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Old 10-27-2010, 05:56 PM   #21
plamzi
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Re: MUD Development Journal

From what I understand MXP, supports clickable links, 16M colors, dropdown menus, and audio. It doesn't even support images, let alone element positioning, element interactivity, etc. Even if we had hundreds of MUDs that implemented MXP fully and competently (which we don't), I'd still go with a custom UI because MXP doesn't even begin to tackle the problem of standardizing a graphical representation of a MUD universe.

Sure, MXP may seem like steroids compared to flat text, but I think those who would see it as steroids would also not rate it much higher than having their own super-configured advanced MUD client. The bottom line is that if you're really aiming at a MUD GUI and not just an HTML-ized text client, MXP falls short. Why not build a more ambitious UI that goes after new players?
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Old 10-27-2010, 06:16 PM   #22
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Re: MUD Development Journal

What you did is an obvious advance regarding clients to play MUD's. And by the way, if I don't have an IPhone can I still play that MUD with just text in my ZMud?

I am somewhat "against" graphics in MUD's. Or is a text based game, or a graphical game (I am excluding image maps and such).

You giving me an image of a text is limiting my imagination, that's why I still play MUD's and even read books.
I haven't used your client, though, so I am speaking more than I should, probably. If the images in your client are just to be clicked/touched for the client send "kill"/"get"/"..." commands, then forgive my ignorance.

And to finalize, I just like MXP idea if in a PDA or a PC with touch screen. I prolly say this also because I never get used to it in a MUD, I rather like to write than click (and I do all actions faster that way, by the way).
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Old 10-27-2010, 07:26 PM   #23
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Re: MUD Development Journal

I think someone needs to split off the advanced UI sub-discussion. Apologies to the OP.

@viriato

- I'm with you on writing being faster for many MUD actions and plain text being 'purer' overall. I'm an old-schooler on plain telnet myself and even zMUD with its perks is an "abomination" for me I built the GUI for the young'uns out there who would not otherwise fire up a MUD.

- The images are not animated. They are, as you said, just hot areas on the screen that you can drop into or tap, 2tap, 3tap, etc. The only thing that *looks* animated is when your avatar changes states (sleeping, invisible, flying, etc.)

- Bedlam is and will always be free to play over . The app is a separate commercial venture (but its LT version offers months of free play as well).
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Old 10-27-2010, 07:41 PM   #24
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Re: MUD Development Journal

Creating a graphical front-end for something like MUSHclient or Mudlet is pretty straightforward, and the OP could certainly throw one together if he fancied doing so - but as long as his game remains primarily text-based, MXP will still make a good addition.

There are quite a few custom GUIs out there, and it might be interesting to compile a list of them, but personally I'd rather this thread followed dayrinni's project rather than turn into a showcase for other projects.
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Old 10-30-2010, 05:51 PM   #25
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Re: MUD Development Journal

Unfortunately my computer crashed on Monday. I have been able to get back on line starting yesterday. So as you could imagine, I did not accomplish much this week.
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Old 11-01-2010, 06:12 PM   #26
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Re: MUD Development Journal

I wanted to throw some ideas out about the previous language discussion.

We use foreign languages quite a bit over my way (We have four major "houses" that each represent a different culture, so each of them speaks their own language.)
Everyone can speak the "common" language (the language of the house that owns the city where the game is set) but members of the other houses can also speak their own cultural languages. There are also other languages around the game for other reasons (such as the game's equivalent of Latin, which the church sometimes uses, since the players are humanoid animals, most types of animals also speak their own "racial" language... and so on)

Essentially, this is good for a social game, since it means players can "keep secrets" during roleplay, while still showing what they are doing. It's more interactive for my character to say something in a foreign language to his friend, rather than me sending them an out-of-game instant message. Hopefully that'll lead to players staying in-character more, and being more interactive. It also provides social clues, what language did I speak? Does my friend also know the language? I'm taking a gamble that the listener doesn't know the language well. Could they guess what I said from the situation?

Because we have so many languages, we want them to feel distinct. We essentially do the "replace random characters", but with a big more logic behind it.

