18 Apr, 2008, rumble wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
We are happy to announce the sixth release of the codebase
formerly known as CircleMUD. If you are interested in a mature
and stable codebase with dedicated staff and support please check
us out.

Download here: http://tbamud.com/filebrowser/patches/re...
Full changelog here: http://tbamud.com/files/changelog.txt

The tbaMUD vision:
TbaMUD's vision is to provide the MUDding community a stable and
functional codebase that includes an in-depth World and help files
that makes it ready to be molded into a custom MUD by its coders and
builders. We also provide multiple resources to allow for feedback,
contribution, and the sharing of ideas within the MUDding community
to ensure constant development and improvements.
TbaMUD is highly developed from the programming side, but highly
UNdeveloped on the game-playing side. So, if you're looking for a
huge MUD with billions of spells, skills, classes, and races, tbaMUD
will disappoint you. TbaMUD still has only the 4 original Diku
classes, the original spells, and the original skills. On the other
hand, if you're looking for a highly stable, developed, organized,
and well documented "blank slate" MUD on which you can put your OWN
ideas for spells, skills, and classes, then tbaMUD is what what you
are looking for.

TBA's Vision:
The most challenging aspect of running a mud is finding good
builders. You will hear this from the admin of every MUD that has
ever been. In the past it has always been up to each individual MUD
to find and attempt to train their own builders. This works, but I
think the MUDding community can come up with something better. That
is why I created The Builder Academy.
TBA has been open to anyone interested in learning or teaching how
to build using Oasis OLC with dg scripts since 2000. TBA is now being
used to develop the tbaMUD codebase (formerly known as CircleMUD).
TBA has trained thousands of builders and has an extensive
tutorial and help file system. No pressure, no deadline, just come
learn, teach, or help develop tbaMUD. Give back to the community we
have all taken so much from. TBA is a MUDding resource. Please take
advantage of it so we can improve all of the MUDding community.
TBA is a low stress, no deadline, training environment. Where
anyone with motivation can work at their own pace to learn as much or
as little as they wish. Numerous people are available to answer
questions and give advice. 1000's of builders served and counting.
TBA can even be used by other MUDs as a builder's port. Just send
us your newbie builders. We will teach them and then you can have
them back with the zones they build.

We are always open to anyone willing to learn, teach, or help
develop tbaMUD.
__________________
Rumble
The Builder Academy
tbamud.com 9091
http://tbamud.com
rumble@tbamud.com
18 Apr, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
Sounds great! I have a quick question out of curiosity: where does the "thousands of builders trained" figure come from? I see less than 400 posts on the forum so I'm curious where all this activity is. It would be great if there were that many people interested in MUDding who actually went through steps to learn.
29 Apr, 2008, Fizban wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
The forum was created less than a year ago, the mud itself has trained at least a few thousand builders since it's conception in 2000. I can't find an exact figure since we performed a playerwipe in December of 2006 when changing to ASCII pfiles from the shitty binary pfiles we used up until that point. But currently there are 682 pfiles created since December 13th, 2006. (Actual number may be a bit larger due to players having possibly deleting.) Out of those 682 24 are level 32 or above (ie. staff).
29 Apr, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
How far along does a builder need to get before being considered "trained"? I'm just wondering where all these builders come from and where they all go: if there were thousands of them, I'd expect the community to be a little more vibrant than it appears to be. (It's mostly just coders. But that could be due to the nature of this site and not the wider community.)
29 Apr, 2008, Guest wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
I'd be a little curious as to where they all went as well. If so many have been trained, what's causing them all to disappear? You'd figure with that many in the pool nobody would be struggling to find them as there should be an oversupply of them to pick from. Or there would be thousands more MUDs than there are on the various lists. You'd think that even though this site was geared more toward coders that they'd still show up here, or TMC, TMS, Mudmagic, or anywhere else for that matter, to discuss what they've been taught and to share ideas with others who have been asking.
30 Apr, 2008, Fizban wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
Where they all went? Good question, and one that isn't really all that easy to answer. I assume a large number build on a singular mud. I would bet some of them may have learned how to build and then decided it was harder than they'd expected and went back to being players and never built anywhere but The Builder Academy as well. Also the few thousand quote is over a eight to nine year span and it has been in the last eight to nine years that MMORPG's have really taken off so many of those builders may no longer play muds at all. As to what is considered trained is anyone who completed one room, one object, and one mobile, and had them load in the room upon zone reset. All new builders get one trial vnum, a member of the staff then looks it over with them to catch any common mistakes before they are given a zone so that they don't repeat those mistakes across an entire zone. I would estimate that 95% of the builders have at least started their own zone after completing their trial vnum, but admittedly most of them have not finished an entire zone after completing their trial vnum.
30 Apr, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
Oh. I guess I am less surprised at the figure of "thousands" if that is your definition of "trained".
30 Apr, 2008, Fizban wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
I looked through the zones that are available for download and there looks to be currently 172 zones completed by the staff or builders that have been donated for public use. And I'd estimate that 1/5 of the completed zones are put up for download. Many times muds send their new builders to us and they build their first zone on TBA, then we send the zone files to the admin of the mud they were working on and the zone gets added to said mud, so the number of donated zones is a good bit lower than the number of completed zones. So even if there have only been 700-900 zones completed that still shows that most builders do indeed get farther than just passing their trial vnum and then losing interest.
30 Apr, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 9th comment:
Votes: 0
I'm not trying to say you guys aren't doing a useful job. I was just surprised at the figure of "thousands trained", and frankly I'm also surprised at the figure of "900 zones completed", but if the criterion for "completion" is like the criterion for "trained" then I better understand why the figure is so high.
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