From: "Stewart M. Clamen" Date: Tue, 22 Feb 94 12:18:06 EST To: lpb@ccs.neu.edu Subject: Minutes of the AD-HOC REALITY CONFERENCE (circa Jan 1990) Reply-to: clamen+@cs.cmu.edu Perhaps by looking at the geopgraphic details you can get a better fix on the date. -- SMC ---------------------------------------- >look Crystal Palace Meeting Room This is a large room intended for conferences. The walls are richly paneled, and the floor is covered by a thick carpet. There are no windows, but the room is lit by both lamps and chandeliers. There are paintings arranged around the walls. A large long table runs down the center of the room, with chairs on each side and one at each end. Contents: Mutant fur morrigan Mizue [and later, Havok -- ed.] LongThorn(#1548PSLCJA) uwiz Satoria Moira a small cart small plaque Stewy says, "I guess we were discussion the relative assets and debits of reality-based Virtual Realities" Stewy says, "OK, fur, will do." Stewy says, "I'll reask a question I asked in the Square a long time ago." Random has arrived. Random finds an empty seat and sits down. LongThorn decides not to say anything about assets having debit balances (since he really hates accounting and would rather pretend he didn't take it) Random says, "Hey, where's my chair?" LongThorn shushes himself, as per rules, and sits down./ Moira notes stewy has it, since he's moderator. :) fur gets outta randoms chair anna curls up in moiras lap instead Random grumbles. Never made any difference BEFORE. "Someone stole all the paintings, too." Moira says, "builders haven't unpacked 'em yet." cHuPChUp has arrived. Random says, "You own the foot AND the head chairs. Grrrr." cHuPChUp wavez Random plots to move Moira's street off to Outer Mongolia. Kallen has arrived. uwiz says, "Stewy, ask that question?" Kallen waves. Stewy cannot seem to find that original question in his buffer, so he tries to remember it. uwiz listens to Stewy. cHuPChUp suddenly runs about the room in his underwear, going "hA Ha hA WiGgLi wIgGli" uwiz says, "hey!" Stewy watches Wizard and Flexi leave on a RealLife(tm) dinner trip. cHuPChUp says, "hee hee" Mizue BONKs cHuPChUp. Moira shushes chup and shoves him into a chair. Random sits down in the large chair at the foot of the table. cHuPChUp siddowns. Random sits down in the large chair at the head of the table. **************** Stewy says, "Would you prefer more 'Reality' in MUDs" Moira bops Random. Moira says, "That's a loaded question." fur raises his tail! cHuPChUp hmms at stewy. Stewy asks, "fur?" Random takes this moment to whisper a suggestion to chup. fur says, "i think there should be more reality added, like eat/sleep/etc BUT they should not be implemented totallly realistic like cuz thats not fun" Moira whispers, "btw, you gotta get flexi on too." Stewy asks, "But then, why should they be there at all?" fur says, "because the added variance makes it more interesting, i mean do i want to be killed by a dragon, or eaten alive? i think being eaten alive would be more fun" uwiz quotes that line to you from true names about the red witch: "She was beautiful, but then, who wasn't?" Random raises his hand. uwiz says, "That's not realistic, is it?" uwiz shuts up! fur is small enuf :) Stewy opts for giving Random the floor before answering fur. fur says, "like i said earlier, i can ask someone to go with mee to eat, so that makes it more social" Random says, "You can do that anyway." LongThorn raises his hand, now. Moira raises her hand too. Random takes advantage of having the floor to answer fur. :) Stewy pulls out his notepad to record the queue of speakers. Random says, "I should point out that if people (ie, The Public) really had ANY interest in more realism in muds, they'd bonnie well use the : command to simulate realism more often. It is my observation that (with the possible exception of tinysex :) ) this is rare indeed." fur raises his paws. Random says, "I distinctly recall having a spaghetti dinner on DaisyMud." Stewy says, "That's not totally fair, though, since there is a difference between : and having actions actually affect change." Random says, "There were no exits. No objects. There was a kitchen/dining room." Kallen smiles at random. Stewy says, "fur, you can answer. Sorry Moira, but we should let fur defend his position." uwiz raises a finger Moira nods. uwiz gets in queue :) fur says, "i think people are basically lazy, i would be much more liable to type 'eat burger' than sit there saying :takes a bite outta his sandwhich" Oldman has arrived. Mizue raises a hand. fur says, "this is like the 10 bazillion little commands onna lpmud" Random says, "I'll agree that people are basically lazy, but I'll go so far as to say they are basically apathetic, too. Just be aware that for the most part, he who makes changes to improve realism does so for his own satisfaction." LongThorn is forced to idle/leave for now. He will return, perhaps. He smiles. LongThorn whips out a connection to some MUF carrying MUCK and programs something to the effect of "me @ #1989 moveto" and disappears in a puff of lackofmufness. LongThorn has left. Random says, "fur, I'd rather use : than have a command for spit, sneer, and hug, which is why lpmud annoys me." Stewy says, "I am adding another convention to the boardroom procedure. Please explicitly relinquish the floor when you are done, thank you." Random is done, and, indeed, is going to go get things done. He made the point he came in here for. Kallen gotta eat. Kallen is outta here. Kallen has disconnected. fur says, "okie but the : still wont reduce yoo characters hunger status :)" fur done Kallen has left. Stewy asks, "Moira?" Random wishes he was in...A TOWN SQUARE. YEAH. Random has left. Moira nods. uwiz says, "is someone logging this?" Stewy says, "By default..." Stewy says, "I'll post it. I don't want this discussion to end here." Moira says, "There's a definite different between going to eat because it's necessary for survival, and going to eat because it's a socail event." _!Beverage has arrived. uwiz says, "okie - I gotta eat too - ceeeya later! cool." uwiz looks up in horror as an orderly bursts into the room. "There he is! He's got Dr. Samson's stethoscope!" uwiz runs off going "hA Ha hA"... uwiz has left. _!Beverage meets in the meeting room. Moira says, "Now, are you talking about added reality for the sake of increasing social behavior/variations, or are you talking about added reality for the sake of pure reality?" Moira hopes she's making sense. Moira sits back down. fur raise paw Stewy says, "go ahead." fur says, "i want it for both, but without reality there are things that just wont happen, what if there was a drought in my land and we had no food, the people would uprise against another country or something. yoo think people are going to do that with : commands?" Moira raises her hand. Grod has arrived. Grod says, "Heyheyhey." fur done i guess Mizue raises a hand. Stewy asks, "Moira, if this is a followup to your previous question? or another point?" Mutant shushes Grod and points to an empty seat Moira says, "mostly a followup, and an answer to fur." Stewy says, "ok." Satoria raises her hand. Stewy gives apologetic looks to those in queue. Grod disapears in a cloud of fuckits. Grod has left. Moira says, "Well, ok. ABout the : verses actions..." Stewy QUEUE STATUS: uwiz,Mizue,Satoria. Satoria whispers, "uwiz left." Moira says, "If you define everything rigidly with actions, imagination and innovation wanes somewhat, I feel. It's too stifling. On the other hand, having NO actions and depending fully on the : command is just as irksome, because it leaves the player wondering exactly what's expected of them. There's got to be a balance, but I think LP has gone clear over the line with all of their expression commands." fur put a paw up Moira says, "I also feel it should be up to the player as to how much they want to rely on : or actions, not force them in either direction." Moira done. Stewy says, "The test is simple. : is for stateless events. You only need a real command for actions that affect a change." Moira nods, ok. Stewy says, "fur? Quick rebuttal. This is moving real slowly." fur says, "i dont like the lp commands either, but thats because they dont do ennything, i would prefer gigglin in my own style, everyone know that." fur says, "they should do somethign like stewy said. done." Stewy asks, "Mizue?" Mizue says, " (response to earlier comment) In some ways, things like "bonk" and "high5" are that type (lots of little commands) of realism. Some people have complained about those, of course...." Mizue says, "Lots of 'reality' things, like fur's hypothetical drought" Random shouts, "don't forget; if you want rooms to be totally uncluttered, @link them to #124, the junkpile." Mizue says, "Lots of 'reality' things, like fur's hypothetical drought and revolt, are things which take up lengths of time. In the real world, people are present all the time. In a Mud 