First, we look at the speaker's skill. If they are fluent, we just tag the language and carry on. If they are not fluent, we add up the letters in each word to get a "difficulty value" - for fun, I used a frequency chart of letters in english, meaning the letter "q" has a value of about 26, while the letter "e" has a value of 1. Which means "Queen" is a much harder word to say than "Engorge", despite being shorter. We compare the score to their language skill to see if they can speak the word.

Any words they can't speak get replaced with a word from an array. Those aren't "real" words, instead they are stutters.
So "I went to the zoo and saw an elephant" might become "I ... to the um and saw an ..uh"

This ensures that they are only speaking in the foreign language, and won't be overheard by anyone who doesn't speak the language. They also have the option to, instead of stuttering, use the normal language. So in that case, the phrase will come out "I went to the zoo and saw an elephant" to anyone who speaks the foreign language (with highlighting so they can see the words that were spoken in the common language), and anyone who only sees the common language might see "Da went meht zihlah zoo und zig de elephant"

Similarly, we check the listeners skill to see if they can understand the word, so if you only partially know a language, you might pick out some words but not others. Usually players play along with this by guessing the missing words. (It's easier to understand a word than to speak it)

The "foreign" words are generated from an array of syllables, prefixes, and suffixes. Each word gets assigned a score which is used as a random seed to decide how to construct it. That ensures that a word will always result in the same "foreign" word (so players can learn what their character's name sounds like in another language, can learn "key" foreign words, etc.) - it also ensures that the language sounds genuine. We've got languages that sounds like French, Latin, German, and Scottish.

Finally, we have specific words that always translate the same, which come from an associative array. So, the Avoirdupois house (the french dudes...) wouldn't use a different word for their own name when speaking their local language. Which means if you say "Avoirdupois" in the French-like language, it would still come out as "Avoirdupois" - if you say the word "and" it would come out "et", if you say the word "good" it comes out as "bon" and so on. It lets us scatter a smattering of recognizable common words through the languages, and helps the players recognize it as a genuine-looking language. It also helps us avoid any stupid-looking common words (you wouldn't want the word "a" translated as something too long, like "j'appulainten" since it'd be jarring how often that long word keeps cropping up.)

Animal languages word the same, we just use different syllables, prefixes, and suffixes. So a word in rodent might sound like "ikkit" while a word in cat might sound like "Mrreeewrrr"

It could be that I've thought too much about languages, and should have just used random character substitutions... at any rate, if you like this setup, you're welcome to our algorithms and dictionaries of syllables.
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Old 11-02-2010, 08:32 AM   #27
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Re: MUD Development Journal

Seems cool
I use random characters in the following way: check each correct character, test listener considering his skill and the speaking guy skill, write the letter correctly if had success or a random one if not succeded. I just keep untouched spaces, commas, etc.
Decided this way because it's easier, but also because it's very hard to implement a system (like yours!) that makes sense and that outputs fairly good. Also, probably exist workarounds (rather than common language) to that language system that permits two guys understand each other even not knowing anything from that language. Why would one do that I don't know If he wants to RP just RP, if want to be understood use common language... but random chars also prevent that - if you want to enforce the use of language system only, it can be usefull.

I am exagerating on this, but I am really curious how you deal with this:
If I want to say "HELLO" to other person and he does not understand my language, OOC I can tell him I will use the alphabet A=1, B=2, C=3, etc, and then I would say "10 5 12 12 15". Does your system deals and prevents this?
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Old 11-02-2010, 08:31 PM   #28
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Re: MUD Development Journal

your right, it is a lot of work, and unnecessary if all you are doing is trying to keep information from the player. In our case its worthwhile for the social rather than system benefits

UOTE=Viriato;45449]Also, probably exist workarounds (rather than common language) to that language system that permits two guys understand each other even not knowing anything from that language. Why would one do that I don't know If he wants to RP just RP, if want to be understood use common language... but random chars also prevent that - if you want to enforce the use of language system only, it can be usefull.

true there are workarounds. As you say, though, why would they? They would just speak common or go to instant messengers.

