Haven't managed to do a whole lot of anything other than school related stuff. Just...meh...exhaustion is the key word. Can't say a whole lot more!

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/mudreading/~3/277420692/rae-on-armag

I recorded a videocast where I talk about ArmageddonMUD. Sanvean of Armageddon has been doing these for awhile and I decided to give it a shot. In this episode (assuming I’m going to do more) I talk about setting up new staff members for the game and an interesting character I played years ago.

Is there anyone else in the MUD community doing these? I’d love to see videos like this about other games!

It is split up into 3 YouTube videos and is about 22 minutes long:

Part 1/3

Part 2/3

Part 3/3

And there is a discussion of the videocast going on here:

Armageddon community discussion on the videocast

Well those 9 months went very fast and here we are its all over now.  :)  I have a beautrful baby girl and I couldn't be prouder!  She was born on Tuesday and now that its over you will see a few changes coming to MudDomain!  More to come...

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/mudreading/~3/263582409/easy-supply-

A realistic economy is a goal of many MUDs. Many of the benefits of a realistic economy can be created with very little work.

Here is a simple supply and demand system. Every time a player buys an item, increase its cost. Every time a player sells an item, decrease its cost.

Voila. Supply and demand. The system works well to make high-demand items expensive and extremely common items cheap. There are just a few tweaks that would keep things working.

Tweak the settings for how much the cost is effected by each purchase or sale. You can’t assign the “right” values deterministically. It depends on your playerbase’s size and behavior, and will change over time.

Consider having the prices normalize gradually over time. That way a surge of unusual activity will be offset sooner, and items that are bought but not sold (such as consumables) will not simply increase in price forever.

Consider a minimum and maximum price. EG, do not allow an item’s cost to change to 50% less or more than its original cost. This is a good approximation of other factors not considered in the system and helps catch flukes before they cause a problem.

To expand on the system a little, keep a multiplier for object types and materials, if you have them. Start at 1. Each time a player buys or sells an item, increase or decrease the multiplier (by a small fraction). Have the multiplier effect all objects of that type or material. Now, if silver longswords are in demand, the price of silver broadswords will increase as well.

To expand on the system even more, keep these set of values separate for each city, region, or whatever granularity is appropriate for your game. Then travelling to a region where an item is more rare will yield a better payoff.

http://www.zalanthas.org/blogs/brideofson/archives/001414.html

Here's a sneak peak at something we're doing for Arm 2:

Currently commands are implemented to perform a specific action or skill in the game. Sometimes other uses or additional complexity that would provide more functionality need to be added to the commands. New commands are created, or command line switches added to access the added complexity. This pollutes the name space with single-use commands, or adds difficult to remember syntax, when the added behavior could be abstracted out to work in multiple other commands using a more natural approach.

Adverbial commands are commands that alter the functionality of existing commands. Most of the existing commands are 'verbs', directing user's characters what to do. Adverbial commands work like adverbial phrases in English, allowing the user to describe how they are doing an action, and providing coded benefits for doing so.

A collection of adverbs would be put together based on multiple criterion: How many commands they make sense with, the amount of complexity reduction they will provide, and the clarity and ease of use they hold for the player base. Each individual command would define what adverbs it supports. Using the adverbs provide coded modifiers or affects to the execution or results of the command for that single execution. Further commands which set the person into a 'mode' of behaving could still be done.

The intention of this is not to remove one-word commands that make sense (such as whisper and sneak), but rather allow a greater flexibility in describing your actions, as well as providing coded benefits to a wider variety of commands without having to come up with a command name that exactly fits the intention of the command.

