[visko]

A while ago, Meric and I started a mud called Slugs. It was initially supposed to be a conglomeration of Ground Zero and VandalMUD, taking the best of both worlds and integrating them into one functional total-pk mud based around skill and tactical ability rather than levels or equipment. Meric was a fairly novice coder and definitely too young to be starting anything hefty at that point, and I was just young and inexperienced. We fought through the last four years, and I'm left as basically the only curator of the museum that was Slugs.

I became interested in the code again about a month and a half ago, and have started recoding the mud again, this time from the ground up. I am a couple of days away from having been over every inch of the code, and optimized/changed it to more conform to the ideas put forth by our team four years ago. All legacy code on this Rom-based mud dealing with earlier versions of the game, and all unnecessary code dealing with classes, races, and other rp-like non-pk-oriented systems have been scrapped in favor of newer, more versatile pk-based systems.

A few examples are as follows: normal hit points we all know and love have been taken out in favor of new structures that specifically define each body part, and it's abilities. Each body part has hit points, absorption/ac, specific wear locations, etc. Skills go up and down with use/disuse. Hunger and thirst are gone, but drugs can be used for temporary help in combat; sideaffects manifest themselves in withdrawal symptoms, which can range widely, and in fact are part of the ongoing recoding process.

An unfortunate consequence of this recoding is that the area files are much beyond any hacks I can throw into the code temporarily to save them. Frankly, many of them were quick solutions to problems the mud had with all of its legacy code from before, and although I hold them in great nostalgic value personally, they have no business being anywhere near that mud anymore.

If you like total-pk environments, are still fairly ambitious, and don't mind seeing the code be a work in process as you build, give me an email. The code isn't quite ready for the building process to begin, because I need to finish getting it compiled and stable as far as room/mob/object stats go, but I'm projecting a semi-stable infinitely-buildable environment within a few weeks. Thanks,

-Visko
visko36@hotmail.com (no, I'm not a .net fan )

[cuth]

Screw slugs, anyone got the VandalMUD code? That place ruled.. Glad ground zero is back, though..