'reality', you have to deal with the possibility that someone might log on only before the revolt starts and after it ends. In fact, consider most LP's requirement to get stuff again each time you log on..." Mizue says, "that is essentially a big dose of unreality which _depends_ on the fact that players aren't always there for it to work." Mizue sits down. Stewy says, "Ah yes, the perennial time problem. As old as the concept of a multi-user Rogue." fur shivers anna snuggles closer to moira Moira raises her hand. Stewy says, "Unless people think that that is the crux of the problem, I'd like to leave TIME out of the discussion for the time being. ." Moira lowers her hand, then. :) Stewy asks, "Satoria?" Mizue raises her hand. Satoria says, "Umm... (1) I don't have any opinion on the pro-realism/anti-realism debate. It seems obvious that different people think different things are good, and it seems likely that different people will probably *like* different things." Julai says, "I have 21:27 (eastern), Stewy." Stewy sighs. Satoria says, "(2) I don't think : has any use except as a communications tool. Except that that is one thing that people do with muds. Perhaps a lot of the problem here stems from problems in the concept of what the point of mud is." fur raise a paw paw Satoria says, "(3) You can't have a change of state without some concept of time, so I don't think we can ignore it entirely, if that's the diff between real commands and :." Satoria has a couple comments about lpmud too, being probably the most exprienced lpmudder (maybe), but isn't sure if they really matter. Random shouts, "ATTENTION: hugh recently defended his thesis successfully. From now on out, you may if you want refer to his as "Doctor hugh"." Moira raises her hand. Satoria says, "(4) lpmud has the screwy atmosphere commands because they can't let players have :" Satoria says, "Lpmud can't let players have : because it breaks lpmud programs that just listen to actions that occur in rooms, which is considered legitimate programming practive." Satoria is done. Stewy asks, "Mizue?" Mizue had nothing major to say, only that I _do_ think that time is a significant problem. Mizue sits down. Stewy asks, "fur?" fur says, "im sure there will never be a single mud for all people, some people like IRC, some lp, etc. but i for one am tired of glorified chat systems and i want to see something real :) done." Satoria raises her hand. Stewy says, "Mizue, I didn't say that time wasn't a problem, just that it was such a significant problem, that I wanted to try to leave it out nof the discussion for now." fur raise his tail Stewy asks, "fur, is that done a 'use' or a 'mention'?" Mizue whispers, "You said "unless you think it's the crux of the problem"... I think it is..." Satoria boggles. Stewy whispers, "oh. OK" to Mizue. fur was done, but has something new Stewy asks, "OK fur, I'll take that opportunity to add you to the list again. Moira?" Moira says, "Small comment on the changing states bit. (I've got more on Time, but I'm leaving it out.)" Moira says, "On Xroads (don't say ugh), they have one changed state sort of thing.." Mutant says ugh cHuPChUp says ugh Satoria refuses to be so obvious. Mizue says ugh Moira says, "They out and out removed kill, as I recall. In it's place is "annoy". You annoy a person, and if they are annoyed, they cannot annoy anyone else UNTIL they go home, and "cool off"." Bruce has arrived. Bruce wavez _!Beverage nods to Bruce. Moira says, "That's not dependant upon time in any way, it's dependant upon other circumstances." Mizue bows. Satoria boggles. Oldman giggles quietly. Mizue raises a hand. Bruce is hear to listen to deep philisophical discussions Bruce says, "here" Moira says, "But I'm sure most other changed states would have to depend on time in some fashion." Moira done. Stewy says, "Satoria is next." Satoria ewws, and addresses old thing first. Satoria says, "3 pieces of data you may not know, useful for those of you forming hypotheses:" Satoria says, "(1) The behavior of groups of wizards on an lpmud is much like a tinymud. Once the goal is gone, we tend to hang out and chat, etc." Satoria says, "(2) Laziness: Someone (fur?) said that coming here was an evidence of wanting to be realistic. On wintermute lpmud we had an object that automated moderation for us." Satoria says, "In a totally unrealistic way, but very convenient." Satoria forgets #3. Moira heard about that from Grod, who was retching at the thought, which is why he left. :) Satoria says, "Re: Moira's time. Very short." _!Beverage wiggles his fingers over his lips going 'bebebebebe', some men in white coats drag him off. _!Beverage has left. Satoria can't imagine defniing time, but any such definition would seem to involve talking about the order of events, which Moira's annoy example still depended on. Moira's event has an underlying 'before' and 'after'. That's what Satoria meant by changing state depending on time. Satoria is done. Stewy asks, "fur?" fur says, "i think the biggest problem with tinymuds, is that there is no need to ever go ennywhere but the local hang out spot. on mucks this is even worse cuz people just teleport. this greatly reduces exploration, which in turns discourages builders. and building is the only other thing to do. done." Satoria has response to fur, but will wait. morrigan walks over to the door, which swings open, and walks through. morrigan has left. Bruce goes home. Bruce has left. fur raise paw Satoria nudges Stewy. Oldman , who is still interested, stays. Stewy says, "Ooops, sorry. Didn't notice that you were done." Stewy says, "Satoria, can respond to fur." Satoria says, "On lpmud, ability to teleport in no way affects building. Done." Mizue raises a hand (if I didn't already) Stewy says, "Mizue had. You turn." Mizue says, "I think something like "annoy" can work for one major reason: annoy isn't good for anything else. If you're annoyed, it doesn't keep you from doing other stuff. If you were prevented from doing _other_ things until you went home and undid the annoy, annoy would be, how shall I say it, an annoyance...." Mizue says, "In response to fur, is it truly desirable to encourage exploration? What if someone doesn't _want_ to explore? You might want to explore one time, and chat another time; IMHO the game should not try to force you into a particular mode...." Mizue sits down. Stewy says, "The queue is empty, so I'll take the opportunity to say something:." Satoria says, "No, fur is at head." Oldman goes away to watch an explosion. Oldman has disconnected. Stewy says, "So he is. ." Stewy says, "go ahead fur, I'll type in another window." fur says, "personally the best part of building for mee is seeing people explore it, i did all my building onna tinyhell, but rarely saw people go thru it. no i dont think that the mud should force everything one way, i think every option should be available and yoo choose the ones yoo like." fur says, "done" Satoria raises a different hand than last time. fur raise a paw again Stewy says, "Someone mentioning teleport is interesting. While TinyMUD does have a notion of time, it does have a notion of space, a constraint that is broken often, much more so when free teleport is available" Stewy asks, "satoria?" Satoria lafs at fur. Stewy is updating the QUEUE on his Virtual Clipboard, for those interested. Satoria says, "Some people claim the satisfaction of building is enough, but I do agree on fur with this. What I didn't make clear about lpmud is that the game's goal *does* obligate people to explore. And to do combat, which is why many people don't lpmud." Mizue raises a hand. Satoria says, "It is very satisfying on an lpmud that has quests to be able to have part of the goal of the game for people be to solve your quest, i.e. to run through your puzzle." Stewy says, "The bottom line seems to be. Sometimes people like to follow the rules, sometimes they don't. The trick might be to figure out how to balance those two desires fairly. (NOTE: I don't want this to devolve into a game design question.)