[Chryos]

The Fall of The High Seas

Written by: Chryos

It was the 8th Day of the Month of Autumn Twilight, Year 541.

That cold ocean air, so cold it burned your nose. The salt air filling every breath.

Shrefwan took his post aboard the Crow's Nest, watching over everything the crew was doing. The crew, bold adventurers all who came aboard to help rid Medievia of one of the newest threats to our land, the serpent. Those slithering denizens of the deep, who have made their home in our oceans.

We set out on our journey in search of those wretched beasts. We had journeyed together before, the Captain and myself, aboard this ship of almost mythical standings\; the High Seas. With record high's of 2,616,587 fae, and 21,717 serpents points, the ship was out to beat their own scores.

So we set sail, with the best crew of serpent hunters Medievia has to offer. Today, those serpents would have to run and hide, because holy vengeance was about to wrought. It didn't take long for the battle to begin, the DM felt it necessary to test our strength, and wits, by sending aquoderms. Shrefwan held his place aboard the crow's nest, if a serpent were to sneak up on us, we might be in trouble. The sea worms quickly squirmed below decks, trying to take out the crew person by person. Angeliqa quickly got the crew organized, and together began battle with the derms. The derms, though vicious, soon fell to the spells and blades of the crew.

Though the battle with the derms was short, it was not peaceful for long. We quickly entered serpent territory, and almost immediately we saw a glimmer of violet just underneath the surface of the water. With a quick call to arms Shrefwan shouted for our larboard side to open fire. With that, the battle was on. As soon as the first shots hit the beast, it reared up, staring at us with three heads. Then quickly dove again. From afar Shrefwan viewed the serpent coming at us, fast. "Load Larboard!" We needed to get all of our guns reloaded, before the serpent was to attack again. Arrumar grasped the wheel a bit tighter, making sure our course was true. The serpent came closer and closer, and just when it was almost on top of us, "FIRE!". A shot hit it in the face, and quickly turned it away. This serpent was going to be no trouble at all, We had all faired quite well against much harder adversaries in these waters, and no eel-headed beast was going to hurt us.

The serpent was quickly destroyed, volley after volley made sure of it. With the beast's corpse in the water we all grabbed our hooks and ran to the edges, hauling up more and more meat from the serpent's giant remains. Serpent meat seems to be the best thing to use to attract other serpents. So we started throwing more and more of the smelly carcass into the water, hoping to attract, bigger, badder serps. A crossbreed was next. Crossbreeds have advantages from both sides of their parentage, but cannot break apart when killed. It slowly rose up, shining glowing gold and glistening emerald in the moonlight. Though through all menacing it did on our nerves, it was no match for what slithered under our boat. A hideous streak of ruby as far as the eye could see.

It reared it's ugly hammer head out of the water, which immediately sent chills down the crews spine. This thing could very easily sink our ship, and kill everyone aboard. Immediately we bore down on the serpent. Though it may be big enough to swallow us, there was no way we were going to lose. Quickly we eradicated the golden emerald serpent, we had much bigger fish to fry. Volley after volley the crew fired at the beast, slowly but surely wearing it's life down. The brace crew faired well against the giant foe, carefully timing their shots with the orders of the captain. The battle was long, but the serpent couldn't even touch us, out ship had faired incredibly well so far. Soon the serpent was dead, a wonderful gift for the necromancer to bless our journey. Though, we discovered the gods were not on our side this day, for when the final shot hit, and killed our foe, it split. Turning what was a difficult job, into sheer terror. The crew, dazed from the long fight, still weary from battle, manned the guns, ready to follow the orders of the captain. The exhaustion got the best of us though, when trying to keep one baby from hitting us, another would come forward in it's place, ready to annihilate our ship. Bravely the crew fired, but the beast's offspring rammed us again and again. The hammer headed serpents were too much for us, and with one last final strike. We sank.

That ship of legend, gone in an instant.

So all that remains of our faithful day, is this log, to be remembered by future generations of serpent hunters to come.



For More on Medievia and Clan Ships, please visit:
http://www.medievia.com/f/ships.html

[Drealoth]

Clan Ships on Medthievia, Med MudSlinger: Fall of the High Seas [http://www.game.org/med/]

There, I fixed your typo.

EDIT: Wow Ikonboard is interesting...

