25 Jul, 2009, JohnnyStarr wrote in the 61st comment:
Votes: 0
Dubstack said:
Basic helpfiles are still in a few building area need to finish off than the rest is makeup and what not log on Host and port is at the bottom


uhh…what?
Dubstack, I have no idea what you are trying to say. (shrug)
26 Jul, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 62nd comment:
Votes: 0
I made my comment above well aware that "coding != building"… :rolleyes:
26 Jul, 2009, Banner wrote in the 63rd comment:
Votes: 0
Dubstack said:
Basic helpfiles are still in a few building area need to finish off than the rest is makeup and what not log on Host and port is at the bottom


Translation:
The stock helpfiles are still in and and a few people rebuilding stock areas need to finish that up. The rest of the MUD is made up and whatnot. Log on to my mud. The host and port is at the bottom.
26 Jul, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 64th comment:
Votes: 0
It's amazing what a difference a little punctuation can make! :smirk:
26 Jul, 2009, Confuto wrote in the 65th comment:
Votes: 0
I logged on, almost had an epileptic fit, saw an immortal with a profane title and logged off.

I apologise for not staying for the full hour, Dubstack, but yours is one of those MUDs that told me almost instantly I wasn't going to like it. Whether the same is true for others, I don't know. Anyhow, perhaps you want something more constructive, so let me expand upon my single sentence (bear in mind this is based solely off of a 3-4 minute visit):

1. Colour. This is what I was referring to when I said I almost had an epileptic fit. You overuse it. I personally like a bit of colour in my MUDs, but when it is overused and inconsistent it bothers me. Many individual letters in a single word were coloured differently, and that doesn't look nifty or cool or anything, it looks stupid. If you want to have a super colourful MUD, that's fine, however don't assume that all your players will like it. You probably have some sort of command to turn ANSI colour off or something, so how about asking players whether they want full colour or limited colour before they log on rather than just assuming that everyone wants their eyes to be brutally assaulted.

2. Professionalism. You lack it (who would've guessed?). I don't particularly mind profanity in and of itself, but when I log in to a MUD, type "who" and the only person online is an immortal called "Michael is the fucking bomb" or something to that affect, that tells me all I need to know about the game. I realise that you're doing this as a hobby, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't have a somewhat professional attitude. You should treat basically everything that the player sees from the moment they log on as promotional material for your game. The only professional industry in which you regularly see words like "fucking" in promotional material is the porn industry. The fact that one of the admins on your game had a profane title illustrated to me that you don't really care what kind of image your game (or, even worse, that you don't realise profanity has a negative affect on said image) has and that that particular admin was immature. I'm sure there will be people who disagree with me on the profanity front, but I think that unless a particular part of your MUD requires profane language, it should be avoided.

In short, your game gave me a terrible first impression, so much so that I wasn't even willing to give it a chance past character creation. There may be people out there who feel exactly the opposite, so don't take my words as any sort of ultimate damnation, but you asked for people's opinions and I gave you mine.
26 Jul, 2009, Lobotomy wrote in the 66th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
I made my comment above well aware that "coding != building"… :rolleyes:

I suppose I'll pull a David Haley here and just assume that I'm the one being replied to, and say that you really ought to know that I was replying to flumpy, not you, David.
26 Jul, 2009, Runter wrote in the 67th comment:
Votes: 0
Not to derail this thread or anything, but I have always liked to see a question in creation asking about how much color. Perhaps giving two examples.
26 Jul, 2009, Cratylus wrote in the 68th comment:
Votes: 0
Confuto said:
when I log in to a MUD, type "who" and the only person online is an immortal called "Michael is the fucking bomb" or something to that affect, that tells me all I need to know about the game.


"effect"
26 Jul, 2009, Confuto wrote in the 69th comment:
Votes: 0
Cratylus said:
Confuto said:
when I log in to a MUD, type "who" and the only person online is an immortal called "Michael is the fucking bomb" or something to that affect, that tells me all I need to know about the game.


"effect"


Affect/effect is one of my super-weaknesses. :cry:
26 Jul, 2009, Cratylus wrote in the 70th comment:
Votes: 0
Confuto said:
Affect/effect is one of my super-weaknesses. :cry:


No worries, your post made me curious and I dropped by also. I concur
with your statements on the appearance of the mud. Further, I suggest
that dubstack not assume that people use white on black.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net
26 Jul, 2009, JohnnyStarr wrote in the 71st comment:
Votes: 0
I did the same as crat, and i swear, i felt the mudding equivalent of being 'sea-sick' :stare:
26 Jul, 2009, Cratylus wrote in the 72nd comment:
Votes: 0
staryavsky said:
I did the same as crat, and i swear, i felt the mudding equivalent of being 'sea-sick' :stare:


Dragon's balls muds have a bit of a reputation for this, actually. In fact, my codebase includes a
function called dbz_colors(), which allows text sent to it to be displayed in the manner of the
colorized output of a dbz mud.

I will perhaps one day also include a dbz_speling() function…but I'm afraid I've just not yet
been able to get drunk enough.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net
26 Jul, 2009, JohnnyStarr wrote in the 73rd comment:
Votes: 0
haha
26 Jul, 2009, Dubstack wrote in the 74th comment:
Votes: 0
Come on play my mud host and post is down below
26 Jul, 2009, Zeno wrote in the 75th comment:
Votes: 0
Dubstack said:
Come on play my mud host and post is down below

I believe a few already did and gave a critique of it.
26 Jul, 2009, Runter wrote in the 76th comment:
Votes: 0
I might suggest strfry() for dbz_spel() :d
26 Jul, 2009, Cratylus wrote in the 77th comment:
Votes: 0
Dubstack said:
Come on play my mud host and post is down below


All righty. Crat's review of dubmud.

