Fizban
Wizard
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#16 Posted Sep 23, 2008, 7:04 pm
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Sandi said:
Lobotomy said:I happen to prefer the current setup that repositories like Mudbytes employ. That is, they are unbiased. Trying to assert across the board whether or not codebase Y is better than codebase X to someone is always dangerous considering how subjective the idea even is. What a person prefers in a codebase will not always match up with what anyone else prefers; nor their perceptions of what is or isn't quality or useful. That isn't to say I'm against people promoting particular codebases; I'm not. Rather, I think such promotion should be done by word of mouth (as it is currently) than forced upon people by a biased repository/listing.
I agree with this in principle. In practice, I think it's doubly important.
However, except for a whacko like me that doesn't want OLC, there's no sane reason for a newbie to use Rom 2.4b6 over QuickMUD, and using ROM 2.4b4 or earlier would be a mistake as the differences are only bugfixes.
In MUSHes, a newbie's likely not to notice the differences between any of the patch releases in the last ten years. Me, I have specific reasons for using PennMUSH prior to 1.6, the original MUX, and Tiny 2.2.
Circle 3.0 has no OLC as well whereas tbaMUD does, which is the main reason in the Circle branch I feel many people who might not be disappointed with tbaMUD if they tried it would be disappointed with Circle.
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Kline
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#17 Posted Sep 23, 2008, 7:28 pm
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If someone had the time (or would it be dedication?) it would be useful to have a table of features to compare against, out of the box. Ansi? OLC (command or menu based?)? Multi-classing? Etc. Given a chart that lays more general terms for specific features and compares them side by side would give new folks a good place of where to start based on their initial design goals or experience level. "Well I'd love a multi-class MUD but I don't know how to comfortably code that well...Are there any games that support it already I can just work off of?" etc
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The_Fury
Sorcerer
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#18 Posted Sep 24, 2008, 12:07 am
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Funny discussion especially seeing that when i submitted my code, in the descriptions i have tried to steer people away from earlier versions that are less stable or complete.
Quote:
EldhaMUD V1.1
Description:
This was the first release of the EldhaMUD codebase. Uploaded for historic reasons. If considering using the EldhaMUD 1 series, 1.4 is the most stable and complete of them all.
EldhaMUD V1.4
Description:
This is the 4th and final release of the EldhaMUD 1 series codebase. This is the most complete and playable of all the releases. This release comes complete with all the areas, classes and races that were used in the game. Game features included:
I think people are generally smart enough to understand that latter versions of code are generally better than earlier version, its not like we see many people using say Rom1 but rather Rom2.4.6b. I think the confusion that leads some people to use Smaug over Fuss or Circle over TBA, or Rom2.4 over Quickmud is that they relate to the words Smaug, Circle, Rom and not understand that Fuss, TBA and Quickmud are more or less the same product with bug fixes. So that this is ultimately a branding issue, where some choose the name brand because that is all they are aware of.
One thing i think we can do is rather than point people towards using a codebase that they feel comfortable with or have played, would be to encourage them to design a game first then look for the best tools for the job.
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......................... bMUD: Custom server written in Ruby.
The Oriental Dojo Mud
The_Fury: Coder and Designer.
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Conner
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#19 Posted Sep 24, 2008, 1:04 am
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DavidHaley said:Why would somebody choose stock SMAUG over the FUSS version? That's a serious question. I'm tempted to say that the reason would be either ignorance or victim of FUD, but I've never heard somebody defend stock over FUSS after having been acquainted with both. I have no opinion on CircleMUD vs. tbaMud because I'm not familiar enough with them.
Oddly enough, I've encountered this a few times in the past when I tried to point a newbie coder/admin to FUSS and was told that they'd rather go through all the individual fixes manually so they could learn the code better. *shrug* Go figure.
