18 Apr, 2009, cooper wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
Hello all! First of all I would like to introduce myself a little. My name is Stephen Cooper, some of you may have ran across me in various muds by the name of Brahmus. I'm 28 years old and have been mudding since i was old enough to type. My first computer was a Commodore 64, and for the record i still have it and it works perfectly. I learned enough of basic on my C64 to write my first program, which was an alarm clock program at the age of about 11. My favorite games back then were "Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego" and "Oregon Trail". Anyways, I was born and raised in a little town in Alabama called Phenix City, and that is still where I call home to this day. Hailing from the south and being a country boy, I enjoy 4x4's and hot rods when I'm not glued to my own custom built computer.

I have been building for about 8 years on various muds and have even tried running my own a few times. But could not keep a server up for long with some of the various free servers, either they would go down and never back up again or something else always happened. I have had an idea for a mud for a few years now and am finally taking the steps to build my very first ROM based mud. I figured that I would delve into coding a bit more than I previously have and try to learn as I go since I had my goal in mind. I will admit it is a bit more than I can handle, and I know that it's no easy task to take on for my skill level. I have always worked with/on SMAUG and swr and have never tried to build or work on a ROM based mud. I have played several and seen what they are capable of and decided that It was the best codebase for my end goal of my mud, and that it is a highly supported codebase. I have played many, many muds, and tried just about every one on the list, but only have ever found about 3 that I continued to go back to. I have seen many where the title was changed and an area was added and they called it all original and custom.. that is not what I plan to do or want other players to see on my mud.

If any of you have ever played the game FABLE, I plan to base my world around it. I'm sure that I will have many more post with some questions that will be more obvious to some of you, but not to the newer coders like myself. And so here are a few to being with:

I plan to have an ascii style map system that is always up. I have see the wilderness map system and would like to code something like that for my mud. Would anyone have any tips or suggestions on doing this? I know coding this to be 100% original by myself is impossible at this point but , I want it in my mud. I was thinking about taking something like the wilderness snippett and trying to make it work.

Does anyone know what areas can be stock Rom2.4 and what areas MUST stay? I'm am pretty sure that you must keep at least Limbo.are, and Darkhaven.are, but am not sure of what else.

Which OLC is most similar to SMAUG that I can add the snippet for my ROM? I have seen quite a few to choose from.

Is LOPE the best color snippet to use?

I would like to set it up so that mobs drop randomly generated items based off of their levels, any ideas or suggestions on this?

So far i have been making constant backups of my code as I go, just in case a snippet or code does not work so smoothly. I cannot write code from scratch and am still learning. I can install snippets pretty well, but when i get certain errors when compiling, i do not know how to fix them. I am trying to learn to debug and find the errors better and am making slow progress but, at least I'm learning and trying. I am pretty good and copy and pasting bits of code together to make the code work that I want for now.

Thanks,
Cooper
18 Apr, 2009, Idealiad wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
welcome to Mudbytes!

I just wanted to mention one thing quick, iif you're not using a version control system – you probably want to start.

Another thing I recommend is to start making a basic spreadsheet for all the items and monsters in your game. This will let you calculate a basic power rating for each, and give you a better idea of which items should drop with which mobs.
19 Apr, 2009, cooper wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
Thank you very much for the spreadsheet idea. I had the idea of something similar in mind at one point, but hearing it just made it stick. I would like to get all the stock ROM areas out of the mud first before I start on it. There will not be any areas to play until I have the major coding done that i have in mind.

Also, could you elaborate or give me an example of this Version Control System that you spoke of? I don't believe that I have heard or used or seen anything like that before.

Thanks,
Cooper
19 Apr, 2009, Lyanic wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
cooper said:
Also, could you elaborate or give me an example of this Version Control System that you spoke of? I don't believe that I have heard or used or seen anything like that before.