Example Adverbial Commands

Some examples of adverbial commands and how some commands might respond to them follows.

quietly -- Used in speech related commands, lowering the volume of the speech. Lowering the volume of speech affects how well it could be heard in loud areas, listening skill checks, and if it carries to other rooms. Existing commands such as 'whisper' can be set up as an alias to 'quietly tell'. This could also be used in movement, such as "quietly go east (moving through the shadows)", allowing for a one room sneak. Other possibilities: Opening a door, picking up an item, starting an attack or drawing a weapon.

loudly -- Inverse of quietly, raises the volume of speech related commands. One might need to use this to be heard over others, or in a loud bar. Someone might catch only part of your say, or just an emote that your speaking but it's too loud unless you use this. This could be optionally used as a way to shout rather then the shout command. Other possibilities: Loudly moving to make your presense known, loudly attacking perhaps drawing attention (or other combat effects), or loudly chanting at a critical point in a ritual.

repeatedly -- Keep trying to do something until you succeed (or you determine it's impossible for your skill). It increases the delay proportionately and gives you a highest possible random result on your skill check. This wouldn't be used on skills where failure can result in a bad outcome. Possible uses include: Picking a lock, and searching a room.

in <language> -- Shortcut to allow you to change your language for one speech command. Example: in pig-latin say hello. This might be used in casting, or other communications such as psionics, or writing.

quickly -- Decreases the delay for the skill, but reduces your chance of success. Normally a master in a skill can ignore menial tasks involving the skill. If time is of the essence, they can try and do it quickly, and it increases the difficulty of the task. Possibilities include: drawing a weapon, attacking, shooting, kicking, disarming, getting an object, stealing, casting a spell, climbing, moving instead of run, mounting, or foraging.

slowly -- Increases the delay for the skill, but increases your chance of success. This should only be possible in a non-stressful situation, but the idea is you take your time doing it to reduce the difficulty of the task. Pretty much the inverse of quickly, this can be applied to many of the same commands. Possibilites include: moving, poisoning, casting a spell, stealing, climbing, crafting, picking a lock, stealing an item, foraging or shooting.

ineptly, poorly, adeptly, expertly -- Purposefully degrade your ability in a skill for one performance of it. Removes any chance of skill gain from failure, but can be used as a role play tool. Depending on your actual ability in the skill, you may not be able to use higher levels. You can't use this to increase your skill beyond your current ability. Other possibilities include: Taking a payoff to ineptly guard your boss one time, to downplay one's combat skills, or basically charade. Should give viewers an opposed check to see if they notice the deception.

exclusively -- Specify that you are looking for a specific result, like with forage. Example: exclusively forage for a golden skull.

Syntax

The general syntax for adverbial commands is:

Syntax: <adverb> <command> (pre-how emote) [post-how emote] <body>

Some Adverbial Commands might take arguments themselves (for instance 'in' takes the language to speak in), and would require slightly altered syntaxes.

Output

Each command will decide if it makes sense to show the adverbs used in the output for the command. For instance, 'quietly say' might echo 'You quietly say...' Alternatively, some might not be shown unless some condition is met, such as noticing someone trying to fake poor skill. Others may never show in the output for the command.

Implementation

An 'AdverbialCommand' will be created which will take the name of the adverb to set on the command. Commands that want to intercept an adverb will add a public boolean instance property (getter/setter) for it. When an AdveribialCommand is told to run, it will re-interpret the remaining arguments as a new command. Assuming it gets a new command back, it will use introspection to set the adverb as being used. It will then schedule the new command to run and exit. The new command will have to decide what the result is of the adverb on the command.

If the command does not have a public property for the adverb, the default behavior will be to give an error message 'You may not , try using command-emotes (see help command emotes)'.

So, if a Command wants to handle the 'slowly' adverb, it will add a 'private boolean slowly;' and an appropriate getter and setter for it. The slowly adverbial command will check to see if the command has a boolean setter for the 'slowly' property, and set it to true. When the command is run, it will determine what 'slowly' means for it.

Strict/Permissive Error Handling

There should be a user setting which allows the user to not get told if the command doesn't support a specific adverb, give a warning, but go ahead and do the command anyways.

