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Old 06-02-2006, 03:42 AM   #21
Elora
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My 2 cents.

1- Commercial mud vs. free mud. As a builder, I'll admit I think twice about considering building for a commercial mud. I don't mind it on strictly ideological grounds (as long as they aren't using DiKU), but I don't want to add my contribution to a mud that I am not absolutely sure will be honest their  future marketing strategies.  I don't mind pay to play or even pay for perks as concepts, but I will not help advance muds using "pusher-marketing" (get your first fix free, rest will cost you). Just to be sure no one misunderstands: this is not an attack on any particular mud out there, but pure hypothetical concern stemming from the marketing methods I have seen used in the MMORPG industry.

2- The "new mud risk". I have been burnt pretty badly in the past, losing incredible amounts of work, and I admit that has left me more than a little sceptical in regards to new muds.  In the mid-90s I worked for a mud for the better part of two years, which literally disappeared from one day to the next. The owner went offline due to personal issues, and took my areas with him (I was 16 at the time, and not smart enough to be sure to make copies of my work). A few years later I found out he had given my areas to another mud without my permission, and when I asked for them back, I was rejected, on the basis that it could not be proven that those areas were in fact mine.

It's water under the bridge, as they say, but today I really do need to be convinced that the project is more than the initial starting euphoria.

3- Building conditions. Building is a hobby of mine, it is not my work. The day I start considering it work is the day I stop building. Sure, it can be tedious at times, but that is worth it, if the creative satisfaction in the end is big enough.

Some Imps seem to think that builders, regardless of their unpaid and often uncredited status, should work under deadlines befitting an actual paying job. I absolutely detest this approach: not because I don't understand why a manager would want to ensure efficiency (I certainly do), but because the moment my building becomes a job, my desire to do it disappears, and I have to run purely on discipline to get it done. You can get things done through discipline alone for a while, but it burns you out, and you ultimately end up hating, loathing what you used to love doing.

4. Playerbase. This is not a top concern of mine, but I admit it does help. The instant gratification gotten through watching players enjoy your area can help alleviate some of the stress. However, if the top three issues are taken care of, this is not a crucial issue for me personally.
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Old 06-02-2006, 04:37 AM   #22
Baram
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I think you misunderstood what I meant.

I meant that if we are coming close to the planned Alpha testing, but are still lacking on area's we can let our builders build all the area's planned. Without descriptions, or filler ones, and then during Alpha/Closed Beta testing they can go back through and fill in their own area's.

It was merely an idea to not lose time due to lack of rooms, this way we can have enough for the testers to really test things, and still keep, relatively, on schedule.
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Old 06-03-2006, 10:02 AM   #23
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Not a planned thing, but we actually started getting more applications since the start of this thread. Due to this, we have decided to officially re-open builder applications.

Thanks for all the advice, it's always nice to see the community offering it's expertise to the younger generations.
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Old 06-22-2006, 02:18 AM   #24
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There is a solution to the new mud risk....tell your friends, have them bring friends, and so on and so forth...the Mud I am making now isn't even open yet and we already have 21 people in our Pbase, all of us on and actively talking to each other about ideas for opening. So we already have a good opening number.
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Old 06-22-2006, 08:04 AM   #25
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I've been a head builder, a lead builder, and a grunt builder for several games so far. I'm currently a "grunt" (meaning, just a regular builder, not in charge of anything but my own zones). So that's my background. Here's why I might not work for a game:

1) The code is too difficult to work with. If I have to type out some long unintelligible_under_scored_command every time I want to add a description to an object, I won't last long. Builder tools need to be created for the ease of the builder. The easier the tools are to use, the more time the builder will spend actually writing, and less time trying to figure out which letter of their command was the typo that rejected the whole paragraph. And no, I'm not going to write an alias for every single ridiculous tool command provided. A couple of things like making "home" bring me to the first room of my current zone is easy enough, but I don't want to spend hours replacing all your "#make_room_with_weather_light_dark" with "rcreate outside."

