No, you don't avoid the "what codebase" discussion with a neutral rotation – that's exactly what I was pointing out. You still need to decide which ones to put into the rotation, when to rotate, etc. If you have five codebases to show, do you leave it open for 5 days?

You might mean that the rotation should occur on an annual basis, but then your timeframe is so long that it's debatable whether there's really anything being accomplished in terms of showcasing 'recent' codebases – and then you still have to decide which comes first, etc.

Right… you missed the last one! That's exactly what we had. The reason we chose this is because the previous mudcon's were on ResortMUD… or some other SMAUG codebase IIRC. I personally don't know my way around those system at all, so I was hopelessly lost for a good 3 hours :). I also found that the stress on these games can be pretty high around 'Con time. I remember one being held on a VPS and was brought to its knees rather quickly.



Ya, initially people were slow to catch on, because most people skipped the introduction and figured they'd just pick it up… not so :P. Any ways, once people read over things and actually got going, things went very, very well. I'd wager a guess to say it was the most successful one to date.

The only real reason Smaug got chosen in any capacity is pretty simple. Ntanel hosted the gatherings that preceeded MudCon, so he used ResortMUD because he was most familiar with it. Since he was admining the event, that made perfect sense. When Orion and I took over for the first 4 MudCon's, we used his own Smaug derived base because he was handling most of the duties and it was most familiar to him. There was never any deliberate attempt to promote the codebase during the event. And in fact, both codebases are now pretty much dead anyway. So any supposed benefit from the exposure never existed.

And while I'm happy to see AFKMud got mentioned, it is in fact not being actively developed anymore. And honestly I'm not sure it would be considered stable enough to host a large even since the transition to more C++ stuff never got anything close to proper testing. Springing it on a MudCon would be a pretty bad idea.

If this is an issue, why not have an application process with some sort of "required features" that developers have to implement to be considered as the host codebase? Specifically, a communication and movement system that has been custom-tailored to fit the needs of MudCon? First, this will greatly narrow down the pool of possible candidates. Second, you have an explicit, impartial dimension on which to base selection on. Make submission deadlines a month (or two) before MudCon so they can be evaluated and, in the event that nothing meets the required quality standard, it gives organizers some time to put together a reasonable alternative. Let the amount of effort people are willing to commit to the Con determine what is used, rather than getting bogged down in issues of preference and personal bias.

Just another thought… rotating codebases is probably going to be incredibly disruptive for a one-day event (it is a one-day event, right?), but with enough people (60-80? That's what past numbers have been like, right?) maybe you could run multiple tracks – one for general discussion of code/design ideas, and a second for showcasing specific implementations of ideas, codebases, building tricks and tutorials, and so forth. Sort of a "theory" and a "practice" distinction. The "theory" track would be continuous discussion on the main codebase, and then people could run small satellite events to showcase practical work on some sort of rigid schedule. As long as it's rigid and people are given time to set up, maybe it would be a way to showcase work without being overly disruptive to the Con as a whole.

I'm not sure this is true, because the requirements of MudCon are quite simple really. If people are talking about SocketMUD sufficing, then surely something like SMAUG suffices.

Only for throwing out the ineligible – you don't really make any progress when it comes to making the final selection. Of the X eligible MUDs, who wins?

If showcasing is something that people reallyreally want to do (and I'm not convinced it's appropriate as the 'main event') you could set up a base MUD that is basically a chatroom, and then set up IMC between the showcased MUDs. Communication would go to the IMC channels. This way, everybody can follow the conference no matter which particular codebase they want to be checking out. Of course, this assumes IMC support on all codebases. But the idea of rotating through codebases just seems absolutely infeasible to me.

Notto insult you or belittle the work you put into the codebase used for the last one but I know personally I'd have rather used just about any common codebase over what was used. You state you were hopelessly lost on the smaug derivative. Most everyone was hopelessly lost on the codebase that was used and would have been much less so on something like SMAUG. Not only are the majority of mudders used to DIKU derivatives, but the channel system they use is honestly far more intuitive in my honest opinion. I had assumed AFKMUD and RaM could function with large numbers of players on as I've definitely seen SMAUG and ROM derived MUDs in the past with 200-300 people online but perhaps that isn't the case with the stock codebases as I'm not nearly as acquainted with themas I am with the CircleMUD family. I do know though that CircleMUD can easily handle large numbers of users as I just now booted a stock copy and connected fifty users to it with no issues.

I log fifty pc's on as shown:

Immortals
———
[34 Mu] Fizban the Implementor

Mortals
——-
[ 1 Mu] Eh the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Eg the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Ef the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Ee the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Ed the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Ec the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Eb the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Ea the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Dy the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Du the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Do the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Di the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] De the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Da the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Cy the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Cu the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Co the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Ci the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Ce the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Ca the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] By the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Bu the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Bo the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Bi the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Be the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Ba the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Aa the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Az the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Ay the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Ax the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Aw the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Av the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Au the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] As the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Ar the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Aq the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Ap the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Ao the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Al the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Ak the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Aj the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Ai the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Ah the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Ag the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Af the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Ae the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Ad the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Ac the Apprentice of Magic
[ 1 Mu] Ab the Apprentice of Magic


They'reall logged in via one instance of cmud, so I can then do this: #ALL (command) to make them all do the same commands at the same time to replicate them all actually playing and not just sitting there. Even doing this it doesn't hit 1% cpu, and it tops at 22,228 KB of RAM. That's certainly not going to bring my laptop or any other modern cpu to its knees.

