Delerak's MUD Vlogs
 

TMS,

It's been a while since I posted here but I thought I should go ahead with this thread for my youtube channel where I discuss a variety of topics in MUDs. Coming from an RPI background I focus a lot of my topics on Armageddon MUD where I spent many of my days pecking away at the keys (until I got good enough not to peck).

My channel isn't just for MUDs though as an exercise enthusiast I post other stuff up on there from time to time but it's easy to find my vlogs as there is a Playlist dedicated only to my MUD vlogs. Take the rest of my channel with a grain of salt as I am a pretty silly guy. I do tend to curse like a sailor at times so I apologize in advance for my vulgarity!

Here's the link:



Remember that I have multiple playlists. There is one for exercise only called Deleraks Domain and the other is called My Vlogs.

Thanks guys! Post your feedback to this thread. Any video requests can also just go in this thread. Some ideas I already have in the works for future vids are me doing introductions to certain muds that have a really high learning curve; ie: God Wars 2. Is KaVir still around? I hope so! Love that guy.

-D

Re: Delerak's MUD Vlogs
 

Delerak,

Thanks for sharing.. Don't care to comment much on Youtube so I'll join your discussion here. I think your vlog on staff avatars raises many valid points, but it only targets one niche of the MUD genre, which is RPI. "Immortals" playing "mortals" has a bit more merit in MUDs where changes/content additions benefit all players equally. Anyway, wanted to write a bit more but a bit burned out this evening. Looking forward to more of these and I hope that you relate your personal stories / armageddon to other MUDs.

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I appreciate the feedback. I would prefer comments here anyway as well, as youtube comments are a bit difficult to keep track of and this is a much easier format.

I will definitely be doing more videos in the future I just need to figure out where I want to go with it. So far my vlogs are me rambling about my thoughts and trying to make my points as best I can. But I really want to do some videos that apply to the general overall mud community which I plan to do with some MUD introduction/chargen vids for MUDs that I really have enjoyed over the years.

Re: Delerak's MUD Vlogs
 

I enjoyed your last one, but that was pre-GUI. If you did another, you could use the MUSHclient plugins, and perhaps include sound as well :)

Actually if you're looking for ideas, a vblog would be a pretty good medium for giving overviews of different muds which offer custom interfaces.

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Kavir! It's good to see you still active in the community my friend. I didn't know you made Mushclient plugins. I will have to download it and give it a look.

I logged into GW2 last night and fiddled around to make sure I didn't look like a complete idiot during my vid. I will definitely do the mush client if it's more intuitive since I used to just make buttons for all the commands in zmud.

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Episode 3 is up guys. God Wars 2 is the topic and I basically just load up mushclient and have fun with it.

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Dude, totally awesome idea. Love it. Technically haven't -watched- the videos, but I will eventually.

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So I had this idea today to do videos called "First Looks"

The idea behind it is I login to a random mud (or at a muds request) with my camera rolling I go thru the character generation process and start playing for 10-15 minutes. The first look could then be looked at later by the programmers/builders of the mud to see how a fresh player views their mud from a players perspective.

What do you guys think? Am I off base here or would this be a good idea that the mud community might be able to take advantage of?

Re: Delerak's MUD Vlogs
 

Sounds good to me

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I would love to see a 'first look' section! I'd like to see more concepts like this come around in general, with different medias used to advertise MUDs and get them out there. I think it's a great way get our small community to branch out into different MUDs and even introduce others to our text based fantasy worlds!

Re: Delerak's MUD Vlogs
 

This is a great idea IMO. I've asked players before to log in and provide feedback.. any and all is useful.

-Astark
: 7000

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Ask and ye shall receive. Aarchon Mud first look :D

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Also this vid went way longer than I anticipated but it was too fun! Really brought a lot of nostalgia back during my pk mud days.

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Delerak,

I'd like to thank you for taking so much time to do this first look video. You gave me quite a bit of insight into some things that can be improved upon in the newbie zone, and for new users in general. One example is that the "kick" skill can be used by any player at any level, regardless of their skill %. This would have sped up your leveling/combat at lower levels quite a bit.

This "service" you offer is something that I think every MUD will benefit from and I hope that you find more MUDs who are interested in something like this. I'll probably end up watching your video a few more times and decide on the best way to implement a few other changes before moving forward, but I've already fixed the "practice" peeve you came across. It will be on the main port in the next 24 hours.. Change shown here :




You also came across a bug in the Disney area with Goofy's Hovercraft being worn on the "hold" location. A little surprised that it's never been reported before given that it's one of our oldest zones!