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Samson
Evil Overlord
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#20 Posted Sep 24, 2008, 1:34 am
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The_Fury said:I think people are generally smart enough to understand that latter versions of code are generally better than earlier version, its not like we see many people using say Rom1 but rather Rom2.4.6b. I think the confusion that leads some people to use Smaug over Fuss or Circle over TBA, or Rom2.4 over Quickmud is that they relate to the words Smaug, Circle, Rom and not understand that Fuss, TBA and Quickmud are more or less the same product with bug fixes. So that this is ultimately a branding issue, where some choose the name brand because that is all they are aware of.
Well at least in the case of SmaugFUSS, we have TRIED to keep the name intact by calling it SmaugFUSS. But getting people to retain the full name isn't as easy as it seems, and that's pretty obvious when lots of people shorthand it as just "FUSS" which isn't strictly a label for the Smaug code. The "FUSS" label applies to all 3 main branches the project maintains, but the Smaug portion gets a lot more attention than the two star wars branches.
Conner said:DavidHaley said:Why would somebody choose stock SMAUG over the FUSS version? That's a serious question. I'm tempted to say that the reason would be either ignorance or victim of FUD, but I've never heard somebody defend stock over FUSS after having been acquainted with both. I have no opinion on CircleMUD vs. tbaMud because I'm not familiar enough with them.
Oddly enough, I've encountered this a few times in the past when I tried to point a newbie coder/admin to FUSS and was told that they'd rather go through all the individual fixes manually so they could learn the code better. *shrug* Go figure.
Yep. That'd be the only reason I could see for someone to deliberately choose the old 1.4 over SmaugFUSS. They want to learn how things work. Applying bugfixes is a good way to go about that if you've had no other exposure to the code. But for most average people this is just a large waste of time that could be invested in other ways.
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Kayle
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#22 Posted Sep 24, 2008, 10:42 am
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Applying the bugfixes from the FUSS forums wouldn't allow you to end up with the same thing as stock SmaugFUSS. You wouldn't have the weather system, the converted pfiles, or any of the stuff brought over from Smaug 1.8. You'd also have to manually apply the const fix.
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......................... Owner/Coder Coder
Malevolent Whispers Star Wars: The Sith Wars
{Development Phase - Not accepting players} Open Alpha - Players Welcome - Full System Re-writes Imminent.
IMC2 Contact: Kayle@MW
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SmaugMuds.Org - The Smaug MUDs Community Center
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Cratylus
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#23 Posted Sep 24, 2008, 11:26 am
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Quote:I would never suggest removing them but I wonder if maybe there should be more Historic subdirectories which are captioned specifically that they are intended for reference only and not actually to generally be used for new projects.
I agree with this sentiment, though the implementation
is likely subject to endless, possibly passionate,
debate. For example Why would someone who only knows
the name "Circle" navigate into a TBA directory?
It wouldn't be enough to have a dir named TBA with
a subdir named Circle. You'd want something like
Circle-TBA as a directory name. Or do you? Is it more
correct that there be a Circle dir with TBA under it?
You could go around in TBA's all day debating this, I bet.
I don't necessarily have a solution but I do have
anecdotal corroboration...on occasion I've seen someone
try to use the Nightmare lib because of some vestigial
memory of it being "better" than Dead Souls, and hard
to find. Never mind that NM IV and DS 1 are almost exactly
the same in terms of code, and that DS has been fixed
up and improved on since then. It takes time and effort
to explain this stuff to people who fixated on the
old brand. And this is a vestigial echo of a brand switch
from TEN years ago.
I just thank my muse that it never seriously occurred to
me to rebrand Dead Souls when I picked up maintainership. I
bet that a non-trivial amount of my time would be spent
just explaining this stuff.
Quote:I fail to see any logical reason as to why someone would prefer stock Smaug over FUSS or stock Circle over tba.