Why? To me, codebase is a non issue, all you need is a simple talker and a handful of locations and you have all that you need to have a conference. I myself would not attend a mud con if all i was going to hear was some fool rabbiting on about how great his diku is or Drizban turning every conversation into a look at me i can draw a circle with elmos crayon.

Pick something that does the job required, ideally a nice little custom base would be the best choice then no one can whine about favor being show to their competing diku.

Now back to my paper on the importance of Ozone and what cooked humans will look like when toasted by the UVc that would reach the earth surfce if it was not for those 3 Oxygen's.

Cute. Not once did I state it should be my own codebase or that whatever codebase it was should be the focus of the conversation. I just stated using a new mud codebase for would also inadvertently get people acquainted with it and kill two birds with one stone.

Whats the point? No one is going to attend a mud con because they are looking for a new codebase to use for their existing games, no body if going to attend one either to find a new codebase for an upcoming game either, so, whats the point of making any specific codebase the focus of attention. I am sure that in a couple of hours i could have a suitable base ready to run a mud con with, that has no affiliations with anyone or anything, i am sure DH could wack something together in Lua or Tyche in Ruby that would do the exact same thing in the same amount of time. So again why bother with self promotion of any specific diku over any other. It all seems to me to be rather pointless unless you have a barrow to push.

I guess that would work if it could run permanently on a dedicated host, so it's there whenever there's a Mudcon.

Then again, from the looks of it there won't be another Mudcon.

what?


…


no really what?


just use http://www.mudbytes.net/index.php?a=file...

Well i have the hosting and im sure i could dig up a base to run it with, if someone actually wanted to put it on, im sure mudcon.kicks-ass.net is available. I just dont have the time nor the inclination to go to all the trouble of making it happen. But i can offer up the server space for it.

Yeah exactly, there is a MUD CON base already in existence, just use it again.

It's been stated repeatedly that that was by far one of the least user friendly MUD bases I have ever seen.

You can use something and have a chance to possibly end up liking something without it having been a blatant advertisement that caused you to try it. ie. An event can run on a codebase without the focus of the event being the codebase. Also an existing well known codebase is something more people are likely to be familiar with and therefore more comfortable using.

Well you got used to it last time, so you will be all Old School in the House and have a total grip on it this time and will be able to earn cred points with the ladies when you can show them how its done.

Like what? what feature of a codebase is going to stand out that much at a mudcon, how great the chat system is? or how nice the 10 rooms are? And are people that dumb that they cannot learn 5 new commands to move from room to room so they can talk to different people?

Its not like your going to a mud con to play a game, or test out a new skill or spell or check out the lovely areas that have been built, or play a class and race selection that you would not normally choose. Your going there to listen to talks, give talks and to generally socialize and talk with other mudders about mud related things.

This whole codebase thing seems only to be a mud related issue, i don't think i have ever talked to a player on an MMO who says they only play TORQUE engine games or OGRE 3D, If there is another mudcon i want to give a lecture on this very issue, titled "Players Don't Care About Codebase's: THey Want Games That Are Fun"

Sure, any codebase with basic communication can suffice. That doesn't mean the Con can't be made better with good tools to support it. I doubt any codebase out there currently is set up to be perfectly suited for hosting large scale discussion. A good chat log, maybe a way to open-endedly create new chat channels so branching discussions can be accommodated. Probably other things I cannot even think of. The point I was trying to make was that, if there is an issue of "what codebase should be used" why not just leave it as a question of whoever is willing to put in the work to make MudCon the best that it can be. You'll maybe get a dozen (less? guessing?) submissions, and maybe one or two that stand out. That's a much easier decision to make than weighing the relative merits of the scores of codebases out there, each of which is "sufficient" but by no means "ideal".



I'm thinking "how well-suited a codebase is for hosting a large discussion" isn't something you can really hit ceiling on. Between presentation, usability, and functionality… there's lots of room for people to shine in creative ways. In a field of what would probably be about a dozen submissions (pure guesswork based on numbers I found on last Con's attendance rates), I just have a hard time believing that selecting between best submissions would be a practical issue.



Yeah, showcasing stuff as a main event would certainly not be appropriate. That would be incredibly disruptive. The way I see it, though, is when stuff like this is purely open-ended discussion why not just leave it to the forums? It's easier to organize topics and search back through logs to find important records. A social gathering like a Con that doesn't have some hook into advertising, teaching, or recruiting sort of misses the benefit of organizing such an event in the first place. At least in my experience, the value of these types of events is almost always in terms of the unexpected surprises of finding/learning something new, and rarely ever about its focus. That's just the carrot to get you in the door. I don't know, maybe that's just me.

In this case, we are no longer showcasing codebases – we are designing something meant for MudCon. At that point, it is almost pointless to ask for submissions – what motivation do people have?

I completely agree with you that it would be awfully nice to have something well tailored for the kind of free-for-all forum that such an event represents. But I think that it's important to not conflate the ideas of showcasing new MUD bases on the one hand and having something tailored for MudCon on the other.


In my experience at least, forums are a poor medium for realtime discussion, although it is true that they provide a better organized final result.

I thought the Mudcon server Davion setup was fine. Maybe it could use a little tweaking in the command department
and better help files. Possibly a functioning note board for people to post articles or other things they've prepared.
They only thing that annoyed me immensely was finding out all personal tells were logged. Anyway..

Actually, I could think of nothing more irritating than logging into a Rom, Circle, Smaug and
having a bunch of peeples running around barking socials, teleporting mobs, casting spells and playing with
their equipment.