1) Colors. Too much. Too random. Unicorn puke.

2) User interface. Don't assume people use white text on black backgrounds.
I don't, and it makes some of the mud unreadable.

3) Newbie unfriendly. You can't use local channels unless your powerlevel
is about 1,000. Which is fine until someone tries to talk to you on a
channel and you can't respond.

4) Buggy bulletin boards. Broken until an admin showed up.

5) Poor layout. I was actually able to wander into the admin's workroom.
There are empty rooms in the game that are actually called "Empty Room".

6) Weak descriptions. Example: "Banishing and torching everything in its path
and all the while a figure is barley visible through the flame, clothed in a
hoody." That's from a description of a room. There was nobody actually there.

7) Odd numbers. I killed some tourist with a single blow for like 32,000 XP.
That makes no sense to me. Why are the XP from a one-hit kill in the thousands?
Perhaps I was promoted more than I thought, but I'm still unsure why some
random pedestrian yields XP in the thousands.

Example:

Quote
kill police
You ram your fist through West City Police Officer's chest, and your bloody arm emerges through their back!
You receive 50,000 experience points.
(You gain +1 Focus)
You feel West City Police Officer's powerlevel fade away.

[PL: 1,582/1,778][Ki: 1,315/1,696][Lp: 22]
get all from police
You don't have a police.

[PL: 1,582/1,778][Ki: 1,315/1,696][Lp: 22]
get all from corpse
You get a small pile of gold coins from the corpse of West City Police Officer.
There were 200 coins.

[PL: 1,582/1,778][Ki: 1,315/1,696][Lp: 22]

You are hungry.
You are thirsty.

[PL: 1,599/1,778][Ki: 1,315/1,696][Lp: 22]

Drunken Bum arrives from the North.


I get the strong feeling that it's supposed to be fun to just
kill everything you see with one hit. It's actually less fun
than it looks.


Conclusion:

It's pretty unfair to judge a mud based on 15 minutes of looking around,
so there's that. However, from what I saw, this is a poorly written,
poorly laid out, poorly thought out game with few engaging features or
functionality. As far as I can tell it's supposed to be fun because
there are lots of things to kill and get XP for, and that's it. If
that's what you like, then this is the mud for you.

-Crat
26 Jul, 2009, Chris Bailey wrote in the 78th comment:
Votes: 0
Cratylus said:
You ram your fist through West City Police Officer's chest, and your bloody arm emerges through their back!


Kamehamehahahahaharoflhahalol =)
26 Jul, 2009, Dean wrote in the 79th comment:
Votes: 0
Cratylus said:
Dubstack said:
Come on play my mud host and post is down below


All righty. Crat's review of dubmud.

1) Colors. Too much. Too random. Unicorn puke.

2) User interface. Don't assume people use white text on black backgrounds.
I don't, and it makes some of the mud unreadable.

3) Newbie unfriendly. You can't use local channels unless your powerlevel
is about 1,000. Which is fine until someone tries to talk to you on a
channel and you can't respond.

4) Buggy bulletin boards. Broken until an admin showed up.

5) Poor layout. I was actually able to wander into the admin's workroom.
There are empty rooms in the game that are actually called "Empty Room".

6) Weak descriptions. Example: "Banishing and torching everything in its path
and all the while a figure is barley visible through the flame, clothed in a
hoody." That's from a description of a room. There was nobody actually there.

7) Odd numbers. I killed some tourist with a single blow for like 32,000 XP.
That makes no sense to me. Why are the XP from a one-hit kill in the thousands?
Perhaps I was promoted more than I thought, but I'm still unsure why some
random pedestrian yields XP in the thousands.

Example:


I get the strong feeling that it's supposed to be fun to just
kill everything you see with one hit. It's actually less fun
than it looks.


Conclusion:

It's pretty unfair to judge a mud based on 15 minutes of looking around,
so there's that. However, from what I saw, this is a poorly written,
poorly laid out, poorly thought out game with few engaging features or
functionality. As far as I can tell it's supposed to be fun because
there are lots of things to kill and get XP for, and that's it. If
that's what you like, then this is the mud for you.

-Crat


1) Colors. I'll be honest, I played DBT for years and still got epileptic fits at times. When I logged on Dubmud, again, they returned.

2) User interface. People don't use white text on black background? :surprised: Seriously though, if you're going to assume people use a certain User interface (it might only be font), then putting disclaimer on the login screen would be advisable like: "This MUD is best viewed with the Arial font and white text and black background." This way, people are given fore knowledge of what to expect and if they don't want to change and put up with a potentially horrible viewing experience, they can easily leave and find somewhere else that they might like.

3. Newbie unfriendly. There used to be qsay you could tune in to to ask for help (typing RP) below the 1k powerlevel mark. But I've not seen anyone yet who runs this code that actually has this channel turned on. :sad:

4. Buggy bulletin boards. Not anything I can add to this really.

5. Poor Layout. That's a result of dubmud's builders changing how zones link in an attempt to make new zones.

6. Weak descriptions. Says it all really.

7. Odd numbers. This comes down to that pesky small vs big numbers debate, in this case, it was opted for the latter. XP reaches into the tens of millions without XP modifiers (which seem to be all the rage atm with this code).
26 Jul, 2009, Guest wrote in the 80th comment:
Votes: 0
Anyone who plays MUDs with a white background expecting black text deserves to be soaked in "Unicorn Puke".
60.0/227