land to do it, whatever happened that made the stuff melt that fast would probably
create related problems at least as serious as the sea level, no? Just what does it take to melt Antarctica within a
decade? And wouldn't that heat pretty much melt everything everywhere? And if not, wouldn't it force massive loads
of water vapor into the air through sheer hotfulness, mitigating the sea level? And wouldn't the entire process make
air basically unbreathable, temperatures unsurvivable, and weather a constant 300-mph hurricane?

3) A steel derrick half a kilometer in the air is problematic as a salvation solution for humanity. Let's start with the
living space. 6.66 miles by 6.66 miles (cute, btw) gives you about 44 sq miles for the "few" humans left after the
300 foot sea level Great Flood. Turns out that's fine, because while you're living a life of terror balanced on a spindly
steel column in South America, I can just drive to Ohio, which is entirely above 455 feet current sea level, and
affords its inhabitants a comfortable 44,000 sq miles of living space in which to settle their End Times differences.
And trust me, Ohio ain't the only place with lots of room for me to build my hurricane-proof earthen warren. Good
luck surviving the fall from your 1930's magic platform when The Big One hits. Or is it also a spaceship?

4) Here we run into the crux of the problem. You've got awful specific about the setting without establishing
realistic touchpoints of what can be reasonably expected and what is going to be Deus Ex Machina. "Ah, well,
The Event was caused by steampunk scientists learning magic secrets from the 11th dimension, so yes,
actually, Pulse will one day detach from the mooring column and leave the Earth when the transdimensional
Bollockians arrive and chew everone to death slowly over a thousand years".

All my nitpicking makes it seem like I've missed the point of your wondrous imaginings. In fact, it's meant to
illustrate that your fantasy inherently depends on some level of verisimilitude to be exciting (even Steampunk
has rules), but you simply have not thought it through enough, and it shows, and that's why people politely let it
ride for a month.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net
03 Jan, 2011, David Haley wrote in the 9th comment:
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Quote
Honestly, is that so much to ask? Yeah. It was a vague post. I was tired that day.

IMHO you have answered your own question with these few sentences. You're asking for people to put in serious thought, but that means you have to not write posts you are "embarrassed" by after the fact.
03 Jan, 2011, Sanus Compleo wrote in the 10th comment:
Votes: 0
@ David Haley *nods*, That'd probably be best for my goals! I'll work to do better with future posts.

@ Crat - I didn't ever research further than Google (Which told me, as you can tell, notadamnthing, though likely with all the wrong topics. Should'a picked a tall mountain, and went with that.) how high the sea level would have needed to be to flood the entire world - which was my goal here. I was hoping that someone here would have been able to offer And yes, it's a BIG ol' Deus Ex Machina. Of the biggest and most catastrophic sort, which in fact won over the only other person who was interested in the project. It also provided the conflict for the game as well, which is of the most hopeless variety - and now I say without any reservations it was meant to be a mud set in the Cthulhu Mythos universe. Do not get the impression that the rest of the project had not been well thought out, in all this post was the exhausted rantings of someone who had far too much caffeine, and far too little sleep. The whole damn thing's on suspension though, because I realized how narrow of a world it was (It had been the point of the thing, but it also kept the code from utilizing a hell of a lot of features.). But out of curiosity, if you were to make it more plausible and realistic, how would you go about doing so?

I am very interested in participating in the creation of a galactic horror MUD at some point, if anyone else by chance happens to be interested >.>

Also, I changed the size of the platforms later on in personal editing, because it felt rather immature to include it in something I was so serious about at the time.

And lastly, this was the sort of conversation I was hoping for, particularly out of Crat… Where were you in November?!

EDIT: On a less broad note, it seems (Especially from the title) that I was searching for what would be needed in an entirely self sustaining city, to base the individual layers off of that. I had a good few things, food production (Hydroponic plants), hospitals, schools, some form of policing, meeting places, places to make and sell goods - keep some sort of economy going, wouldn't want to leave the survivors of the apocalypse with nothing to do. Idle hands, and all that. Beyond that, I didn't have much that wasn't just interesting world fluff.
03 Jan, 2011, Cratylus wrote in the 11th comment:
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fwiw, this was my favorite part:

Sanus Compleo said:
Money and economy is mostly rather imaginary, companies run for the sake of necessity, and money exists out of habit…


:)

In November I was up to my eyeballs on my work projects, and triaging my involvement
in mud stuff to those things that seemed likely to achieve best effect.

I'd suggest rethinking the environmental calamity angle. If you're summoning cthonic titans
anyway, might as well make the apocalypse something that makes the disaster more
tangibly man-made…like legions of red-eyed thralls murdering most everyone and then
merging into Low Archons that must be defended against from Mount Pulse or whatever.