Multiple Adverbial Commands

Multiple adverbial commands could be combined (for instance, 'in pig-latin quietly say hello'), depending on how this is implemented. If so the system would need to watch for opposing adverbs (quietly vs. loudly, quickly vs. slowly). One solution to this is to have each adverb maintain a list of 'unacceptable' other adverbs that it'll turn off if found.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/mudreading/~3/248081054/hiring-for-m

I’ve noticed that for the last person we hired for Armageddon and for the last person we hired at work, the process was nearly identical. In both cases it was for a developer position. Our process is to say that we are hiring, receive applications with a certain type of information, choose some people to come in for interviews, have interviews that ask the same questions, then send a few offers.

What are the differences, though? That is the part that I find interesting.

Supply and Demand

In the software world, startups and new, exciting companies usually get a lot of attention from job-seekers. There is the chance to learn new and exciting technologies, having a fully stocked soda fridge and expresso machine, and of course the possibility of stock options making you a quick fortune.

In the MUD world, new MUDs are the ones that have to try their damnedest to bring on new staff. MUD forums are always full of posts about the need for coders or builders for a fresh MUD. Why is this?

First, new MUDs have a low success rate. As a hobby, it is very possible that not enough volunteers will be rounded up. Even if the game gets off the ground, its very hard to reach the critical mass where you have enough players for the playerbase to not just disappear during a lull. For MUD administration talent, its a risky move to invest in such a MUD, and many talented folks are more interested in starting their own project.

Most MUDs that are already established hire from within. Players of a MUD are usually very interested in joining the staff of their favorite MUD, so the game staff can remain sufficient even with a fairly high churn.

What can we learn from this? If you are starting a new MUD, be ready to hire through networking rather than forum posts. However, you should take some lessons from the software industry. Make your MUD an appealing place to work. For coders, advertise what cool new technologies you employ. For builders, make sure you have some unique features that are of interest. The competition is fierce, so make sure you answer the question: “Why is it more fun to work on this MUD?”

For established MUDs: Be picky. You probably have a boatload of players who want to help out. Look at the entire pool of potential staff and take the time to really get to know people and their qualifications. We used to hire by invitation, but hiring by an application process has let us consider highly qualified potential staff that had been flying under our radar in the past.

Celebrity Founders

Every heard of Pownce? It is a Twitter like site. Why do I know about it? Only because one of the original founders was known for his involvement in Digg. The world of software entrepreneurship has celebrities. Companies started by such a person get a lot of attention, both by users and by potential employees.

This doesn’t seem to happen with MUDs. New MUDs are likely to come from an average Joe, or an established group making a new MUD that does not need to establish a new staff.

Why is this? First, there seems to be a stigma surrounding leaving your MUD to go make a new one. You would be seen as abandoning your friends there. In the business world, people coming and going is simply a way of life and (usually) no offense is taken. This is infinitely worse if you try to recruit some of your talented friends to get the new project going. Talent poaching is highly frowned upon in the MUD world, even on a small scale. Lastly, people have a strong sense of loyalty to their MUDs. Even if the previous problems didn’t exist, few people want to embark on such a project.

Further, the MUD world doesn’t seem to have celebrities in the community as a whole. MUD administrators are often seen as celebrities in their own game, but players from other games will likely never of heard of them.

One way I’d like to mitigate this is to promote a more far-reaching MUD community. More networking and awareness of what is going on in other MUDs would help anyone who is trying to hire.

I don’t think I’d want to promote higher staff churn. I think the comradery and loyalty that MUD staffs have is a good thing, overall.

When you are hiring for a MUD, make sure to ask what a person’s accomplishments are, in and out of the MUD community. They probably don’t have 4 or 5 MUDs under their belt, but what they say should be interesting.

Expectations

The last difference between real-job hiring and MUD hiring that I’ll discuss is expectations. On both sides of the table.