." Satoria says, "Yes, we are getting off from the reality question." Mizue lowers the hand. Stewy apologizes for speaking out of turn. fur put his paw down Satoria says, "But, of course, I said I don't have much interest in the reality question!" Satoria snickers. Satoria is done, and looks at the empty (?) queue. Stewy asks, "fur?" Mizue raises a hand. fur points to mizue Stewy asks, "Mizue?" Mizue says, "There is the problem that sometimes people want to follow the rules and sometimes they don't. But, often the way things get done in practice is that if you want to not-follow the rules, you have to spend a lot of time following the rules first." Mizue says, "For instance, consider an extreme, parodical example:" Mizue says, "Every time somebody builds, they get 10 "pose credits". This allows them to use the "pose" command 10 times, then they have to build or rebuild some more." Mizue says, "Since different people want to use "pose" different numbers of times and for different reasons, and since the purposes of "pose" have little to do with the purposes of building, this is obviously a bad idea." Mizue can think of lots of less parodical possible changes for "reality" that would have the same problem. Mizue sits down. Stewy strokes his beard. Mutant goes home. Mutant has left. Stewy says, "I want to point out that building is an action that has meaning in this, the TinyMUD society, other VRs work differently. ." Moira nods. Stewy says, "In ABERMUD, motivation was experience-points driven." Stewy has lots track of where the discussion was going. Stand by. fur gigglez Stewy says, "Right, we were talking about whether how much 'reality' a VR needs" Moira raises her hand. Stewy says, "Is there any disagreement to the following statement: If you can break a rule, then your 'Reality' is corrupted?"." Satoria raises Moira's other hand. Stewy says, "Back in the Square, I said that the constraints of a reality form a Society. Change the constraints, and society changes. That is why people play differently on LPMuds and TinyMUDS. If people can break the rules, (as in TinyMUD, which mostly has only conventions), then our sociological 'experiment' is corrupted somewhat." Stewy asks, "Moira?" fur raise a paw Mizue raises a hand. Moira says, "In answer to your question, I'd tentatively agree that breaking a rule breaks reality. But it's very situational; how important that rule is to the superstructure of the mud, etc." Stewy asks, "As an example then, how much do you think being able to teleport out of anyplace affects topological integrity?" Moira says, "As it stands, TinyMU*s have a varying amount of reality, dependant upon what the players want to do. In some muds, there is no "walking" from here to there. In some, there is. Entire cities, etc, exist sometimes, sometimes not. It's very flexible. If you switched to a more rigid system, then you'd have to worry about how much imposed reality is too much reality. Too much reality, and it becomes boring, I think, no purpose to playing the game except to see if you can do better at the game than otherwise." Moira says, "Well, ok. That's tricky.." Moira says, "Topology debates have been held, half of them in this very room. :) There's strict topology, and ther's meaningful topology." Stewy asks, "So, winning isn't everything. Getting their is half the fun?" Stewy their=there. Moira says, "I should be. Getting there should be mmost of the fun. If it isn't, there'd be more of a tendancy to quit, and never get there." Moira says, "Back to topology and teleporters, to me anyway, it really depends on your rationalization for something. I have no problem with the closet from your perfectly mundane bedroom leading to the town square, if you give a semi-plausible explanation. Now, in a fantasy environment, this isn't too hard to come up with. Witness the step discs and griffons in Islandia and TinyHELL2." DarkRandom shouts, "Don't forget to watch SCUD BOWL 3 tomorrow!" cHuPChUp laffs Moira says, "Or even in a futuristic environment, you can have transport beams, ala Star Trek. If you impose more reality, are you limiting it to 1990 reality?" Stewy says, "While waiting for Moira to type, let me add the following: 'In case anyone thinks differently. HOME was added for game mechanical reasons. Without it, it is too easy to get stuck. One of the first TinyMUD chars (Danny), on the first day, walked into a room that had no exits. HOME was born." Moira nods. "It's reality breaking, in a sense, but very necessary for game mechanics. It can be rationalized realistically, if necessary. You get rescued by the coast guard or whatever." Stewy says, "Of course not. I meant teleport options under the control of the player, not the builder." Moira says, "I'm not quite sure of the distinction there." Stewy says, "Right, HOME is necessary as a reset, which is why it makes you drop your inventory." Moira nods. Stewy says, "It breaks 'reality' to be able to teleport out of someones puzzle if the designer did not want you to. Except for reset purposes, that is." Satoria watches the moderator and the person with the floor converse. Stewy accepts the criticism. Moira says, "mmm.. generally speaking, correct. Even if the player's rationalization is better than the builder's rationalization, for game purposes the player should not be able to teleport out of the puzzle. (Incidentally, in MUCK1.*, rooms have to be jump_ok for player and object actions to work)." Moira is done. :) Stewy asks, "fur?" fur says, "when i saw i want reality, i want the world to act in a dynamic way that i can predict, i want to be able to break all the rules actually. i want to cast a 50' foot fireball, i want to fly at warp 10 to another universe. i want to be able to do anything. of course this does assume some underlying system that cant be broken - topology comng next..." Satoria says, "Hey!" Satoria raised Moira's hand right after Moira. Stewy says, "Oh, sorry, you raised Moira's other hand. I got confused." Satoria shouldn't have been weird. Satoria waits. fur says, "topology, whatta great topic! i luv topology and i think most people do to however the current implementation of it suck rocks..." fur says, "this network model of rooms that forces yoo to travel between boring stuff gets old fast, i dont care if a town is 10 miles away if i have a vehicle (that moves at a realistic speed)" fur says, "of course this means major headaches for the implementors but thats life right? the mud should be a work of interactive fiction that unnerstands what the player thinks is relevant and gloss over things that arent" fur says, "i think that with a decent implementation of topology, where i can sit at home and say 'goto the square' and i get there (unless there is something of notice in my way) automatically, i think 99% of complaints about topology would go away., done." Stewy asks, "Satoria?" Satoria says, "Hmm. Well, fur addressed my point about Moira meaning something different from us by 'reality', mostly." Satoria says, "fur said 'predictability', I think; I'd probably say that the player wants an underlying feeling of cause & effect." Satoria says, "More imporant than 'reality' is 'detail', I think." Satoria says, "Fact: Ability to teleport results in less exploration." fur raise a paw Satoria says, "Rule-breaking: I don't think the rules matter when a player isn't interacting with other people or interacting with other people's stuff." Satoria says, "In this sense, I think having a link to town square doesn't matter anyway, regardless of having a rationalization." Satoria says, "And, in some sense, I think HOME may well fall under this rule." Satoria says, "Topology: I suppose this is a logical subset of realism." Satoria says, "I think topology makes it much easier to explore, for the aforementioned 'predictability' things." Moira raises her hand. Satoria says, "I don't think it matters in any other way." Satoria says, "I think Islandia worked much better two-dimensionally than under Lynx' original one-dimensional plan." Satoria says, "This is because it was much easier to get from place to place than it would have been. I always strongly argued that crossroads should be highly interconnected. Time will, perhaps, tell. I think connecting through a nexus is too slow to travel, or if tporting to nexus is always convenient, too hard to visualize for topological reasons." Satoria is done. Stewy is getting lots of ideas. "Mizue?", he says. Satoria uses "I think" a lot in that one! Havok has arrived. Havok sighs. My machine crashed. You could at least _wait_ a little while.... Havok has the wrong character, of course, and bows. Havok apologizes for that outburst, then. Havok says, "My mistake. Sigh." Havok says, "Still, is it my turn now?" Stewy asks, "If you are Mizue?" Havok is, yes. Havok had about 7 sentences worth of stuff in macros. The machine died, so did the tinyfugue. :-) Havok hms. Mizue is still logged on? Moira nods. Havok thinks, odd. Havok tries to log onto the machine again. Stewy says, "Moira, speak while we wait for Mizue to solve her machine problems" Havok can't rlogin. Do the @boot. Havok had a few comments.... Satoria watches Moira @boot Havok instead of Mizue! :) Havok says, "Think of a teleport as sort of a scene change on a TV show...." Havok says, "One second later, someone is suddenly _there_. They did go through some pains to get there, but it's not _important_ and they don't bother showing it." Mizue has disconnected. Mizue has left. Havok says, "It's not really a violation of topology at all, therefore." Moira just has a quick response to something satoria said. Stewy says, "Havok, when you are ready for comments. Satoria and Moira have quick ones" Havok had other things to say. Mostly responses to people, and mostly stuff I forgot. :-) Satoria hates watching TV with channel changers though. Satoria