02 Oct, 2010, donky wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
Tavish said:
My current kick is creating a roguelike world and bringing it to MUDs. I think the random-dungeon generation is what drew me in and I'm having fun trying to see how indepth I can get my current generator to become without completely going overboard on memory usage.

Me too… got a blog or screenshots where you describe your roguelike MUD efforts?
02 Oct, 2010, Tavish wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
donky said:
Tavish said:
My current kick is creating a roguelike world and bringing it to MUDs. I think the random-dungeon generation is what drew me in and I'm having fun trying to see how indepth I can get my current generator to become without completely going overboard on memory usage.

Me too… got a blog or screenshots where you describe your roguelike MUD efforts?


Not at the moment. But if I did you wouldn't have missed too many updates so far. Currently all I have in place is the dungeon generator, movement, and FOV/LOS. Probably within the next day or two I can give out a link to anyone who wants to poke around for curiosity sakes (hell I could probably give it out now if anyone were really that interested in seeing something that early in production).

How far along are your efforts?
02 Oct, 2010, donky wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
Tavish said:
How far along are your efforts?

Telnet based multiplayer world. FoV. Simple entities that wander round. Handmade world.

You can see some screenshots here.

I'd like to have dungeon generation.. but there are so many things I would like to do, that I am working on side projects. Like using a database of the OGL D&D data to generate game content. Or trying to work out how to layer UI over the game in text.
02 Oct, 2010, Tavish wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
donky said:
Tavish said:
How far along are your efforts?

Telnet based multiplayer world. FoV. Simple entities that wander round. Handmade world.

I've gone back and forth several times on handmade regions. Right now I am leaning fairly strong towards none other than the player's starting home city. Each player can have their own home city (or one can be shared between clanmates) that they can expand with their dungeon conquests. These cities are customizable so the ability for persistence is there, so if in the future I want to add handmade regions I can go that route. But after spending the last 10+ years either working with builders or building myself I don't see that as something that will happen anytime soon.
02 Oct, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 5th comment:
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If you're making a roguelike world where it's essentially just a bunch of tiles put together, is building really that big a concern? Or am I missing something here?

Maya/Rudha
02 Oct, 2010, Tavish wrote in the 6th comment:
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I guess it would depend on how strict you want to apply the "roguelike" tag vs the MUD tag. I believe the main ingredients for what is normally considered a true roguelike are:

A) random world
B) winning and losing (end game goal and permadeath)
C) turn based
D) single player

Most MUDs on the other hand have a very similar feel to roguelikes but go about it in exactly the opposite fashion on every point. The two genres have been heading towards a head-on collision for some time now, I'm just falling in line. I'm sure there are a bunch of MUD purist who would consider newer MUDs to be MUDlike.
02 Oct, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 7th comment:
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I think you misunderstood me, or perhaps I wasn't clear: the gameworld, as I understand what you're trying to do in having it be 'rogue-like' in regards to the world, is have a tile-based world, rather than room/description based, so to me, that seems that you avoid a lot of the pitfalls of building that MUDs typically encounter (and possibly fall into some new ones, but that is another matter entirely)

Maya/Rudha
02 Oct, 2010, Tavish wrote in the 8th comment:
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Rudha said:
I think you misunderstood me, or perhaps I wasn't clear: the gameworld, as I understand what you're trying to do in having it be 'rogue-like' in regards to the world, is have a tile-based world, rather than room/description based, so to me, that seems that you avoid a lot of the pitfalls of building that MUDs typically encounter (and possibly fall into some new ones, but that is another matter entirely)

Maya/Rudha

Tiles and rooms are for the most part exactly the same. Both are just containers to store where the character is. Really the only difference conceptually is that tiles all typically represent a single unit of space whereas rooms can be whatever size the builder wants them to be (room A is a broom closet, room B is a 10 mile stretch of ocean).
But more to your question (if I understand it right), the reason I am going "roguelike" with randomly generated areas is because that is what fits the theme of the game (a shifting world, somewhat of a dreamlike illusion). I could use the same design and hand bill the areas so that dungeon-A was persistent. It definitely gets around some hurdles of the typical MUD and while adding a few new problems. I might add some persistent areas (other than the home city) down the road that way I can face both sets of dilemmas.
02 Oct, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 9th comment:
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Yeah, the idea of having at least specified room sizes in my MUD is something that I've toyed with, it is something that will go in eventually once I've decided exactly how to do it, since it has combat implications.

Let us know how that works out for you :)

Maya/Rudha
02 Oct, 2010, Runter wrote in the 10th comment:
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I think the use of the phrases 'room' and 'tile' based are ill defined and inspire fractured concepts at best.

What is really being discussed here is the concept of logical exits. The underlying model has little to do with it.