MUDs are usually a volunteer effort. A staff member’s value is related to how many hours they choose to volunteer. Its obvious that someone who can devote 20 hours a week to a MUD is a great potential helping hand. Someone who has no time to help, no matter how qualified, is probably not going to get hired.

If someone gets hired onto a MUD, then produces less work than is expected of them, this is usually not a big loss. They can linger on as an occasional helper. If they produce no work whatsoever, or completely disappear, they can be taken off the staff list quietly with no incident.

In the world of business there is no such notion. A hire who is not as effective as needed is a major problem. They’re still around every day and drain resources without giving back.

This difference leads to less sense of risk and lower expectations in MUD hiring.

This is a good thing. Staff can be hired with a risk that they won’t work out. Some of these people might turn out great, and if not, the loss is not unbearable. Hires that are an active problem can be dealt with quickly. Be ready to take risks (if there is some reason to think the person may turn out very good) and pay attention to newer staff to see how the risk is paying off.

On the other side of the table, MUD players often expect that working on a MUD will be far more fun than a real job would be. Well, this is probably true, but occasionally there are unenjoyable parts of the job. Any reasonable interviewee for a paid job is ready for this, but far fewer MUD players are. Set expectations early. If someone gets scared by the thought of building an item that someone else designed for them, or talking to a player who has been misbehaving, they probably aren’t a good resource overall.

That’s all for today. As always I’ll leave an open question on the table. What is your best and/or worst hiring experience? From the perspective of either a employer or interviewee. Doesn’t need to be MUD related, but if it isn’t, how might the situation have been different if it was a MUD hiring?

Finally managed to strip down Quickmud to the bare bones. Only have the required help files, limbo.are, midgaard.are and hood.are.  No errors, only crashed once because I forgot to delete some resets in midgaard. After I take a break and actually do something productive *coughstudy-write-paperscough*, I will try to get rid of Midgaard and try to figure out why Gangland is needed? I know why limbo is needed so no rocket science there.

Now that's a spicy meat-ah-ball! 

Oh yeah, and in case any of you *don't* already know, Arthmoor has the most kick ass set up ever! I typed make and was amazed at the speed. Samson, you da man :) 

I'm not even day 1 into this "project" I've undertaken. So far I've screwed things up so badly that my log folder is full :P

So glad I remembered to back things up.   I'm beginning to wonder if I can get this piece of crap off the ground :P

*keep smiling, light at the end of the tunnel, silver lining in every cloud*

If I keep saying that loud enough everything will be ALL RIGHT won't it?

Meh... 

I have decided to grab the bull by the horns and start a new project. I have always wanted to create an immersive roleplay atmosphere in a game.  So here goes!  I have never had any luck with finding or keeping a coder. So to prove that I can at least tackle things on my own, I am going to tackle the building end of things for now.  I want to rip all the stock areas out and rebuild from scratch.  Brave, big plans for such a little person, eh? I can build if nothing else. Maybe if I start out like this then a coder might fall into my lap :P

Just remember, I am not holding my breath waiting for a coder to fall into my lap. I don't expect that to happen. So to all those who have offered a bit of help here or there, I might call on you if I screw things up beyond recognition or can't remember all the things I used to know about Unix :P

Now I should get back to writing a paper. A big, ugly, nasty paper with teeth!

Yes, this makes *5* of them now. Every last one of them I've bought in the last 2 years now is dead or dying. I've already turned the previous 4 in for warranty replacement. This one will make the 5th.

After investigating the usual causes for blue screens of death - bad drivers, incompatible software, rogue code, etc - I've come to the conclusion the drive itself is showing the same signs my servers showed before. These things manifest more subtely on Windows boxes and if I hadn't suffered so many failures before I might have missed it entirely.

So once more, Hitachi will save my behind from another big fat mess. And to think, I just put the bloody drive back into a brand new motherboard and CPU and this is the thanks I get. At least the data is still readable so I can take the drive in and use the cloning machine at work.

And again, for the love of God, nobody buy Western Digital! This is just plain stupid!