11 Feb, 2010, donky wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
As I have recently been spending a lot of time working on my custom codebase, I have also had reason to log into a few MUDs to see what I can learn from them. I've been thinking quite alot about the experience, and I'd be interested on any thoughts anyone has to add.

Choosing Midkemia Online

Back in the day, I think I read at most one Raymond Feist, so I barely remember what he is all about. But reading the announcement of this going into beta or opening or something I am not entirely clear on, Midkemia Online seemed like a good consistent fantasy theme that should have contributed to a well thought out and made MUD. And it is part of the Iron Realms conglomerate, that added enough of a cache to give me reason to check it out.

The web site

The web site looks really professional. It is a little bit fruity in a Disney kind of way, but it looks so good, that I want to try the game. Looking at the top quality image of some waif with an old dagger, does on some subconscious level make me wonder whether he's about to knife Pocahontas or something. So I decide to "get started today".

Now, I block flash. It is a pox on the web… but moving on. The flash client looks great. I create a character login and it takes me to a small, concise all in one character creation page. Everything is on that page and it looks just as great, gender, race species, terms and conditions and also a picture of a member of the selected race. It is simple and straightforward to select options. Clicking on finish puts me straight in the game, and in an action oriented tutorial.

One thing I seem to note about these web-based telnet consoles, they seem to separate the input from the output. At first I was against that, and my own integrates the prompt into the text standard telnet client style. But having reflected on it, it makes sense. The output is not broken up.

The tutorial

Some NPC prompts me to learn some commands.

Here's some pants, wear them. There's two pants, one brown, one green, choose one. "wear green pants" FAIL. "wear brown pants" FAIL. You need to use this second inventory command, and use the item identifier. "wear pants42323" SUCCESS. I'm scratching my head but okay. And it proceeds, from there I head off to somewhere and he gives me money or tells me to take it from somewhere.

Put the money in your purse nancy. Okay. Now go to this village and buy some food for the sake of learning commands. All through this process if I sit there, I get helpful text repeatedly sent to me tagged with HINT. And I can speed up and slow down the tutorial. Anyway, I have to give the salesman 10 groats or something. "give 10 groats to salesman" WHAT 10 GROATS? "take 10 groats from purse" "give 10 groars to salesman" SUCCESS.

Then off to some old dudes who give me information about professions I can choose. But the information is limited. I don't know the repercussions of choosing a profession and I have to make the choice here. The help documents telling about each are not written. I really do not feel comfortable choosing one. So, I sit for a while and play with help trying to see if I am missing something.

Back in the day, the LPmud help system standard was to page the text. You would get a page, then a prompt showing you how far you were into the document. You would either hit enter to get the next page and prompt, or you would hit "q" and enter to exit the help document. But the system here effectively gives you a page and then gives you the normal prompt. You are expected to enter a "next page" command to get the next page, which is fine because this is automatically put in your web client input field. I think I like this approach, at least in a web client.

Anyway, I accept the fact that this MUD has a lot of unfinished bits. But the basics are polished to an impressive level, and I am extremely impressed and have been kept interested to this point. And it looks good. It has been made very easy for me, someone who is easily bored by games, to get into it. The fact is, there is never enough people to do everything that needs to be done. But this does give me an idea for my own game, which is to track the things people try that have not been finished, and to prioritise working on those things.

So I choose a profession.

The game

Now I am put in the game. There are some people standing around. Some use orbs to jump in and out of the room. What is this fantastical orb jumping that seems out of sorts? It makes me picture Aladdin wandering in, dressed in his open chest vest and pantaloons. I have no idea what to do from here. Interest lost, it was great up until this point, but there is no obvious direction to continue. And since my primary interest is learning from the experience, and I have, I have no inclination to fight my way through cluelessness to some understanding.

It does make me wonder if you can make the whole game a tutorial. Perhaps have a tutorial mode. I wouldn't want to dump players out of an experience that is guided, to one that is completely freeform.

I can see why the item identifier system is used. Well, I can assume. It allows you to concentrate on building a game, rather than mucking around writing parsers and stuff like that. But the player has to bear the cost. It takes me away from doing things without thinking, to thinking WTF everytime I have to use one. And wondering how cumbersome it would be, when I am in a hurry.

Tangentially: The Looming Spectre of Commercialism

Commercial MUDs… I don't object to the idea. In an ideal world I also want to make things that people pay for. But I've been part of a MUD before that had few players, and I have this belief that it is hard to attract players. So it follows that if I log into a commercial MUD, I perceive a pressure for me as a player who has no intention of giving them a dollar, to.. well.. give them dollars. It taints the experience of logging into a commercial MUD for me.