whispers, "That's it." Stewy wishes people would stop using :-) when they can really smile. Havok is referring to scene changes within an individual show. Havok says, "Say, someone says they're going to the store, and the scene changes and you see them in the store. I think of many teleports as like that." Satoria doesn't think of those as teleports. Havok says, "Or teleports done from HOME (already mentioned). You really want to start out in the square or whatever, you just teleport there because you can't start out there." Stewy says, "The bad teleports I have been commenting about are those not in the 'script'." Stewy says, "Havok still has the floor." Havok says, "But what I am saying is that it's not a bad teleport just because you can't say "I jump on a stepdisk" or "Scotty, beam me up". Even if the way you got there is by a 10 mile jog, a teleport may still be justified." Havok sits down. Stewy says "Who's next?" He consults his clipboad. "Moira?" Satoria raises hand. fur has connected. Stewy did not we had lost fur. Satoria sighs. Satoria pats fur. fur whispers, "yoo skipped me" Moira says, "Right. In response to Satoria's "Fact: teleporting reduces exploration", I'd like to say WRONG, and chance that to Theory. :)" fur whispers, "i log on again so i can whisper, while i have my text queued up inna nother window" Stewy whispers, "so I did" to fur. Satoria grins. Moira says, "For example, Maelstrom, my idiot brother-in-law, did the majority of his exploration simply by teleporting to every possible number." Stewy grins at fur. Satoria laughs. Moira says, "Mind you, he's singularly twisted, and most people wouldn't do that. But I don't think you can simply say that teleporting is directly linked to less exploration." Stewy notes quickly that sometimes the exploration is in getting there. Moira is done. Satoria restates: "Fact: teleporting reduces proper exploration.", hiding behind an ill-defined word. Havok raises a hand, and glares at his machine. Moira sniggers at Satoria. Satoria notes that she draws from the lpmud world as well as the muck world for evidence, and relinquishes the floor which she never had. Oops. Stewy waits for Moira to proceede. Moira kinda thinks randomly teleporting about then trying to figure out how to walk back is fun. Moira sits back down. Stewy asks, "fur?" fur says, "i also think that a new implementation would aid in building, if i could just do a few commands to put a whole forest somewhere, or a mountain, building by 30x30 chucks at a time gets old (this is how topology is designed to work unner a certain nameless vapormud :) this is a great example of where mud designers need to open tneir eyes and face the problem of people travelling head to head. done. in response to havok, i agree with the end result, but not on the method, say yoo have to walk across..." fur says, "a bridge to get there, the first time yooshould have to explore it, but from then on yoo should just be able to say 'goto square' and the game should recognize if there is nothing on the way, just put yoo there" Stewy thought of that having feature many months back. fur says, "however, if last night someone blew up the bridge then yoo should be forced to stop at the edge until its fixed or find another way, so straight teleports are out" fur says, "done." Stewy asks, "Interesting idea. Of course, topology is just one of those features of a VR, hthat lends it an air of 'realism'... Satoria?" Satoria notes that just implementing 'brief' like in adventure games is a major resource hog, and thinks the idea of keeping track of relations between all people vs. all objects in the game is infeasible to implement, regardless of its usefulness. IHHO. Done. Moira boggles silently at all the behind-the-scenes stuff that would have to happen. Satoria says, "Unless you need me to spell out 'brief' like in adventure games." fur raise a paw Stewy says, "We're not discussion implementation here, so hush. We all know that implementing fur's 'physics' would be VERY computationally expensive." Satoria is done then. Stewy says, "Umm, Havok is first, unless fur is responding." fur says, "it might be infeasible today, but why should that cramp our designs now? of course todays best mud will be primitive compared to runz 10 years fro mnow" fur done Stewy asks, "Havok?" Havok says, "I still explore (gasp). I often do it by making maps on paper, like one would an adventure game." Havok says, "I also teleport, and often scan the destination and change my teleport message to fit it." Havok says, "For instance, the room is a refrigerator, and make my message "%n arrives with a box of parts and offers to fix the refrigerator" or something." Havok says, "At the same time, I certainly wouldn't expect everyone to do that..." Havok says, "A problem with the bridge idea, aside from the implementation problem, is the one I was mentioning earlier: there might be some "non-rules" reasons why you want to get across the bridge, say to talk to someone there, or even to build at your place on the other side." Havok says, "As for "brief", brief would be hard, but "superbrief" should still be possible...." Havok sits down. fur raise a reply paw Stewy says, "go." Havok says, "Reply. :-)" fur says, "i think yoo should be stuck atta bridge but" fur says, "yoo should have a phone to call them as well, the hard part is only halfway hain reality sucks its all or nothing" fur says, "er, having. done." Satoria has to go! Can she say one-line reply to Havok and fur's previous? Stewy nods. Havok says, "Do it." Satoria says, "lpmud has superbrief; fur, sorry for confusing 'ideal mud' with 'feasible mud'." fur gigglez Satoria goes to have exciting real-life girl-talk-and-drink discussion including talk about how dumb guys are. Satoria smiles. Moira smirks. Havok bows to Satoria. cHuPChUp waves... Satoria says, "Oh, cut the treehouse crap!" Satoria giggles Satoria walks over to the door, which swings open, and walks through. Satoria has left. Moira sniggers. "girl talk indeed. feh." Stewy says, "The queue is empty. ." Moira says, "So, Stewy, any points or questions?" fur raise a paw Stewy says, "I would just to remind everyone that this topology concentration was a specialization of my original question. Topology is just one aspect of 'reality'." Stewy asks, "fur?" fur says, "i think that people need realism to aid in puzzle building, this one-key for one-lock type of puzzle works okie for single player adv games, but just doesnt cut it for multiplayer" fur says, "yoo should be able to burn doors, kick them in, pick the lock, etc" fur says, "done." Stewy says, "Although, it sounds like we might be able to solve many complaints people have about topology, I am not sure that will apply for every 'realistic' characterstic." Stewy asks, "You can do that already in some MUDs. You want some underlying game mechanics to provide responses to things the author did not expect, though, correct?" Havok raises a hand. fur says, "sure, ideally yoo wouldnt even have to build puzzles" fur raise a paw after havok Moira eek! brb. Moira hops into a nearby chaos tornado. Moira has left. Stewy asks, "havok?" Havok doesn't think there's really any way to avoid having to do all the details yourself. Havok says, "If anything, just the amount of _text_ you need to build something is substantial." Havok says, "I don't think that detailed unexpected things will help much, though. The defaults will never work, anyway." Moira has arrived. Havok says, "For instance, consider a Muck with a global "up" that says "You can't fly" and a desc of "You see the sun shining". If people don't have up exits, all of their rooms will have that up." Asp has arrived. Moira says, "Lookee who crawled in!" cHuPChUp blinks Asp hisses at everybody. Havok nods to Asp. cHuPChUp waves at asp! Stewy says, "without getting too techinical, fur is asking for the hard AI problem to be solved." Asp says, "hm... fur isn't the only person who works on this stuff who is waiting for that" Moira considers force feeding Asp a magic bean, if she could only find one.. Havok says, "Now, suppose everyone doesn't put an "up" exit in their room. Then, when you wander around the Mud, you will see a couple of hundred rooms with "You see the sun shining"." Stewy says, "That's alright, lots of people are waiting for that." Asp wonders how come hell is so slow... Havok says, "In fact, pretty soon, "You see the sun shining" will get to be like "You don't see that here" in a current Muck." Stewy says, "Have a seat, Mr. Asp. Nice to meet you." Asp coils up on the floor. Stewy would offer a hand, but cannot imagine how the snake could reciprocate. Havok says, "It will be considered "good building" to do something to keep people from getting that message, people will have to put their own ups in anyway, and the global detail will not have helped at all." Random shouts, "ASPNES!" cHuPChUp hehs Asp peers around looking for Random... Havok forgets to sit