Top Mud Sites Forum Return to TopMudSites.com
Go Back   Top Mud Sites Forum > Mud Development and Administration > MUD Builders and Areas
Click here to Register

Reply
 
Thread Tools
Old 04-22-2005, 05:44 AM   #1
Savitri
New Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: South Africa
Posts: 14
Savitri is on a distinguished road
Angry

Our mud has quite a few original areas but nobody really thought to replace the old stock areas or to remove it.  I’ve decided to start a campaign to remove the stock areas now after so many years since half of them don’t fit into the mud and the other half is just a waste of space.

Now I’ve asked the question on our forum about which areas should be replaced first since there are so many stock areas that were left.

I’m thinking of replacing the stock areas with same themed areas so that some of the players don’t feel completely alienated, e.g. Replace The Shire with a new shire but completely custom.  The problem comes in that certain areas don’t quite fit into the medieval fantasy theme.  Now my question to all of you.  What do you classify as medieval fantasy? E.g. Smurfville according to me don’t fit really into that theme.  Do you suggest that areas such as e.g. Smurfville get replaced with a totally new area – different theme or try to make it fit into the theme of the mud as much as possible?

PS Smurfville is just one example that I'm using - there are others.
Savitri is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 05-05-2005, 10:11 PM   #2
Iluvatar
Member
 
Join Date: May 2002
Location: Mississippi USA
Posts: 142
Iluvatar is on a distinguished road
Consistency in your theme is an important part of displaying professionalism in my opinion. Each excursion from the basic theme to a different one "should" have a logical, common sense explanation of why there's so much deviation. Stock zones were usually trash by our modern standards created by people who were more interested in functionality of coding concepts than coherent expansions of the world in a logical pattern. So yes, they should be either re-written or trashed imho.

As to priority, perhaps it depends on how people access your world. Best thought might be target the ones YOU consider the worst and either do yourself or get volunteers who share your view to committ to doing them. We use a standard that says the original author will always get credit from an original submission. We have zones in the status of original and rewritten with the latter reflecting the level of modification applied to it by a rewriter. Changing approximately half may give editor status but you'll have to do 80% or better to get co-author and rewrite status.
Iluvatar is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 05-06-2005, 04:00 AM   #3
Estarra
Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2003
Home MUD: Lusternia
Posts: 191
Estarra is on a distinguished road
Any newbie area--places like "Smurfville' or "Mob Factory" (*shudder*)-- are often a player's introduction to your MUD. You may want to consider giving special attention to newbie areas to showcase the theme and originality of your MUD. Often, newbie areas are overlooked, because, well, there's a misconception that it's more interesting to build higher level areas. But I think newbie areas are terribly important for retaining new players, as first impressions count for a lot.

As an aside, there's no reason to dumb down newbie areas. Just because newbies can't kill big mobs doesn't mean they're stupid. When I designed Lusternia's newbie area, I made sure that there was an interesting story line and dozens of quests, including two very long quests that are extremely difficult. A funny anecdote I've heard is that, since our newbie area is level restricted, some players puposefully die so that they can stay in the newbie area to figure out the quests!
Estarra is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 05-06-2005, 04:24 AM   #4
Molly
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Sweden
Home MUD: 4 Dimensions
Posts: 574
Molly will become famous soon enoughMolly will become famous soon enough
I'd say that it is usually a better idea to trash the old zone and make a completely new one than trying to rewite parts of it. Rewriting usually end up as a patchwork, and for a skilled Builder it actually takes longer time than working from scratch.

I once had to rewrite Midgard, because it is one of the 2 zones that the code needs to work properly - (zone 0 is the other one) - and it was a terrible experience. Not only had that zone been added to innumerable times by different builders, leaving it totally without any logic structure when it came to the order of the vnums. It also had exits and entries to dozens of other zones. most of them non-existant in our mud.  It would have been a lot easier to junk all the existing files and just write a new zone.

And if you make completely new zones, you don't need to worry about whether the builder should be called 'editor', co-author' or just 'author' either.

Personally I wouldn't keep any stock zones, but if you actually LIKE some of them, and the theme fits with your general Mud theme, I don't see any harm in keeping those, after balancing the mobs and objects to fit your other zones. But if you do keep them; show some respect for the original builder, and don't change things just for the sake of changing. Try to adapt any additions to the original style the zone was written in, to keep the 'flavour'. This is actually not an easy thing to do, and if the builder doesn't have enough feeling for the language to manage it, again it would be  better to start from scratch.
Molly is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 05-06-2005, 11:11 PM   #5
Iluvatar
Member
 
Join Date: May 2002
Location: Mississippi USA
Posts: 142
Iluvatar is on a distinguished road
You're correct, the only things to remember are to expect newbies not to know your commands and few young people care about reading anymore than they have to. *sigh*

I'm of the opinion it's a waste of time to use 10 cent words much less the 25 cent or 50 cent ones I normally use to ameliorate a nuance. *Wonders how many ran to dictionary.com*  I guess I've developed a fairly jaded perspective over the years.
Iluvatar is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply


Thread Tools


Replacing Stock Areas - Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
All Original, Not Stock, No Rent. - Aurealan Realm Mouseglove Advertising for Players 0 10-20-2003 10:54 PM
Adding new areas Kariyana MUD Coding 1 01-18-2003 12:12 AM
Distributing Stock Areas with a Codebase Neranz Laverani MUD Administration 14 09-04-2002 09:18 AM
Stock Areas ScourgeX Tavern of the Blue Hand 12 08-20-2002 08:51 PM
Sexist female stock mob KaVir MUD Humor 17 08-02-2002 11:08 PM

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

All times are GMT -4. The time now is 06:56 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Style based on a design by Essilor
Copyright Top Mud Sites.com 2022