The only thing I'd like to mention here is that Aarchon isn't exactly a PK MUD. While many (most) of the hero characters enjoy PK we don't have a lot of action going on at lower levels.

Some feedback that I have for you, is that doing a slightly longer summary the end of your video would be extremely helpful for the MUD admins and players contemplating joining the MUD. I think you mentioned enough during the video for me to keep busy, but thought this might help you with your vlog format. I'll see if I can come up with any response/feedback for you after I watch the video a couple more times, and in the mean time I'll link your YouTube Channel on our facebook page and website.


Thanks again,
Astark
: 7000

Re: Delerak's MUD Vlogs
 

Hey there Astark,

Thanks for responding so quickly to my vid! It was a pleasure to login and check out your game man. It has a LOT of features and if I had more time I actually could see myself playing there for fun. But as I said this was more of a 'first look' type thing and I spent around an hour or so on there which is a lot for me right now during my final week of college.


- About the PK MUD thing. In hindsight I should have said 'hack n slash'. Which to me is quite the same as PK mud. The way the games are setup with lots of skills, plenty of zones for power leveling and getting gear. It's old school. For me personally the only incentive to play these are to eventually get into player vs player combat. While I thoroughly enjoy roleplaying it takes kind of a backseat in this case and with this kind of system as the system isn't necessarily designed around roleplay as much as it is designed around: Go here. Kill this. Loot that. Rinse and repeat. It's a super fun model that works very well.

- Finding bugs/typos/minor annoyances etc is easy for me. It comes naturally as I was a beta tester for activision for a while. (9 months meh.) but that was a lot of fun and I learned a lot about gaming while working there. And yes my vids are definitely lacking in a 'format' I need to do some research and talk more about features, but I think actually connecting and logging in is also the meat of the vid. Being able to watch a HD vid of a MUD isn't something you see very often. However; YES I need feedback and I need help figuring out how to format my vids. If I had a script it would be much easier but I don't really have time to do all that and the main point of the 'First Look' vids are that I've never logged in and I know nothing about the game.

-Thanks for the links! Always good to increase viewership and I don't do nearly enough. I don't think I've done any advertising besides this thread.

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It's been a while folks got some new content.

I again want to apologize to Carrion Fields for taking so damn long doing this one. They requested it many months ago and I was just super busy. I'm kind of gimped up right now and was able to finally get on and have fun with the game. I really enjoyed this one and may come back for a Second Look soon!

Anyways here is a link to the video for your convenience.

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Also I promise to be more active. Any and all requests for first looks or topics of discussion/questions will be posted in weeks instead of months. 8 months with no reply on this thread is unacceptable to me personally and I think it makes me look lazy. While I am lazy I can't have people knowing that so if anyone has anything feel free to PM me on here and I will do a video as soon as I can.

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Thanks for the quick run through Delerak. Really appreciate this and it sounds like you've been busy with your move so I hope that is going well. Would you mind if we linked this on our website and FB page and so on? We would of course give you full credit and direct folks to your Youtube and thread.

To clarify on our player base size, the peak time is early evenings CST and is typically 35-40, with our busiest day being a Sunday night. In off-peak (European mornings/Australia afternoon) we don't have too much traffic. (Typically known as the regear/potion gathering hours.)

Anyway, thank very you much again. Truly awesome video and you picked up the basics pretty quick.

Re: Delerak's MUD Vlogs
 

Not at all. That's what I do it for. I will probably return for a Second Look some time soon as well. To be completely honest I feel like I didn't get nearly enough playtime with this video to do the mud justice.

Re: Delerak's MUD Vlogs
 

Hi all. As promised I am being more active with my channel and so here is another first look on Alter Aeon this time. Link below for your convenience.



I will apologize in advance for my video is a bit off on the bottom and you are unable to see some of my commands going thru but overall the quality is okay I adjusted the resolution to 1080p I will make sure it doesn't happen in my next videos.

Thanks.

Re: Delerak's MUD Vlogs
 

Thanks a lot for taking a look at the game. It was really good to get an outside perspective, and I went through a number of the things you mentioned (as well as a few you didn't) to see if I could improve things. The 'spurious line feed' thing you saw immediately after login appears to be a side effect of the way that ZMud in particular handles MSP. It can be fixed on the server, and should be handled properly after the next server code upload.