down, but realizes he has something more to add anyway. Moira mutters something about the @wall command (and for that matter most wizard commands) not being very reality conscious. but oh well. :) Random shouts, "I am going to wall about Aspnes until he pages me a greeting. :) <-- in a @wall mood tonight" Moira laughs. cHuPChUp hees Stewy frowns. Havok says, "Example: globals on Brigadoon. You have bonk. _Everyone_ had a bonk message. You also have eat. _Nothing_ had an eat message. (except for sarcastic players)." Moira apologizes for interupting.. Havok says, "Bonk had a default message. But nobody was ever satisfied with the default message." Havok says, "And on the other hand, eat is something nobody ever used." Havok says, "It seems that those details will go one of those two ways: either nobody uses them, or everybody uses them and nobody uses the default." Havok sits down. Stewy says, "Fur, is in the Queue, and then I'd like to try to recap, to figure out where we are going with this." fur says, "if yoo a criminal and yoo run outta ammo then yoo have to break into a store to get more. the store wasnt created as a puzzle for people to solve, just by existing and having locked doors it becomes one. as for text, i also believe that the mud should generate as much text as possible by itself before dropping back on human entered descriptions and such. this is stuff that is possible but not being done currently. im asking for people to at least take a stab at it stewy!" fur says, "that 'look up' stuff is the type of thing im talking about, the mud should know by its implementation what is up and tell yoo (mebbe theres a dragon flying around) natually, people can override that for their specific cases and such. the mud should pick up for places where people left off, fill in the gaps so to speak. done." Stewy has forgotten the point of this thread again. cHuPChUp reads Asp nods sagely. Moira raises her hand. Stewy says, "Moira, ok." Moira says, "Well, in partial response to Havok and fur.." Moira says, "As it stands, in Muck 2.2 global environments can be used to use for up and so forth, as Havok pointed out. Moo I believe is even more usable for that sort of thing, since it's fairly user programmable. (there's problems with that, of course, that I'm not going to go into)." fur raise a paw for his recap. Moira says, "The thing is, part of the "technology", if you will, is out there already, just not being utilized as such." Moira says, "Yes, advances can be made, of course. But I think the first step would be to use Moo for instance, and attempt to do whatever with new rules of reality, and see how it goes. Then you'd have a better idea as to exactly what needs to be written." Moira done. Havok raises a hand. Stewy asks, "fur?" Havok accidentally blasts the ceiling and dodges falling plaster. :-) fur says, "i think that currently muds are getting off track with this programming stuff. the mud should be a highly interactive system (read OO :) that try to do a better job of modelling reality, they should also be redesigned to better handle certain aspects such as topology, etc." fur says, "done." Moira thinks MOO is OO. Moira knows it is. erk. fur dont Stewy says, "Havok." Moira says, "latest version supposedly is, a lot more than the original was." Havok /recalls. Havok says, "The technology is out there and not being used for much.... But, is everyone going to want to use it?" Moira grins and raises her hand. Havok says, "Even consider a MOO. You have a "light". Anyone can make a light that can be turned on and off. Now, is everyone going to put a light in their room?" fur raise a paw Havok says, "The same way people don't alays desc everything in their room's desc, they';re not going to use every single feature, even if they are easy to use." Havok sits down. Stewy asks, "fur?" Havok thinks Moira was first, actually.... Stewy has a BIG RECAP in the works. Whisper to him how many rows your client displays. Stewy says, "Yes, Moira, sorry." cHuPChUp whispers, "emacs :-)" Havok whispers, "20 odd, but I have /recall." Moira whispers, "6.5 or so rows." Asp whispers, "pump all the lines you want, i'm in emacs" Stewy forgot to consult his clipboard. Moira says, "Just a quick answer to Havok re: everyone using new stuff.." Stewy whispers, "You are kidding. Blech" to Moira. Asp raises its tail. Moira says, "It's a well-known but little-liked fact that a certain cadre of people can make or break a mud. MUCKs weren't terribly popular until we put up Chaos, and people came to it simply because all of their other friends were there. In so doing, they got exposed to muck-isms. Granted, most people still don't use actions as much as I think they should, etc, but they use them a sight more than they would otherwise." Moira says, "If a group of people got together and worked on the basis for a new type of mud, no matter the system, if it was well-put together where you didn't have to read a 3 inch thick manual to learn how to log on and move around simply, people would come to it, and gradually learn the intricacies of that type of mud." Moira says, "Doesn't mean they'd all use them, but some would." Moira done. Stewy asks, "fur?" fur says, "yea, everyone should but they should be able to say @create living room, which gives them a prototypical living room will all furnishings and stuff, if yoo dont like it fine, yoo can change it or recycle it or whatever, the mud should do more work instead of pushing it off to every user." Moira nods. fur says, "gee moira, sounds like cross roads :)" fur says, "done." Havok says, "fur: Negative. Crossroiads has, at the very leasdt, the 3 inch thick manual problem." Stewy asks, "Mr. Snake?" Asp says, "This point may have been raised some time before, but: most MUDs follow the aspect of the text adventure game where the landscape, messages, and such were specified by an author somewhere. This model is _not_ a necessary feature of a text adventure game, it just happened to be that text adventure games were historically built by hand for the most part." Moira nods at Havok and grins at fur. cHuPChUp raises a hand. Havok sits down. Oops. :-) Asp says, "pretty much since rogue though all the "new" single-player computer games have computer-generated landscapes and such... perhaps what we need is not so much the ability for players to be able to generate their own neighborhoods from built-in templates (thus avoiding the unused feature problem) but for the machine to skip the players and just create the landscape itself as needed." fur wiggles happily, finally getting some support :) Asp coils up again. Havok did sit down, actually. Never mind. Sigh. Stewy lost the state of the thread while working on his recap. Stewy asks, "cHuPChUp?" cHuPChUp nods. cHuPChUp says, "this is in response to the thick manual problem" cHuPChUp says, "crossroads has this problem because muck tends to encourage bad programming practices, what i mean is, to use a program there, you are told to 'set fifty properties named this and that and the other thing'." cHuPChUp says, "i think the end user, ideally, should never have to mess around directly with setting properties." Havok raises a hand. cHuPChUp says, "moo and other muds have solved this by making new classes as readily available as "@create $note named foo"" cHuPChUp is done. Stewy asks, "havok?" Havok doesn't really see properties as being an example of a 3 inch thick manual. Havok says, "Perhaps the best example I can give is when I started on lpmud programming:" Havok says, "I know C. I know how to program in C. But the things I need to know are _what_ functions I must call for _what_ result, and C knowledge is no help at all in that." Havok says, "There's this bare minimum of knowledge you need to create. As you learn you can add things on top of that." Havok says, "If a "light" needs a property and you don't know the property, you can just have a room desced as containing a light, without actually building one in." Havok says, "But if you didn't know how to @link an exit, you're not going to be able to create a room at _all_." Chris has arrived. fur raise a paw Chris waves. Havok says, "It's more the initial hump. You don't need to worry about properties if you can build without using them. But you _do_ need to digest, as a whole, all the material about @dig and @desc and @link and...." cHuPChUp raises a hand. Havok says, "If this initial knowledge requirement is too large, then there's the 3 inch manual problem." Stewy would like to call the question. While interesting, the discussion is not going in the direction he would like. Havok thinks Muck's actually pretty good for that. You learn to build using @dig, @create.... OInce you know how to do that, you can then go on to programming. cHuPChUp nods. Havok sits down. Stewy says, "fur, quickly." fur says, "when yoo first start out yoo should just be given a living space with everything done, yoo learn by modifying it slowly, when