[mixologee]

I've been playing this game off and on since '96. I've had a clan for I can't even remember how long since before the days of kingdoms, but after the days of castle battles (sad loss). Through the years I have taken part in pretty much every aspect of this game from trading to huge cpk battles between fueding clans to running dragon lairs ... but ney I leave that to another time. Medievia's shipping system is one of the coolest things I think I have ever seen in a game. I think I may have had 50+ people on my ship at times on some of my trecks out to sea. You can have a lot of fun with that many people on a ship hunting serpents, looking for rebel ships or maybe you just feel like being a pirate and sinking, or even stealing, someone else's ship. I mean I'm not big on games that aren't free because I don't relly like spending extra money, comcast is already robbing me enough, but what other game has this kind of feature on top of all the other stuff they have already, free or not?

[prof1515]

Originally Posted by (mixologee @ Feb. 16 2006,23:08) Medievia's shipping system is one of the coolest things I think I have ever seen in a game. I think I may have had 50+ people on my ship at times on some of my trecks out to sea. You can have a lot of fun with that many people on a ship hunting serpents, looking for rebel ships or maybe you just feel like being a pirate and sinking, or even stealing, someone else's ship. I mean I'm not big on games that aren't free because I don't relly like spending extra money, comcast is already robbing me enough, but what other game has this kind of feature on top of all the other stuff they have already, free or not?

This feature has been available on free MUDs for some time. Same for the rest of their features.

[Soleil]

Thanks Chryos for posting your article!

I'll be devil's advocate because I'm curious... what other MUDs can you name that have a Ship feature like Medievia's? Before you answer it might be wise to understand that Medievia's ships are all their own unique little zones, steered through the ocean by a captain and a crew, all working together to fight off all the nasties that the Dungeon Master creates especially for them. I will be the first to say that I am not knowledgable about features of other MUDs so I'm curious to know what other games have ships that are zones, that need a group of people to run, need large groups of 20+ people to kill off the mobs, that have a Dungeon Master creating many types of mobfactions and unique serpents on the fly based on their adventure, and that the clans themselves buy, stock, repair and run.

In addition, do the muds that you mention with ship features have maps like these for navigating the oceans and fighting the beasts? http://www.medievia.com/screenshots.html Scroll down for most of the ship/serpent shots.

[Baram]

Lusternia's aetherships work along the same concept as yours. Though I like the little tree's on your map, those are cute.

[Soleil]

Nods when I read about Lusternia's ships last week they did sound very similar. But, they are a brand-new feature aren't they? Prof1515's post made it sound like there are other games that have had features like this for awhile... I'm curious to know what Muds he was referring to

[Baram]

Probably are others, I've heard of ships in other games before. Lusternia was just the first one to pop into my head.

[Galleus]

Federation from IB Games has had a similar system for quite some time.

[KaVir]

It's hardly an uncommon feature - it's been part of the stock SWR codebase for years, but other muds have had similar systems long before that.

[Valg]

The advertising forum is over there. Third door on your right.

[Soleil]

I've been looking briefly into the games you're all mentioning... are they all science-fiction based spaceships or are there games that you know of that have actual ocean-sailing type ships?  I'm really not trying to get at anything here except my own personal knowledge of the ship systems that exist.  When I get more time I'm going to log onto some of these games you are mentioning so I can have a more accurate comparison.  Do you know of any games that have ocean-sailing ship features like Medievia's?

[mixologee]

Well I wouldn't mind some addresses to these games to check it out. As for the screen shots thats nice but these maps:

http://www.medievia.com/livemedmap.html

This one shows the world and all mob factions/serpents/seaslugs around the world.

http://www.medievia.com/medmap.html?MedMapAllGrid

And this one to put in coords and find exact place in the world is also cool.

Like I said though if you could give me some addresses of these game you all speak of that have these features I'd like to check em out.

Both of these maps used together make the shipping experience much more manageable for anyone who reads this and actually uses the ships this story talks about.

[KaVir]

Originally Posted by Like I said though if you could give me some addresses of these game you all speak of that have these features I'd like to check em out.