2) The other zones. I was initially trained for print journalism. Subsequent creative direction involved very strict room-building criteria. My current building style is a slightly relaxed combination of the two. If other builders of the game use a drastically different style, mine is going to look very strange. Or players might even prefer mine over the others. This kind of style split prevents cohesion and continuity, which is very bad for a game.

3) The game style. Is this a game I would ever want to play? I've had my fill of tolkeinesque games, and so I'd have no interest in building an Orc Cavern or a dozen platinum-haired, doe-eyed, porcelain-skinned elven NPC rangers.

I'm not interested in building for yet another game that insists it's RP-intensive, or RP-enforced, yet has OOC chat-channels and no permanent death, where killing a critter is the primary method of advancing to the next level, just so you can become a Lord and - hunt at the next tier. I don't want to build for a game where the administrator doesn't even realize his game is just a glorified hack-n-slash. I might, however, build for a hack-n-slash, IF the administrator truly understands that's what his game is.

----

Regarding replacing temporary rooms with completed rooms: I actually like doing that. I find it easier to rewrite someone else's stuff than starting from scratch. I can go through a dozen rewrites in an hour, but if the zone is a 500-room blank slate with no exits, and I have to map the whole thing myself, it'll take me a whole lot longer to create it. I -enjoy- writing from a blank slate, but it is definitely more time consuming and if someone is looking to me for expediency, they're better off hiring me as a copy editor rather than a creator.
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Old 06-23-2006, 11:53 AM   #26
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Your signature says you'r a "lead" builder (unless that's from a previous MUD).

Didn't you used to play Armageddon? My memory could be faulty though, just thought I had seen Arm in your signature at some point.
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Old 06-23-2006, 03:54 PM   #27
Jazuela
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Yeah, I have to change my profile again. I was lead builder for a game, but the server went down, the head admin had real life things to do, and as far as I know, no one's done anything with it since. Shame too, it had the potential to be a really awesome RPI with a steampunk theme.

I did play Arm for a few years. I wasn't ever on their staff. I would've loved that, but they picked other people when the time came.
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Old 07-03-2006, 10:28 PM   #28
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As a former grunt-type builder, and owner of a somewhat extravagant player housing area, I'm going to say that's probably not a good idea. There's always that desire to make a large, nice area, and then when you're done, you say, "Damn, now I have to put in -room descriptions-."

Do as Ialie does, and have a purpose and a description behind each room you have, instead of what Richter does, and put in the descriptions after the fact. It breeds laziness.
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Old 07-13-2006, 02:47 AM   #29
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I haven't read through all the posts, but I found the first few posts very interesting.  I used to be into coding heavily on my mud, and worked at being a good coder.

Over the years, I have hired, and gone through a whole slew of builders, and very few if any of them ever finished an area.

Heh, further more builders often get discouraged, and give up from just seeing my building guidelines.  O MY GAWD!  This guy won't allow us to use the word, "you" in a room description!  Heh, very basic gramar writing requirements, and certain formats seem to just be impossible for many of the builders who claim to have built many areas for other muds, heh.  I get people who want quantity areas over quality made one's with anything written out, but I still believe your room descriptions and such are the first impression new players get, and you only get one chance to knock their socks off with it.

I have come to find that I had to build the areas if I wanted them done, and that I was better at building then I ever suspected.  Now, I have hung up my coding ambition, and desire to only crank out quality areas, which I am very good at, if I have someone else taking care of the coding needs, that staff, and players have.

*** Vladaar is hiring for a head coder btw, if one presents himself/herself and has references/examples of work.  ****

However, for some reason, I have the opposite problem, and can't seem to find a "decent coder" to work for me full time, so I can just work on building areas.  Heh, funny how that works out.  

Anyway, with all the struggling small muds out there that may not ever get completed, I have often wondered.  Why we can't ever join forces, and complete one really nice mud.

Vladaar
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