yoo good enuf yoo can build yoo own from scratch. personally i would be quite happy on a mud where i couldnt build at all if i could beg/borrow/buy/steal the things i wanted. done." Stewy says, "cHup." cHuPChUp disagrees with havok -- properties shouldn't have to be set directly, by a builder, ever. they should be set en masse, transparently, by various commands available to builders, whether they be thru the programming language or thru hardcoded mud commands. cHuPChUp says, "@desc is setting a property, but through a builder's command." cHuPChUp is done. Havok adds something quickly, too. :-) Stewy asks, "what, havok?" fur whispers, "yoo were gonna recap something awhile back?" Havok says, "Again, you have two tiers. @desc sets a property automatically. Once you've mastered that level, and know about the concept of properties, you can go on to the more detailed stuff that require you to set properties on your own. Finish." Stewy whispers, "Still am." to fur. cHuPChUp sighs. Stewy says, "I really wanted to keep this discussion abstract. I would have attempted to quelch this discussion of programming features, if I had noticed it in time." Stewy says, "But I was working on this recap." Stewy asks, "Moira, you still at 6.5 lines?" Moira nods. Stewy says, "foo." Moira says, "per burst. I'm not using emacs." cHuPChUp hehs Moira doesnn't core dump, it just chops off then. Stewy says, "Here's my attempt at a recap. Whisper me things you think I left out. Please wait till I am done." Stewy CinDeRSoUl has arrived. cHuPChUp waves CinDeRSoUl says, "hiya people" Havok waves. Havok drops a 16 ton weight, not having any pins. Moira wonders if Stewy is done? Stewy recaps: "Stewy asked the question of the floor, 'Would you prefer more 'Reality' in MUDs'. Stewy recaps: "Fur was the only PC who really has higher expectations for MUDs (Virtual Realities). He does not want Reality(tm), per se, but a general underlying physics that will handle events the builder did not explictly handle. Stewy recaps: "People mentioned Time as one characteristic of 'Reality' that might be necessary, but Stewy directed the discussion away because it is too complicated a problem. Stewy recaps: "In a digression, which was allowed by Stewy because it seemed like an interesting special case of the general problem, we talked a bit about the Topology Problem: Stewy recaps: "Stewy mentioned teleport powers as something he did not like because it allowed players to break the 'script' laid out by builders. There was much discussion, and the subthread ended on the following: Stewy recaps: "It sounds like people want to be able to avoid having to rescout a route they have already followed. Better, the system should run through their previous plan, and if it works, just skip over the details. Stewy recaps: "It was noted that this plan might be too expensive to actually implement. Stewy recaps: "There is also a need to be able to teleport for meta-game reasons, such as HOME, and to talk to people. Stewy might have an attempt at addressing that problem, but will leave it for another day. Stewy recaps: "The discussion then turned to issue of defaults, that is, default messages, default actions, because this is a simplified notion of fur's desire for a server with a more powerful world model. Stewy recaps: "Fur wants to make building (ie, programming) easier, and wishes the server to do more. A subthread ensued on why embedded programming languages, while providing more functionality, really went in the other direction, making building harder. CinDeRSoUl shifts in her chair. Asp wonders if what MUDs really need is the application of rule-based system technology, but doesn't want to write anything itself. cHuPChUp grins fur is willing to write it, but first he want a language thats dynamic & fast enuf to do it. Moira will yell and scream about the simplicity needed in the user interface, and document it. Stewy warns against any discussion of actual implementations (real or imagined) while he is chairing. Asp thinks fur needs to be hit over the head with a large graven copy of Church's Thesis. cHuPChUp giggles Havok thinks this convo is sort of dying out... :-) Asp is not actually discussing anything, just spewing thought balloons, but it will calm down. CinDeRSoUl says, "dya think?" fur was sorta waiting for stewy to say he was done and start a new thread Stewy says, "Rather than post the entire minutes. I would like to post a recap." Stewy says, "oh, foo. forgot." Stewy RECAP DONE. Stewy says, "I am expecting comments" fur says, "post recap, but put whole thing for ftp" Stewy nods. Moira nodsnods. Asp waves its tale. Stewy asks, "Asp?" Stewy whispers, "I'd like to generalize your opinion as. Fur doesn't want to allow Rule-Breaking, he just wants the Rules to be more general" to fur. Asp says, "I think the Tiny-ish MUDs are just plain too much work. LP-MUD is taking over the universe because it does lots of things right out of the box. Any new MUD is going to have to provide that kind of support to really catch on." Asp coils up again. Stewy asks, "You meant functionality, geography, or raison-d'etre?" fur whispers, "i want it to be something like i want a virtual reality where the mud controls most things or something" CinDeRSoUl raises her hand. Asp uncoils to explain itself further CinDeRSoUl says, "Im leaving now :)" CinDeRSoUl goes home. CinDeRSoUl has left. cHuPChUp grins Molly has arrived. Molly waves! Asp says, "It depends. Functionality is definitely important, and in LP-MUD at least seems to have come from having better code sharing across MUDs. Geography is probably not such a big deal. Raison-d'etre (by which I assume you mean some sort of initial role and context for the new player) is a tricky--- I think a lot of LP-MUDders like having built-in goals, but it would drive me buggy." Havok bows to Molly, and regrets not having plasma bolts (== macros). Asp says, "On the other hand, I pretty much got bored of Tiny's too after I stopped running one." Asp coils up again. Stewy asks, "next?" Stormin has arrived. cHuPChUp waves. Stormin waves. Havok waves at Stormin. Stormin says, "Hi Havok, chup." Stormin says, "I break up the convo?" Stewy asks, "Does anyone else have anything to add. Did you find something missing in the recap?" Chris thinks. Stormin guesses he missed it. Stewy says, "I have a followup question to my original one, before we pack it in." Molly missed the whole thing, darnit. She has some opinions about MUDs. :) Stormin has left. Havok thinks people are likely to have logs, Molly. Molly raises her hand. Stewy asks, "molly?" Molly says, "yeah, I'm sorry I'm late." Molly says, "but I wanted to remark that the biggest problem I see in the future of MUDs is administrative." Molly says, "they don't last because they aren't designed to." Chris claps. Molly says, "the success/doom problem is the most important one to solve right away." Stewy asks, "You referring to database lifetimes?" fur raises a paw Molly says, "cool programmability or nifty feeturez mean nothing if your creativity goest to waste in 6 months." Molly sits back down. Moira raises her hand. Stewy says, "fur? ." Havok has to go and switch terminals in 5 minutes. fur says, "one of the things we had in the plans for our last mud were little monster that ran around and just ate old objects, in effect recycled them but within game limits. done." Moira hee Chris raises his hand. Stewy says, "Moira? I would like to address old problems before new ones, if we can." Havok has to go, be back in 5 minutes. When I return, can someone summarize 5 minutes? Stewy whispers, "if we are still around" to Havok. Havok has disconnected. Moira nods. "I was going to say that Molly has a valid point, but it's not very related to our discussion, aside from the fact that whatever reality you implement has to be interesting enough to keep interest up after a month or so." Moira done. Stewy asks, "Chris?" Chris realizes something: can someone give a one-line summary of the issue of the discussion? Molly would like that. She hates being clueless. cHuPChUp Stewy says, "Would you prefer more 'Reality' in MUDs" Moira nods. Molly raises her hand. Chris 's remarks were a followup to Molly's and are thus inappropriate; skip him. Stewy asks, "Molly?" Molly says, "did anyone address the question of evolution ? I suspect that more reality will come when the technologies improve. This is the natural order. The trick is to keep from stagnating - endless re-invention of the wheel." Molly is done. Stewy says, "OK, Molly and Chris have some reasonable questions, which we should leave for another day." Molly hehs. Stewy says, "Or at least till later..." Moira nods. Especially since uokmax goes down in about an hour. fur whispers, "i have a topic i would like to see 'reasons people play muds'" cHuPChUp acks. Stewy says, "Anyone have anything to add after reading my recap." Chris raises his hand. Stewy asks, "chris?" Stewy whispers, "That's