I am exagerating on this, but I am really curious how you deal with this:
If I want to say "HELLO" to other person and he does not understand my language, OOC I can tell him I will use the alphabet A=1, B=2, C=3, etc, and then I would say "10 5 12 12 15". Does your system deals and prevents this?[/quote]

seen that. easier is to both learn one level then just t a l k l i k e t h i s. so each char gets treated as an easy word. thing is, its easy to see people abusing the system, so there is peer pressure. and sometimes those abuses are useful to simulate things like talking slowly for learners.

its a nice effect that a character without skill can learn to recognize a few words or guess context

the biggest protection is just that players have easier ways to cheat, so im not worried about this
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Old 11-03-2010, 09:00 PM   #29
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Re: MUD Development Journal

I'm still getting everything back together here. I hope to be able to reply to the other posts here this coming weekend. It sucks having your computer explode !
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Old 11-07-2010, 01:49 AM   #30
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Re: MUD Development Journal

Some time, I posted about asking several players from my old MUD, ATS, if they wanted to join us. They have recently accepted and have presented some good ideas to the ones I have already posted. I am looking forward to working with them, for I feel we can do great things.

I will update you guys (by making new posts) when I receive the information.
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Old 11-09-2010, 05:25 PM   #31
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Re: MUD Development Journal

We are currently completely redoing the story line and the lore. So you can disregard my previous description of what the game will be about.
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Old 11-12-2010, 04:03 PM   #32
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Re: MUD Development Journal

Hey guys,

I wanted to give a brief update on things.

So I have taken on board two additional people. We all are working together on the MUD now.

We broken the tasks down: I am handling the programming and the other two are handling the Lore and Content. We all participate in game design.

Overall, things are progressing very fast and we are making good headway. We are going to be putting up a wiki soon and I will post the link after we get some content on it.


In addition, I wanted to post the races we are planning on having. We have worked

Here is a general description of them:


Human - Humans of Zeduña are physically identical to humans on Earth. Humans tend to be fairly diplomatic, on average, getting along well enough with each other and most other races. They have a talent for adapting to whatever situation they find themselves in, making them competent in any class. Humans are hated by Kandarians, accepted by the Skala, and treated by utter indifference by the Nemari and Erokans.

Skala - The Skala are a reptilian race of roughly humanoid proportions. They are covered with hard scales, and they have intimidating teeth and claws. They are a proud, warrior race, and they have a strong sense of glory and honor. Their physical structure makes them adept fighters, while their pride and honor make them shun roguish practices. Longstanding military conflict with Kandarians and Erokans has bred general hatred between them and the Skala, but Humans and Nemari are broadly accepted.

Nemari - The Nemari are a plant-like race of humanoid build. Their skin tends to be shades of brown or green, and their 'hair' is more like a collection of leaves and vines. The Nemari are capable of normal food consumption, but they retain the ability to conduct photosynthesis in the manner of plants. The Nemari are more in tune with nature than the other races, making them excellent clerics. Historically, the Nemari have been largely peaceful, giving them a positive, or at worst neutral relationship with the other races.

Kandar - The Kandarians appear similar to humans apart from slightly larger eyes and semi-translucent skin ranging in color from dark blue to silver to white and everything between through intermarriage. Kandarians have a natural affinity for subterranean dwellings and their societies exhibit a caste structure based on coloration. As the coloring of the Kandarians is due to a component of raw magic within them, they make natural mages, though they are competent with blades as well. Due to past conflicts, the Kandarians hate humans and have an antagonistic relationship with the Skala. The Nemari and Erokan accept them to varying degrees and get along well enough.

Erokan - The Erokan are a bat-like race covered in short fur with collapsible wing-membranes that allow them the ability to glide. A slightly protruding 'muzzle' in conjunction with the fur gives the Erokan an animal-like appearance that some find alien or exotic. The Erokan live in a semi-nomadic clan based society, though they are not savage or primitive. Being quick, agile, and naturally sneaky, the Erokan make excellent rogues, but a historic reliance on Kandarians for the magical arts has prevented magical skills from developing in the Erokan. They are a mystery to most, but some Skala hate them and some Kandarians get along with them quite well.


Thanks.
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Old 12-14-2010, 05:05 PM   #33
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Re: MUD Development Journal

We are still hammering out a lot of stuff.

We will hopefully be finishing up the combat system by next week. I will post up the information after wards.

Thanks!
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