It is worth mentioning that some people consider tile based to describe a generation model where all pieces or tiles are predefined nominally as bigger chunks of rooms then represented intermediately to represent large worlds with little resources.
02 Oct, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 11th comment:
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Quote
What is really being discussed here is the concept of logical exits.


I think you're reading an entirely different conversation than I am.

Maya/Rudha
02 Oct, 2010, Runter wrote in the 12th comment:
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One glib retort deserves another.

Nope. Same conversation.
02 Oct, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 13th comment:
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Tavish said:
Tiles and rooms are for the most part exactly the same. Both are just containers to store where the character is.

I've implemented several tile-based systems over the years, but I've never used them as containers. I guess you could implement a room-based system in which each room had one tile, but that would be a bit wierd - you'd be able to see and interact with people nearby as long as they were on the same tile, but as soon as they stepped onto the next one they'd vanish.

Prior to adding tiles to my mud the entire world was just one vast featureless plain. The tiles added terrain types, and a lot of cosmetic flavour, but they didn't change the way movement worked.
02 Oct, 2010, Tavish wrote in the 14th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
Tavish said:
Tiles and rooms are for the most part exactly the same. Both are just containers to store where the character is.

I've implemented several tile-based systems over the years, but I've never used them as containers.

KaVir said:
Prior to adding tiles to my mud the entire world was just one vast featureless plain. The tiles added terrain types, and a lot of cosmetic flavour, but they didn't change the way movement worked.

I'm confused, you use tiles to store terrain types and other information about the world but you have never used them as containers? Maybe we are just not referring to the same thing when using the word tile (or container) because from the second quote it appears you are using them as containers.

KaVir said:
I guess you could implement a room-based system in which each room had one tile, but that would be a bit wierd - you'd be able to see and interact with people nearby as long as they were on the same tile, but as soon as they stepped onto the next one they'd vanish.

That sounds exactly like how Diku is implemented.
02 Oct, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 15th comment:
Votes: 0
Tavish said:
I'm confused, you use tiles to store terrain types and other information about the world but you have never used them as containers?

A tile represents 1 square furlong of world - 10x10 pieces of terrain, each covering 1 square chain (i.e., 66x66 feet) in size. Thousands of tiles are put together like pieces of a mosaic or jigsaw puzzle to create a map, and this map is referenced to determine what sort of terrain is at any particular X/Y position in the world.

Imagine playing a wargame by moving little figurines around on a large wooden table. Now imagine carefully painting a landscape onto the surface of the table. You're still moving your figurines around on the table, exactly as you were before (and obviously they aren't stored in the painting), but now you've got an indication of terrain. I use the same principle when defining terrain in my mud.

Tavish said:
Maybe we are just not referring to the same thing when using the word tile (or container) because from the second quote it appears you are using them as containers.

The tile isn't a container in the same way as a room (which literally stores objects and creatures inside it). It's just an array of 100 (or 25 for dungeons) terrain index values - nothing else.

Tavish said:
KaVir said:
I guess you could implement a room-based system in which each room had one tile, but that would be a bit wierd - you'd be able to see and interact with people nearby as long as they were on the same tile, but as soon as they stepped onto the next one they'd vanish.

That sounds exactly like how Diku is implemented.

Nope, Diku doesn't have the tiles, just rooms. I did previously implement a tile-based system in a Diku derivative though - I described how I did it here.
03 Oct, 2010, Tavish wrote in the 16th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
I did previously implement a tile-based system in a Diku derivative though - I described how I did it here.

So we are talking about completely different types of tiles. If I wanted to (for arguments sake) assign each grid coordinate a flag to describe the terrain and then called the flag a tile we could be having the same argument. Roguelike tiles (which is what I was originally responding to) typically refers to a specific location in the world. What you are referring to as tiles is parallel to what roguelikes consider cells (dungeons are usually comprised of cells that are comprised of 11X11 sets of tiles).

Not saying either one is the correct use of the tile description, just that they are different concepts.
03 Oct, 2010, Runter wrote in the 17th comment:
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Which is why using ill defined terminology is a bad idea. Particularly buzz words from a different community.
03 Oct, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 18th comment:
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Tavish said:
Roguelike tiles (which is what I was originally responding to) typically refers to a specific location in the world.

Ah, I see. Not being familiar with Roguelikes, I thought you were saying that mud tiles were the same as mud rooms.

Tavish said:
Not saying either one is the correct use of the tile description, just that they are different concepts.

But please remember that this is MUDBytes, and not everyone here will necessarily be familiar with the terminology of other types of game.
03 Oct, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 19th comment:
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It might be better to continue RL/tiles discussion in another thread; if a mod sees this, could you move the posts please?
03 Oct, 2010, donky wrote in the 20th comment:
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Runter said:
Which is why using ill defined terminology is a bad idea. Particularly buzz words from a different community.

Seems to me it worked itself out in a rather relaxed manner, but most of the kerfuffle was people not directly involved in the conversation making a fuss where none was needed :wink:
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