one I want to ask about too. NO need to waste discussion time, though. We can solicit responses via r.g.m and a posting in here someplace." to fur. Chris says, "Unless you have a very narrowly-themed MUD what you really need is more Realities, ranging from slightly to majorly divergent, not just one. Solutions need to be thought out so that you aren't constraining the sort of realities that can be build with them." Chris says, "(or the number)" Havok has connected. Oldman has left. Chris is done with his point. Havok whispers, "Did anyone even say anything? :-)" Stewy whispers, "nothing relevent" to Havok. Stewy exclaims: "Last call before my followup Question!" Chris repeats for Havok (not whisper, that'd take too long, sorry:) Chris says, "Unless you have a very narrowly-themed MUD what you really need is more Realities, ranging from slightly to majorly divergent, not just one. Solutions need to be thought out so that you aren't constraining the sort of realities that can be build with them." Chris says, "(or the number)" Stewy marvels at the high, wooden ceiling. Stewy says, "OK, then. My Followup Question is:." Stewy asks, "Did fur convince anyone? Implementation problems aside, do people view a MUD-cum-VirtualReality as something they'd look forward to?" Molly raises her hand. Moira raises her hand. Stewy asks, "MOlly?" Molly says, "absolutely not. anyone who has experienced my claws in fun (most of you) would probably like it a whole lot less in a VR with real sensation. there are tremendous social problems in Tiny*s now - think what a more real virtual reality could be like?" Molly says, "it could be a lifetime of pain. :)" Molly done. Stewy asks, "moira?" Moira says, "I'm going to be wishy-washy on my answer to that. I think people should first use what's already available, etc, etc, and I also tend to fight tooth and nail against having to change, just because I get comfortable with where I am." fur raise a paw. Molly clearly was way off-base. Mus' be the drugz. Stewy asks, "Moira, do you play on other MUDs?" Stewy takes a sip from his Coke bottle. Moira shrugs. "There are good and bad points to staying with what we've already got and with trying to use more reality." Chris raises his hand. Moira says, "Uhm.. yes, although not as much as I used to, certainly. I rarely if ever go on MUSH's, evn thought I like the design somewhat. Mostly cause I don't feel that I fit in, and I don't want to take the time to fit in." Moira generally chalks it up to being too busy to deal with new things, although she actually thinks that's a fairly weak excuse, and that she just is too much of a wimp about Not Knowing What's Going On. Stewy asks, "You mean you have trouble with the culture those servers produce? or you mean you don't feel like coding to keep up with the Joneses?" Moira says, "Culture I rarely have trouble with; that's more of a matter of like versus dislike. Coding to keep up with the Joneses--exactly. I threw a wall-eyed fit when I first got on Crossroads, because I had no clue as to what was what (things are really different there), and no one took the time to help me. There was at that time little to no documentation, and I suddenly got seized with a dreadful inferiority complex." Moira says, "Strangely enough, I never had that much of a problem when I ran my test Ubermud, although I think that's mostly because *I* was running it, and it only took me a day or so to understand the basic coding, and from then on out I was running the show." Stewy whispers, "anything else?" to Moira. Moira says, "I don't know. I'm not saying I'd never try anything new, because I will. I'll even help design it. If it was solely up to me, however, I'd probably leave things as they are." Moira done. Stewy asks, "fur?" fur says, "i think what currently available is all dead end down the road. face it, this network model of rooms blows chunks. im convinced that a better model could be done at this very moment. certainly the @dig @link type interface can be improved (i dont mean to flame tinym* directly, i acknowledge all my muds work the same way currently)" Havok raises a hand. Moira glances at her watch, and decides to do the @shutdown at 10 till or so. fur says, "also, i feel that the wiz/mucker/player stuff has unfortunately build in a caste type system, i think that all players should be equal within the game to avoid thise. done." Stewy whispers, "why is the world going down, btw?" to Moira. Moira whispers, "uokmax is down from midnight to around 4-6am for low level backups on saturday nights." Stewy whispers, "Thank Gd for the time difference, then." to Moira. Stewy grins. Moira whispers, "" Stewy says, "oops, he was done. sorry abou tthat." Stewy says, "Chris is next." Chris says, "I think an interesting question to ask (re Moira's point) is are we using our current tools well right now? How many people on MUDs use how much of even TinyMUD's power?" Chris says, "Is ther percieved 'bad building' that's so common actually the case, and if it is, what's at fault: our users or our tools, or both?" Chris hmms. done. fur raise a paw for tools! Stewy says, "Building was real poor at the beginning, and got much better later. Islandia rewarded good building with connectivity." Stewy says, "I think we are all aware of the *MUD limitations, though." Molly raises her hand. Stewy says, "Havok is next." Chris thinks Stewey has just made a useful point; how do we encourage good building? Havok just notes that he agrees with most of you here. And I'd extend coding-to-keep-up-with-the-Joneses to building-to-keep-up-with-the-Joneses and even client-macros-to-keep-up-with-the-Joneses.... Moira sticks a "without being fascist about it" to the end of Chris's question. Stewy says, "Another good question for another day, I think." Molly grins toothily at Moira. Havok thinks that in some case bad building is the fault of neither the users nor the tools. fur whispers, "put me inna q~" Chris raises a hand. Stewy asks, "Moll?" Molly says, "yeah, it's not a question of encouraging good building." Havok says, "Even with the limitations of TinyM*, for all intents and purposes it's always going to be possible to build something better than what currently exists." Havok wasn't finished. Stewy is obviously getting tired, and looks apologetically at Havok. Havok says, "As you build something better and better, you put in more and more work, and for that matter, people have to put in more and more work to appreciate it." Havok thinks there is going to be a tradeoff between effort and building, and that tradeoff may come well before the point that some people would consider "good enough building". Havok sits down. Molly says, "it's that everyone who knows hos much effort it is, knows how annoying it is when their building gets trashed because of a MUD going down permanently. sure there are ways to rebuild, but it's a pain. I hardly build at all anymore. it's not *encouraging* building, it's a matter of making building worthwhile." Stewy says, "Molly? ." Molly is done. She's sorry she interrupted Havok without meaning to. Molly waitamminnit! Molly *NEVER* apologises! Molly is done, anyhow. Havok sighs. I didn't even /log it. Stewy says, "OK. This is a separable question." Havok puts it as a question on a future tiny* test. Ever been apologized to by Molly? Stewy says, "So let's return to what we were talking about before, whatever that was" Stewy sighs. Stewy says, "fur is next." cHuPChUp smiles. fur says, "i should be able to just say @link north=zoo, and the mud should be able to at least make a desc like "a small path leands north to the zoo" i think building is way to tedious for ennyone really. i would vote for never having to set a desc on an exit and having that always generated (this was how cmud worked)" fur says, "make that tedious under the @dig @link type systems. done." cHuPChUp raises a hand Moira votes for clicking a pointer on "build house" and letting it go! yeah! Stewy says, "Chris, ." Havok raises one too. (Just a short note). Stewy says, "We need to wrap this up soon, guys, so let's try and stay focused." Chris says, "A point after Moira's addition to my line: is it necessarily bad to be fascist about building? How far can one swing one way or the other without alienating people; how much building power are most people satisfied with -- could one give them a room of their own to build in and describe, and have them satisfied?" Chris says, "One observes that LP-MUDs are quite fascist about it by TinyMUD terms, and they're quite popular." Chris sits down. Moira says, "now THAT's an entire subject all to itself." Stewy says, "Interesting issue. Someone with a workstation could try to experiment with this parameter, I suppose." fur wishes we hadda hypertext forum to talk in :) Stewy asks, "cHuPChuP?" cHuPChUp says, "fur has a very good point, i noticed this with three's building: it is very detailed but she ends up running around, setting tons of