A version control system is a repository that you check code into and out of. Every time you do, it keeps track of the changes you made (ie: which lines are different between the previous version and the new version). Most, if not all, of them actually save space compared to a strategy of keeping complete backup copies. The system also gives you nice features that backup copies don't - like undoing one specific change (or set of changes) or making sure that multiple programmers do not overwrite each other's work. A version control system that I like is Subversion: http://subversion.tigris.org/

You might want to read up on it some before you try to jump right in.
19 Apr, 2009, Sandi wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
cooper said:
I plan to have an ascii style map system that is always up. I have see the wilderness map system and would like to code something like that for my mud. Would anyone have any tips or suggestions on doing this? I know coding this to be 100% original by myself is impossible at this point but , I want it in my mud. I was thinking about taking something like the wilderness snippett and trying to make it work.


I can't help you with this, as my MUD is set in the Iron Age, and Warriors running around with TomToms mounted on their visors, CB radios in their helmets, and an "inventory" that would do justice to a 40 foot trailer just aren't part of my design. There are, of course, plenty of "trucker muds" out there and they are quite popular - I just don't want to have to be polite to someone that didn't need to change their last name when they got married.

cooper said:
Does anyone know what areas can be stock Rom2.4 and what areas MUST stay? I'm am pretty sure that you must keep at least Limbo.are, and Darkhaven.are, but am not sure of what else.


Hypercube.org - ROM FAQ

cooper said:
Which OLC is most similar to SMAUG that I can add the snippet for my ROM? I have seen quite a few to choose from.
Is LOPE the best color snippet to use?


You can get Lope's and Ivan's pre-installed here: QuickMUD

cooper said:
I would like to set it up so that mobs drop randomly generated items based off of their levels, any ideas or suggestions on this?


Don't do it. If mobs drop things randomly, then players can't learn where they are, and if players can't learn, then stupid people have an advantage. Again, it depends on who you want to talk to all night long.
19 Apr, 2009, quixadhal wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
Sandi said:
cooper said:
I would like to set it up so that mobs drop randomly generated items based off of their levels, any ideas or suggestions on this?


Don't do it. If mobs drop things randomly, then players can't learn where they are, and if players can't learn, then stupid people have an advantage. Again, it depends on who you want to talk to all night long.


To put my two cents in, don't make it totally random. Most games that use randomized loot have loot tables for various classes of mobs. You might want orcs to drop random weapons of a certain type or style, whereas humans would drop different weapons. Animals typically shouldn't drop items, except for things like food perhaps (or skins, if your game doesn't treat skinning as a seperate thing).

Diablo II was a brilliant game as far as loot goes…. players had to figure out which mobs had what chances to drop items, but it was never a given that killing X got you item Y.
19 Apr, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
Sandi said:
I can't help you with this, as my MUD is set in the Iron Age, and Warriors running around with TomToms mounted on their visors, CB radios in their helmets, and an "inventory" that would do justice to a 40 foot trailer just aren't part of my design.

But even in the Iron Age, people could see mountains and forests from more than a few metres away, surely? :tongue:

quixadhal said:
To put my two cents in, don't make it totally random. Most games that use randomized loot have loot tables for various classes of mobs. You might want orcs to drop random weapons of a certain type or style, whereas humans would drop different weapons. Animals typically shouldn't drop items, except for things like food perhaps (or skins, if your game doesn't treat skinning as a seperate thing).

That's the approach I use. Certain boss mobs drop powerful non-random (called "epic") items, but most of the drops are random. Each mob has a treasure list, and when the mob is killed one of the items is selected at random, its bonuses generated based on the item type and the power level of the mob. Animals drop a craftable piece of skin or bone, which isn't entirely realistic, but at least it's something they'd have on them (unlike Diablo II, where swarms of insects would drop breastplates and such).

The system generally goes down pretty well, but there are two things about it which some players dislike. The first is that mobs only drop a single item - newbies often ask how they can get all of the equipment from a fully armoured mob they've defeated, and of course the answer is that they can't. The second complaint is that, because items are randomised, some players feel the need to keep killing mobs over and over in the hope of getting something better.

My implementation also allows mobs to "drop" other mobs when killed, and the drop messages can be customised, allowing me to justify drops that might seem odd - for example if I told you that spectres drop rings, you might find that strange. But it doesn't seem quite so unreasonable if you see the death message "The horrifying spectre fades away, leaving traces of protoplasm in the air" followed by the drop message "The remaining protoplasm solidifies into an ethereal ring of damage".
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