Most use spaceships (although the difference is really just cosmetic), but I can't be bothered to list them all (there's around 60-70). There are also various TinyMUDs which utilise ships, but they tend to handle it somewhat differently, so I've not bothered with those either. I've also skipped some of the more tacky implementations, and I've no doubt missed many muds which didn't use obvious keywords, but here's a few to get you started:

Necromium: necromium.com 4000

5 Kingdoms of Mercator: xerxes.mudhaven.com 2411

Merentha: merentha.com 10000

Duris: durismud.org 6666

Elysium: elysium-rpg.com 7777

Basternae II: 131.128.194.236 6666

Dark and Shattered Lands: dsl-mud.org 4000

Abandoned Reality: abandoned.org 4444

Empire: wraith.aplus.net 4000

DarkWind: darkwind.org 3000

Ancient Empires: mud.ancientempires.net 5011

Xyllomer: xyllomer.de 3000

Beyond the Forest's Edge: tfe.genesismuds.com 2000

Waterdeep: wdmud.com 6660

Nemesis: mud.nemesis.de 2000

ElderainMUD: elderainmud.com 4000

DreamsMAZE: sonad.com 4208

[Spazmatic]

Originally Posted by I will be the first to say that I am not knowledgable about features of other MUDs so I'm curious to know what other games have ships that are zones, that need a group of people to run, need large groups of 20+ people to kill off the mobs, that have a Dungeon Master creating many types of mobfactions and unique serpents on the fly based on their adventure, and that the clans themselves buy, stock, repair and run.

How is having your ship be a zone a positive thing? It would seem far more intelligent and interesting (and actually novel?) to have the ship be a fluid part of the world - why shouldn't a plank be a ship? What happens when the ship gets blasted to itsy bits and pieces? Are individual components ships too?

I completely fail to see how being a "zone" is a positive thing - I assume you mean that it's not just a room, which surely is, in certain respects, an improvement on the entire ship being just one room (and in certain respects is not). But, psh, continuous functions beat discrete in this case, any ol' day.

Also, it'd be nice if you could explain what "need large groups of 20+ people to kill off the mobs" means - do you need one fella steering and another firing the cannons? If my interpretation is correct, I fail to see any difference from the point before, but I'm assuming you mean something else.

Oh, and could you explain how "need large groups of 20+ people to kill off the mobs, that have a Dungeon Master creating many types of mobfactions and unique serpents on the fly based on their adventure" are actual core features/functionality. It appears completely irrelevant to feature-level discussion... after all, difficulty of mobs and presence of DM/GMs aren't directly connected to ship systems.

Originally Posted by are they all science-fiction based spaceships or are there games that you know of that have actual ocean-sailing type ships? .... Do you know of any games that have ocean-sailing ship features like Medievia's?

Why is there a fundamental difference between science fiction spaceships and ocean-going vessels? Especially if you have, say, Victorian aetherships or something as your spaceship, which are basically ocean-going vessels with 3 dimensions of movement.

Yes, water has other features - waves, wind, rot - that aren't as important or don't exist in space, but most of them should be implemented as part of a complete system anyways. More on that later.

The point is, ships are ships are vehicles are things that you sit in and that go places. Yes, the horse and the horse-drawn buggy and the canoe and the ship-of-the-line and the ironclad and the aircraft carrier and the aethership and the Starship Enterprise are all different, but as features go, they aren't fundamentally dissimilar. In fact, you could transform (decently) the Enterprise into a ship-of-the-line by swapping warp for wind and making some cosmetic tweaks.

True, a deep simulation needs more, but I can think of no active mud with a deep simulation. They're great for fun, and at the fun level, you can turn the Enterprise into the HMS Surprise.

Originally Posted by Most use spaceships (although the difference is really just cosmetic), but I can't be bothered to list them all (there's around 60-70).

I've tried out many of these! They vary from the very simple (think slightly tweaked ROM vehicles snippet) to the rather entertaining (it's quite fun to screw up this one Xyllomer quest and have your ship get buffeted around and devoured by a whirlpool).

That said, I thought I'd add a brief discussion of a system I helped design that won't show up - we were a small MUSH, even at our shortlived peak, and now it's resting in pieces.

Basically, we cheated - our system used relative positioning to create a nice roleplaying ship system, without all the nonsense of absolute positioning and needing to track ninety five million little objects flying through space. Asteroid fields existed as clustered objects, for example, defined by their relative position in a solar system. It was very elegant for exciting RP chases, etc, but I imagine it wouldn't be top notch for a PK mud.

My favorite moment was taking our little cargo ship into an asteroid belt to avoid a pursuing government ship (dilapidated smugglers for the win! , which was much bigger and less maneuverable, though faster overall. I spent the next 20 minutes executing maneuvers as text regarding approaching asteroids (generated, of course) scrolled across the screen. The ship's doctor and mechanic were squatting in the engine room (the ship was a living ship) , injecting drugs and repairing circuitry and being buffeted by my screams to restore power to auxiliary engines, etc. The doctor was actually sideswiped by a flying panel, and was mostly out for the remainder of the cargo run (bloodloss, wee!. Before the end of the run, we had to dump our cargo to avoid pursuing fighters, hide at a planet's pole, and drift with orbiting junk.