exits dark, setting properties manually on everything, setting a bunch of identical or nearly-identical descriptions on small detail-type things, and it only proves she's working against the software too much and she could be much more productive." cHuPChUp says, "and this happens even more on crossroads with just about everyone's building." cHuPChUp sits down. Stewy asks, "Havok?" Havok responds to fur: You can already have a desc on an exit like that. Have a program to do it, and use the same program as the desc on every exit. Problem is that's not the acme of good building, since it's always _possible_ to give the exit a better desc--so to build better than their predecessors, everyone manually descs their exits anyway. fur raise a paw in reply Stewy says, "go ahaed." fur says, "sure but everyone has to write their own prog to do that, once again yoo reinventing the wheel when the mud ould have done it just once. done." Havok says, "If you have a feature available for building, soon it's going to get to the point where everyone has to use the feature, or else their building is considered poor in comparison to someone who did use it." Havok sits down. Random shouts, "uokmax will probably go down for backups in about 25 minutes" Stewy asks, "Anyone have anything else to say with respect to the pervasiveness of a 'Reality' dictated by a serer?" Havok raises a hand. Stewy serer=server. Stewy asks, "havok?" Havok says, "Summary: it can go too far. Too much, and people don't use it, or try to work around it." fur raise a paw Havok says, "Summary: it can go too far. Too much, and people don't use it, or people try to work around it." Havok sits down. Stewy asks, "fur?" fur says, "thats just a user interface issue, doesnt dependonthe technology." fur says, "no matter what yoo write it should be easy & intuitive to use. done." Havok raises a hand again. Stewy says, "yup." Molly raise a paw. Havok was referring to things like teleports. Ban teleports and make people walk for reality, for instance, and people try to avoid excessive walking and they try to work around the requirement for walking. Havok sits down. Stewy says, "...creating something like a Rec Room." Stewy asks, "molly?" fur paw! Molly standz on her chair Stewy turns up his clock rate to cope with the impending machine shutdown. Molly says, "If there were tools that somehow supported building, and accepted a grammar of terrain layout, it'd be a lot easier to enforce bulding rules by not accepting or accepting input as valid. this is something I've toyed with somewhat, but the problem is very hard to solve." Molly says, "IE: if the MUD had a built-in "building machine" that enforced @descs on everyhting, people could still get around it by using bogus @descs." Stewy says, "in ASCII, certainly." Molly says, "in short, I don't think it's solvable - just as you can't solve the "people hate to walk" problem." Molly says, "in Islandia this caused the "let's all sit inn the treehouse all day" problems." Molly admits she's guilty, too, asking to be teleoprted here, initially. Havok raises a hand. Random shouts, "Stormin would like you to know that this is his last night mudding, at least for a long while, and that his mailing address is in the Kiosk. He expects mail (like the writting kind) from you!" Moira grins. Molly sitz back in her chair. Stewy asks, "fur?" fur says, "like i said earlier, yoo cant just give people a half reality, if yoo get rid of teleport then yoo have to give them vehicles (that allow them to move faster than foot) to compensate. done." Moira shouts, "writing kind. writing." Stewy asks, "havok?" Random shouts, "ooo, @walling spelling flames is bogus" Havok thinks that if (for instance), some people want to require walking from users, and the users don't want to walk, you have a little conflict with the users as to exactly what the users are there to do. And this problem is indeed one that can't really be solved. Havok says, "What you _really_ have to solve is the conflict of ideas about what a Mud should be." Havok sits down. Molly prefers to just kill the opposition. cHuPChUp hehs Stewy says, "Anyone else? Otherwise I'd like to attempt to wrap-up." Moira thinks that's it. Moira points to the time. :) Stewy says, "I hope so, we're running out of time." cHuPChUp Sat Jan 26 21:45:56 PST 1991 Stewy stands back up, pushing your chair up to the table. fur yawns Molly whap fur! Stewy says, "First, I'd like to thank everyone for spending the time in here tonight." Moira says, "For shame, stewy. You don't have a gender set. :)" Stewy set me =male. Havok nods to Stewy. Moira nono. Stewy sets his gender bit. cHuPChUp @set me=sex:male Moira @set me=sex:whatever. Havok says, "What? A Mav?" Molly wonders who bit Stewy's gender? fur thinks about bitin mollys ;) cHuPChUp blinks Molly hms, "are these kinds of meetings regyoolar ? one of these days, I'd like too try to rollout some ideas for this new MUD bob and I have about 3/4 done... Stewy says, "I think I learned something tonight, but there was a little too much digression for me to be positive." Moira nods. digressions city. That's the trouble with abstract discussions. Chris snickers to Molly. Havok wonders that too, Molly. I found it strictly by accident. And ironically at the same time as an lpmud meeting about the next generation of the Dartmouth LP.... Stewy says, "I do intend to try to organize more meetings of this type, but I don't know when I will want another one." Molly grinz at Chris, "OK, *I* have about 3/4 done. :)" Moira says, "Um, just let enough of the people that you want in it to know, and pick a time, and let me know, of course. :) Then just show up and tada." Stewy says, "If I announce it publicly, it will be too well-attended, I am sure." Havok says, "Put it in the kiosk?" Moira says, "Oh, we just decided to move the discussion here from the town square." Stewy says, "Let me add that others can have meetings as well." Havok says, "But your names are legend. :-)" Molly nahs. I'll try too maybe run it *ON* the noo mud, then I cant be accused of talking vapor. Stewy says, "To set a good example, I will put the minutes of this meeting on BELCH or someother public place, and post a synopsis on rec.games.mud." Kallen hmms. Kallen would like to see the minutes. Moira says, "Put 'em on belch, and on valkyrie.ecn.uoknor.edu in pub/local." Kallen was amazed. A civilized mud discussion. Havok nods. Chris grins and scritches Kallen. "Small numbers." Stewy says, "If you have any further thoughts on the "reality" question, don't hesistate to email it to me at CLAMEN@CS.CMU.EDU." Molly offerz to smak Kallen around some, if that'd help. Chris wonderz what happened to Molly? Kallen will skip, thanks Mol. Moira says, "Molly got weird." Stewy says, "I suspect my posting a synopnis on the newsgroup will start a discussion up on there, so stay tuned." Chris nods. fur ties his tail to mollys ;) Havok thinks, actually, that Molly's offer is itself an example of keeping-up-with-the-Joneses mentioned earlier.... Chris makes a little note: TinyWORLD. Moira says, "Good. r.g.m. NEEDS a new discussion in a bad way." Molly whapwhap fur. Moira no no no, chris. Moira ick ack bl00p. cHuPChUp ewws at chris Havok says, "Why, Chris?" Molly says, "keeping up with the jonses is not always bad. it promtes evolution." Chris says, "Where else do people want to go when Asylum goes down?" cHuPChUp 's teeny is up for another week, if anyone cares. :( Chris nods to Molly. Stewy is waiting for someone to propose the meeting be adjourned. Moira says, "Uhm. good point. hurm. I usually go to bed." Molly says, "of course, I am less concerned with keeping up, than being superior to." Havok says, "Go to Tim. :-) :-)" Molly says, "le's adjourn." Moira nods. Chris says, "Seconded." Stewy asks, "Anyone have anything else to say?" cHuPChUp 3rds Moira says, "Nope." Havok says, "aye" Chris has lots, but he needs to think about it. Stewy says, "Meeting adjourned. Good Night all." Molly hops out of her chair. She could lacture all night. Havok walks over to the door, which swings open, and walks through. Havok has left. Moira says, "Oh, those of you who had rooms in the xtal palace back on hell automatically are invited to get new ones, but I'll do that later." fur wheeees! Havok has arrived. Chris cranks Bela Lugosi's Dead. Molly peers longingly at Moira. She has a friend who currently lives in her dumpster... Moira grins at Molly, and nods. Kallen chuckles. Molly clap her little paws! Moira hms. "You know, fur, we don't have a cemetary here yet." fur grab molly and hugglez her! Molly kickick fur in the groin! whee! Moira pokes asp. "He's pretty dead." Molly pulla hunkz of fur out! Chris looks at Molly and fur. "Maybe we will soon." fur smoochy molly happily! Molly pokepoke fur inna eye! Havok hugs Molly (Joke, joke!) Molly says, "paws off!" fur snifs Molly smacka Havok inna knee! Moira tosses molly and fur in the pool! Molly has left. fur has left.