It would have been interesting to see the difference using the custom client, as the automap would have reduced your search time for the cave. There's a 'map' command which displays something similar for non-custom clients, but the graphical map is prettier.

Once again, thanks for your time and effort. It's appreciated :)

-dentin

Re: Delerak's MUD Vlogs
 

Of course. These are actually pretty fun to do when I have time. I will dedicate my next video to looking at your client.

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Hi guys. Been a while since I put up some new content. This is a long one but I think it's worth a look (listen?). I decided I wanted to get away from my First Looks for a while and I've always wanted to try my hand at interviewing some people who have interesting experiences in the MUDing community.

Without further adieu I present my first ever Mud interview with Jason (aka: Falco, aka Prof.)





Please let me know what you guys think as this is completely new for me and I know there were a lot of issues in this video. IE: Sound quality. Some of it I can't control but would you guys like to see more content like this? Or should I get back to reviewing MUDs and such? I'd love to do interviews with people just to see their point of view, maybe hash out discussions and just get our grey matter going.

I have a big passion for MUDs even though I'm not much of a good player I just want to try and give something to the community. Thanks guys!

Re: Delerak's MUD Vlogs
 

Been a long long time TMS. Any interest in me doing more video reviews of MUDs? Post here with your MUD and I will either do a First Look or if I've already reviewed your mud once I will do an more in-depth video of the mud.

Thanks,
-del

Re: Delerak's MUD Vlogs
 

Wow, long time Delerak.

We wouldn't mind you doing a new or in depth review of Ateraan if you have time. The game has entered a new Era so you might want to get some of the background on that first and maybe get a feel for it.

Here are some ways to get this background:

These links are the posts related to the Fall and the New Era:





You can also log on and read the help files: help lore and help fall.

If you need special access in order to help the review or have questions to contact me on the game via the question channel during creation or via an otell (read help otell once in the game). I think it would also be nice if you went through the tutorial to show how that works and take the tour at the end of creation (read help tour when you are in the game).

Thanks,

Andrew
Administrator on Ateraan

Re: Delerak's MUD Vlogs
 

I will try and first look first. The format usually is me logging into the game with little to no knowledge beforehand except browsing the website briefly and then showing in the video how a new player interacts with the game.

I'll post the video here in a few days.

Re: Delerak's MUD Vlogs
 

Man, great to see you back around Delerak!
If you want a second game, feel free to check out Ansalon next :).
We've slowed a bit back to 10-15 players on, but regular updates and a great world (22 this summer!).
Thanks bud, I look forward to watching your current review!

Re: Delerak's MUD Vlogs
 

Look for your first look in the next couple days.
Thanks.

Re: Delerak's MUD Vlogs
 

New Worlds first look is complete. Link is below. Of note is that I discovered multiplaying is allowed therefore the player count is probably inflated. The resolution is also a bit wonky because I haven't used OBS in a while so I am going to fix that in future videos. Other then that this was a pretty fun first look, it's been a long time.

Re: Delerak's MUD Vlogs
 

Nice review Delarak.
Being an experienced MUDder also, it's really interesting to see what others notice/want/find fun.
If their game was DOT, I'd love to see the diku/merc/rom credits put back in. But that's another thread completely.

Re: Delerak's MUD Vlogs
 

It's listed as LP Mud codebase. I'm unfamiliar with that, the only reason I mentioned it is because of the who list and I have been working on my coding with dawn codebase so it's really on my brain lately. In hindsight it was missing a few dawn features that are core to the codebase such as 'laston' which I attempted to type in the game.

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Ah cool, LP was Lars Pensejo (sp?)'s base. Haven't used them myself either.
After watching your review, i added 'help features' :).
Always like seeing how people think, and what they want and don't find.

Re: Delerak's MUD Vlogs
 

Delerak. You have an excellent voice, layout, and descriptive prose of a professional game blog reviewer. I think you should start a blog and review all kinds of games.

I would highly recommend any mud owner to have Delerak review your game. He had a lot of good insight and good pros and cons. So either way he does a great job with good info.

Very fun to watch and get his perspective.

Thanks Delerak!

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Hah, dyin!
I hear that!

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Here is Ansalon mud. I want to note that I should not say "review" so many times in the video in fact not at all, these videos aren't meant to be reviews but simple quick looks at the game from an experienced gamer/mudder who can allow others to get a feel for it without having to invest the 30+ minutes to do so.