I can't speak for those specific codebases, but maybe
my experiences with mine are helpful. The codebase I
maintain has all sorts of awesome stuff that wasn't
there when I picked up maintainership. A quick-creation
system (sort of like OLC), vehicles, web editing, blah
blah yadda, really great stuff, imo. Not to mention tons
of fixes. As far as I'm concerned, it is vastly superior.
For some folks, though, it's "too much". Even though you
can turn off features, or just, you know, not use them.
Somehow the fact that they are there is just...not desired.
They want a "simple", clean slate they know. It may be
more work, perhaps, but maybe they didn't want to follow
the dev direction taken by me.
I think that's logical, even if I don't agree with it.
That's why I make available the version of DS that I
cleaned up *juuust enough* so that it runs. So that such
people can follow their own dreams. Peace be with them.
Another logical reason could be that people want to analyze
older versions and compare to newer versions not necessarily
to reinvent the wheel, or necessarily "learn code", but for
reasons of general investigation of dev philosophies or
even authorship. You know...general research. This reason
doesn't involve starting a mud, obviously, but people download
code for reasons other than starting a mud, and we *are*
talking about repository organization for download, not
proselytizing for new muds, right?
This thread seems to be about why a new mud would start
with X instead of its "better" derivative Y, which is fine, right,
you guys talk about whatever suits you. But I understood the
OP to be about the organization of the downloads, which should
not assume that mud-starting is the point of accessing the repository,
in my opinion.
Quote:
Your reaction is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about.
Lol wut
-Crat
http://lpmuds.net
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Fizban
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#24 Posted Sep 24, 2008, 11:39 am
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Quote:For some folks, though, it's "too much". Even though you can turn off features, or just, you know, not use them. Somehow the fact that they are there is just...not desired. They want a "simple", clean slate they know. It may be more work, perhaps, but maybe they didn't want to follow the dev direction taken by me.
That's probably closer to CWG or AFKMUD than tba or FUSS simply because both of the latter two didn't do that much to add to the original so much as polished it up and fixed numerous bugs that were in the original whereas the former two added numerous additions to them to make them heavily modified versions of the original. I know at least with tba, and likely with FUSS, that we aimed to only add features that we felt were sufficiently theme independent and were something that in general no one would rather not have. (Note the in general, I know there may be some oddballs that don't like OLC, and maybe they like having to log into the shell to change their greetings screen, etc.)
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Fizban
Wizard
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#25 Posted Sep 24, 2008, 11:47 am
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"Lobotomy" said:My point is that people have varying preferences/logics at work in deciding on a codebase and that it doesn't always match or agree with that of others.
Would you be as opposed to something more concrete and less biased then, like say a date of latest development:
CircleMUD-3.1: Last Developed November 2002
tbaMUD-3.57: Last Developed: Current
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Last edited Sep 24, 2008, 11:48 am by Fizban
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Fizban
Wizard
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#27 Posted Sep 24, 2008, 12:14 pm
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DavidHaley said:I think that tbaMUD suffers from a branding problem. Without having seen the names come up in the forums, or without having done a little looking around, I'd have had no idea it was a continuation or even vaguely related to Circle...
I agree, we had wanted to continue naming it CircleMUD but Jeremy Elson specifically asked us not to.
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quixadhal
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#28 Posted Sep 24, 2008, 12:26 pm
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Yeah, as I recall, the folks at tbaMUD tried to jump in and take the mantle of CircleMUD 3.5 when the Circle development team pretty much said they were done. The community didn't go for that, and while Jeremy Elson made some comments that sounded like he might approve such a thing, I think he decided they were adding too many features, and since the community wasn't happy, they changed the name.
It might have been better to call it TBACircle or something. The Builders' Academy doesn't imply that it's Circle related, at least by name. SmaugFUSS is pretty clearly Smaug-derived.
Personally, I like the current organization that puts tba into DikuMUD/Circle/tbaMUD. I would like to be able to see the development date though. I could see a sort option on the search page to sort by date being quite handy.
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