That way the whole thing can be within the mythos and not require researching on your part.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net
03 Jan, 2011, Runter wrote in the 12th comment:
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Carbon Credits MUD is already trade marked by Al Gore. Soz.
03 Jan, 2011, Sanus Compleo wrote in the 13th comment:
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Carbon Credits MUD? Also, Low Archons what? Also, without the whole flooding aspect, I would not be able to have a small manageable world, which was one of the focal points of Pulse - a good excuse to be lazy and only make so many rooms. :P
04 Jan, 2011, Runter wrote in the 14th comment:
Votes: 0
Quote
Carbon Credits MUD? Also, Low Archons what? Also, without the whole flooding aspect, I would not be able to have a small manageable world, which was one of the focal points of Pulse - a good excuse to be lazy and only make so many rooms. :P


I'm not really committed fully to this conversation and I've tldr most of it, but just responding to this one point– You don't need to model everything in your world to represent it regardless of the size. I'd argue it's usually unreasonable to. And the philosophy can extend to npcs, items, events/quests, whatevs. You don't have to represent it to say it exists, existed, or will exist. For example, wars in distant lands with real consequences to conditions locally that can't actually be accessed.
04 Jan, 2011, Tyche wrote in the 15th comment:
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Even 6 feet is unfathomable. Had to say it. ;-P

The plausibility of such a world really doesn't bug me…..
But what does one do in this world?
Roleplay?
Kill Mobs?
04 Jan, 2011, Cratylus wrote in the 16th comment:
Votes: 0
Tyche said:
Even 6 feet is unfathomable … But what does one do in this world?


Considering the Cthulhu angle, I'd say it helps to be in league with the Dark One.
04 Jan, 2011, Scandum wrote in the 17th comment:
Votes: 0
Tyche said:
But what does one do in this world?

In an ideal situation one would do the same thing as in the real world, survive and compete, with whatever means provided. This would be the player vs environment model.

Then there is the player vs player model which can be either social or through the provided environment.

Finally there is the player vs developer model where the developer provides a means for advancement, and typically bans people that do too well (often citing bug abuse) or otherwise don't submit to the developer's wishes of how to interact with his/her challenges. So besides interacting with your typical advancement model, there is a minor social aspect where you avoid pissing off the developer. A good example of this is people who write bots to combat the developer's bots. As developer bots, for some unknown reason, always suck, many devs will ban you for out-botting them. They don't mind you out-playing their bots, as your effort vs their non existent effort (running a bot takes no effort) always brings them out on top, which shows the ultimate stupidity of the pvd model, but life itself is kind of stupid, so, whatever.)

Ultimately developers find themselves challenged by the same mechanisms that has kept socialists boggled for centuries, that some are far better players than others, and that this isn't fair. In a desire for fairness the developer vs player model will typically become a developer and newbie vs elite player model. As development is catered toward anti-social individuals social individuals will leave, typically to social games that aside from other social people have little to offer. While most developers are interested in creating a more complex environment, they'll be too focused on the creation of content and interaction with this content to bother.

Even if one manages to create a meaningful interactive environment, this leaves the same problem as giving a kid a box of Legos, most kids lose interest quickly if they actually have to do something creative (typically due to a lack of creativity, intelligence, or both). Much rather have they pre-fabricated content to interact with, with non subtle hints on what ready made content to consume next, until they run out of content, after which they whine for content, and ultimately leave. As such many successful MUDs use the conform, consume, obey formula which mixes content with pvp and an overbearing team of admins to keep everyone in check.

And even with a highly interactive environment and a player base, it'd probably be too unstable to work unless you had an overbearing team of admins. That might be your typical RPI (though they probably horribly fail at providing an interactive environment.)

Just another one of my 2 cent theories.
04 Jan, 2011, Sanus Compleo wrote in the 18th comment:
Votes: 0
@ Scandum, Oh dear. I definitely do not want to display your cited player versus development model, I for one enjoy allowing my players to thrive, and story is a far larger concern than content, although it is good to have a setting in which story may also thrive. A large group of admins with storytelling capabilities would certainly be necessary for such a project, ones who would be willing to display said capability however are difficult to find. Those who really seem to have them, as well as some small amount of social skill tend not to want to peacock their abilities, and those who are able and flaunt may possess an air of superiority in a place where ego ought to be left at the door. But on a more tangible note, in my personal methods the environment exists solely as a place for players to enjoy themselves. It is a game afterall! Though I do tend to make things rather complex.

@ Everyonewhosaysahighwaterlevelisoutrageous - Indeed it is! Six feet would be entirely extraordinary, although this is a rather extraordinary story! And there's Deus Ex Machina a-plenty, as ought to be apparent xP.
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