With that said here is the video:

Re: Delerak's MUD Vlogs
 

I have a few new videos up, stories of old muds I used to play.

I'm working on a tutorial video to start a mud from beginning to finish but am having some problems with concept and hopefully will get that out soon.

Re: Delerak's MUD Vlogs
 

Heyas D, sorry man, switched careers and have been off the grid working 12-15 hour days.
Thanks for the look at our world!
I realize that it wasn't your thing, but I think a few misconceptions were to be had.
1. We aren't RPI, we're role-play encouraged. I think that felt like a major 'um, wth? this is NOT what I though?' type thing with the review.
2. It's Diku lineage, and as such will be _very_ hack/slash as we didn't recode to something without the 'object interaction' it's very much a game where if you drop a dice, the code will know what the number is on that die. It's also the 'murder 4000' type thing for EXP gains etc. That also being said, there has been a major parser change to allow for things like 'get my sword out of my backpack' vs 'get sword back' etc. But, the old 'diku' stuff still works. (see 3)
3. The commands, it's really NOT Rom, (as seen by the 20+ year change logs), but we kept the 'old commands' working so that those familiar with this line of Mud play would still feel at home.
I realize it was a 'first look' type approach and REALLY appreciate the time and look at the game!
I do wish though, that a precursory look into say 'help features' (added after watching one of your previous quick looks) would show 'Hey what's unique?'.

As far as RP type features, some are more akin to PBP type games (you post a story it shows up online on your 'tome' in the Great Library etc). As it was a more 'hands on' type base originally, the RP aspects are more on IC channels etc (back that 'encouraged, not enforced'). Perhaps that's a name/descriptive thing we could change to be more clear?

My approach as always been 'see, feel, touch, smell' etc. So things will have a coded physical interaction.
Long story short, thanks much for dropping in and taking a feel on the game! I'm sorry if it seemed mis-labeled as a RPI, that wasn't the intent. We do have tons of RP but it's not the primary thrust of communication.
I await future videos on games, thanks man!

- Dave.

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No worries Z. Wow I sound cool going just by first letters.. anyway like I said in the video your game would be very well-met by 2 types of people, fans of Dragonlance (which I myself am) and newer players to MUDs because of the simplicity of the system in place. Sorry I didn't check out your features helpfile I remember you mentioning it earlier in the thread, I tend to be distracted in the videos.

15-16 years ago your mud would appeal to me greatly, or if I was new to muds, just like RPI's would not appeal to newer MUD players the opposite is true of simpler systems that use a more hack and slash mentality, it's easier to understand especially in todays society.

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Interesting to hear thoughts on SoI.

Sad how the game's ended up, and incredibly depressing how much history was lost due to bad record keeping, backup management, etc.

I'd love to just get a chance to walk through the world with everything fully intact again.

I'll say that after several years, and having run a MUD myself, Kite gets nowhere near enough credit for how much stability he brought to SOI. He had issues, and Rhubarb was a totally different story, but he's probably one of the most competent head admins the game ever had- and looking at it's current state, he was definitely the right person to be running it.

Also: Crazy to think that SoI has actually been defunct for over 5 years now. The new iteration is only SoI in name, and by the fact that it runs a derivative of the original engine, and is based in middle-earth.

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Traithe would have something to say on that matter I think, but maybe not, I think Traithe ran it far better.

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I did say 'one of', not 'the most'.

Though, I honestly don't think it's fair to say that Traithe ran it far better. He ran it well, and that period of the game was probably the least tumultuous and also saw the most competent developer in charge of the codebase, which is not always a positive (because a developer is likely to burn out) but in his case was, because it was a project he was wholly and completely committed to.

Also, not sure if anyone else could have navigated (or even would have tried to navigate) the legal issues that plagued the game in those early days.

I'll also admit that I was a huge Traithe fanboy, but I was also 13 when I started playing SoI in 2003 and a rather crappy player, so it's hard to apply the same critical lens to how he ran the game. Those early years were a far different time, and I was far less hooked into the OOC network in those days. When I came back to SoI in ~2009 after a few years of on-and-off checking in, it was a very different world and I was far more connected to the 'behind the scenes'.

These days, I think an RPI game can only survive through embracing the metagaming- especially with the ease with which Discord connects players in realtime.