We got away with building this system cheaply by avoiding any actual deep mechanics - relative positioning, linear approximations for complex physics (you go faster, asteroids are generated faster, maneuvers work less effectively, etc). It was fun, though.

My point?

The system was designed to extend into other areas, hopefully elegantly. We had a fairly well tweaked set of parameters that let ships with wings enter the atmosphere and fly there. The system also worked decently under water. We had problems with surface sailing (air + water threw off our fluid mechanics approximations), and nothing was 100% complete, but...

I don't know, in my heart, next to the space dedicated to Firefly, I still love that little hack. And I thought my story was relevant, because I haven't found any ship system that's remotely as fun. Maybe more elaborate, maybe more realistic, but never as memorable.

[Threshold]

I am glad you included DarkWind on your list, KaVir.

That was one of the very first MUDs I ever played seriously, and they had a really awesome seagoing ship system at least 10+ years ago.

You could enhance and upgrade your ship in numerous ways, outfit the crew, attack other ships, attack monsters, travel the ENORMOUS seas, and do all sorts of other great stuff. You could even board people's ships. It was very cool. I imagine they have probably added more features since I last played.

[Soleil]

This is mostly in reply to Spazmatic's post since he asked questions of me directly. Let me first start out by saying that I am not a coder nor did I have any input on the development of ships, so I am not the expert on the whys of the thing, but I'll do my best anyways...

The ships are not just one room, they are many rooms depending on the type of ship. For example, the smallest ship, a Sloop, has 1 deck, 1 hull, 1 mast, 9 guns, and 31 rooms while our largest ship, the Man O'War has 2.2 decks, 1 hull, 3 masts, 37 guns and a lot more rooms (don't have an exact number at this time, but probably more than 50). Anyways, the point is that the ships are many rooms and can hold many people. From a coder's standpoint I cannot answer as to why we took the zone approach, you would have to ask Ozymandias that.

As for needing large groups, well, yes you do. The Man O'War needs a crew of at least 8 people just to get the sails raised. Then you need more people to buy and move the ammo. Once out to sea you need people at each gun when fighting to get the most out of the battle. As the Man O War has 37 guns, that's at least that many people for a good battle. Of course you can have less, but if you are battling another Man O War you want as many people as you can get of course. Then, during battles, you get many nasty critters sent your way that destroy your ship. So, you need additional people onboard to fight these mobs, pump water and repair the ships. So basically, if you are wanting to take your clan's Man O War out for 'shipping', it's wise to muster up a crew of at least 25 people if you want to be successfull. If not you may just lose the ship and all the treasure you captured.

The Dungeon Master is integral to our ship system because depending on the Pride, Fear, Happiness, and Sadness of the crew and the ship's adventures, mobs are created to help you or impede your trip. There are many mobfactions that just live in the sea: Serpents, Ruby Kah, Aquoderms, Kraken, Firesticks, Sea Termites, Firemoths, Sirens, Searams, etc and they all do specific damage to the ship and have specific things to defeat them. There are also 'good' mobfactions that come and help you: Sea Griffins and Emerald Kah. So say that you are being attacked by 2 serpents, firesticks, and Aquderms, and your ship is in danger of sinking... Well, the DM will notice this and most likely send a 'good' mobfaction your way to help you out and fight the nasties. It's very difficult to explain the DM in a concise manner so if you are interested you can read about it at http://www.medievia.com/f/dm.html
and more about the Mobfactions at http://www.medievia.com/f/mobfactions.html

Ok, anyways, it seems that I've answered the questions asked of me to the best of my ability.

To comment on the other stuff.. Thanks Kavir for pointing out those other games. Although I haven't had much time to log in and check them out, I did check out the websites for the first few on the list. Yes it does seem they have something that looks similar to our shipping system, but just not as large of a scale. It's very difficult to say that a MUD has the same thing when we have as many people on ONE ship that they have on their whole MUD at a time. So, the systems may be similar but no where near the scale that Medievia's ships are. There are many times when we have several ships out fighting serpents, mobfactions, and each other with 20-50 people per ship. Some of the MUDs on that list have 20 people TOTAL logged in.

Ok, I've written enough! I hope I answered your questions but to really undersand and experience Medievia's Ships you need to log in and be a part of then yourself. If you enjoy ships on your MUD, you should check out Medievia's ships... you won't be disappointed