It reminds me of that post Cratylus (?) made recently where he mentioned that some guy had a free MUD hosting service where he pressured the users to "donate". And indeed, a video accompanied the post, where the guy shut down his service and commented something along the lines of "people should be able to donate five dollars a month each."

I guess I would feel more comfortable logging into a popular commercial MUD, that was making money, than an up and coming MUD.
11 Feb, 2010, Barm wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
Quote
One thing I seem to note about these web-based telnet consoles, they seem to separate the input from the output. At first I was against that, and my own integrates the prompt into the text standard telnet client style. But having reflected on it, it makes sense. The output is not broken up.


This is gnawing at me too since I use gnome-terminal telnet for the bulk of my testing. Still searching for a "best practices" approach to prompt generation. Heck, I'm waffling between leading newlines and trailing newlines to split lines.
11 Feb, 2010, Scandum wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
Maps are fairly simple using VT codes: http://www.mudbytes.net/index.php?a=topi...

Prompts are a little trickier, but I can write a brief howto if anyone is interested.
11 Feb, 2010, Orrin wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
donky said:
It does make me wonder if you can make the whole game a tutorial. Perhaps have a tutorial mode. I wouldn't want to dump players out of an experience that is guided, to one that is completely freeform.

I've definitely found that with the IRE games there is a real jarring feeling as you finish the (usually very short) tutorial and are dumped into the game. I can understand the reasoning; presumably they want to get players into the game as quickly as possible, but I think this is the wrong approach. I would prefer a system where there is no separate "newbie intro" or "mud school" or whatever, but instead players are guided through the game in a more natural way.

donky said:
I can see why the item identifier system is used. Well, I can assume. It allows you to concentrate on building a game, rather than mucking around writing parsers and stuff like that. But the player has to bear the cost. It takes me away from doing things without thinking, to thinking WTF everytime I have to use one. And wondering how cumbersome it would be, when I am in a hurry.

Referring to items by number is a legacy from the way Avalon did it and it was picked up by Achaea and every IRE game since. As an old Avalon player myself I find it quite natural, and it's certainly good for when you really need to distinguish unambiguously between similar objects, but I agree in most circumstances it would be better to refer to the objects by keyword. Nakedmud has a diku (I think?) influenced system of 2.sword, all.sword etc. which I've always found really strange, but I guess it's what you're used to. As a general principle, I think it's more important for a parser system to be consistent and clearly communicated rather than able to handle every conceivable way of entering commands.

donky said:
One thing I seem to note about these web-based telnet consoles, they seem to separate the input from the output. At first I was against that, and my own integrates the prompt into the text standard telnet client style. But having reflected on it, it makes sense. The output is not broken up.

I take this a step further on my web client and disable the prompt entirely. I think it makes the text flow more naturally, and with the prompt information displayed as graphical bars it's not necessary IMO but the text prompt can be configured back on if people prefer.
11 Feb, 2010, Davion wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
Scandum said:
Maps are fairly simple using VT codes: http://www.mudbytes.net/index.php?a=topi...

Prompts are a little trickier, but I can write a brief howto if anyone is interested.


I (the articles section) am always interested!
11 Feb, 2010, shasarak wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
Quote
I (the articles section) am always interested!
The articles section has achieved sentience and is posting to the forum! :surprised:
11 Feb, 2010, donky wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
Orrin said:
donky said:
I can see why the item identifier system is used. Well, I can assume. It allows you to concentrate on building a game, rather than mucking around writing parsers and stuff like that. But the player has to bear the cost. It takes me away from doing things without thinking, to thinking WTF everytime I have to use one. And wondering how cumbersome it would be, when I am in a hurry.

Referring to items by number is a legacy from the way Avalon did it and it was picked up by Achaea and every IRE game since. As an old Avalon player myself I find it quite natural, and it's certainly good for when you really need to distinguish unambiguously between similar objects, but I agree in most circumstances it would be better to refer to the objects by keyword. Nakedmud has a diku (I think?) influenced system of 2.sword, all.sword etc. which I've always found really strange, but I guess it's what you're used to. As a general principle, I think it's more important for a parser system to be consistent and clearly communicated rather than able to handle every conceivable way of entering commands.

One thing that I took from Midkemia, was that it is not a bad thing to just do a simple parser that is effective but simple. But my key concern was that I found the five digit random numbers cumbersome. In the tutorial I was being rushed by the other goblin to wear some pants. I felt like Desmond in Lost, trying to quickly enter some arbitrary numbers before the shit blew up. It felt more like a puzzle game than a convenience.
11 Feb, 2010, Barm wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
Scandum said:
Prompts are a little trickier, but I can write a brief howto if anyone is interested.


Yes, please do.
0.0/8