If anyone is interested in a snippet thing for enabling mrtg graphs for your mud, let me know. Also which codebase it should be for, or if it should be in "pseudo" code thing. Only thing you would need to do is basically a loop that counts your online players (and enabling some things for mrtg).

To see how the graphs work live check out this link ->

Heh, the first 'snippet' i've used in years.  Good work.

Any mud that is serious about the long term, needs to be aware of their player base history and growth, this is an excellent tool to aid in visualizing that.

The link to the graph on my mud is  

Of course, their is no long term data, so this is somewhat skewed, but it shows it off nicely.


--
Rhuarc
Tarmon Gaidon

Wow, that's a very nice-looking setup, Pharazon.

Great work.

Thanks for the not-so-subtly cloaked advertisement... cant get too many advertisements in our daily lives, now can we?

But on a more serious note, this brings up a good point: when the goal is a large playerbase, one ought to use empirical methods to try and measure the effects that a change has on the playerbase. Use the scientific method. Do one change at a time, and observe how that influences the playerbase. Do a bunch all at once, and valuable info will be hopelessly obfuscated by the interacting effects of each change.

As an example, you will agree that there are a certain number of players who log on, make a new char, and immediately quit. You desire to reduce this phenomena. You experiment, in a very scientific and controlled way, with cosmetic changes to the creation process, changes to the MOTDs, changes to the area they start in... all the while carefully measuring what happens to the above phenomena.

Then maybe with the edge you gain thus *legitimately*, you can stop posting disguised advertisements for your foul-reeking landfill of a MUD (heck, maybe your mud will even become a mud worth visiting!)

Uh, excuse me?

If you'll notice, I've been involved in discussing this particular subject since very early on, when I used Hephos' guidelines to create usage graphs for my own project.

I was simply congratulating Pharazon, a fellow coder, on what I thought was a job very well done. I don't really see any particular reason to merit the rather nasty tone of your post.

I guess it just goes to show that no good deed ever goes unpunished around here, eh?

I believe he was talking to Hephos, though I may be mistaken.

Thanks for the constructive criticism. Perhaps one day I'll be bothered by remarks like this that are generated by retarded individuals like yourself that simply jump on a topic in order to start a flame war.

I was responding to Hephos' original post, where he was requesting a link to muds that have implemented his patch. Although I did a complete "black box" rewrite of the idea, I thought it relevant and fair to respond as the inspiration for the idea was generated by him.

Unfortunately, this just goes to show the general level of input that is now generated on the TMS boards. No doubt this thread will now degenerate into a slanging match as usual, greatly reducing the SNR of the board, and driving more posters away.

Anyway - I thank Hephos again for a great idea that we've now implemented, and thanks to Traithe for the response.