My mud character in abandoned realms.  this mud is awesome, with cool overhead map "automap" config to see the map in room description while running, and more costamized poses spell casts and role then ive seen anywhere.

abandonedrealms.com is the best mud, and if you want to start a character there conntact me on mud domain I'll help.

 

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  Zeid created on 12th of January 2008, and is currently 24 years old (158 hours played).

Title: the Warrior Lord
Gender: Male
Level: 46
Path: chaotic evil
Class: fire giant warrior

Background:

Zeid screamed in agony *whip* *crack* a small man whith white puffy hair and an icy chain whip screamed back "Damn the Gods Zeid, have you no soul!", Zeid felt sick to his stomache, he hated Gober with a passion. Zeid had been sold into slavery at the age of nine by his father who abducted him from Darkhavens misty streets. Zeids father was allways out to get some designer potion or pill that would cool him down, he was a large giant and had big heat in his heart. Zeids mother he could not remember. His thoughts travelled to being free, playing and exploring Darkhavens bakery and docks. *chain* *snap* "Work harder damnit! More ore!" yelled Gober spit flying from his mad face. Zeid scowled and he crushed harder pummeling the rock into particules. He took the pick and broke another piece from the walls of the cavern. dripping sounds, there was water some where close and Zeid beginning to die of thirst again. Gomer didnt notice, he stopped working.. *whip* *crack* "Zeid!" Gomer barked at him with anger. Zeids thirst scratched him again, and the master threw a cup of water at him, it spilled. "Go fill it up" said he, "Get something to drink...". Zeid allways hated being told what to do, he carefully picked the glass up while Gober chortled mischeviously knowing Zeids clumsy fists. He rounded the corner and Zeid could see light. a huge bug flew in coming strait toward Zeid, Zeid was afraid but knew what move worked best and crushed the insect into particules, like everyday work. The creatures wings floated to the ground slowy Zeid brought his face down to the water and gulped it up, and his blood cooled down, this was zeids chance, he could outpace his master using the fallen wings and regain his freedom. he turned his head, his master was looking at him, Zeid picked up the wings fast as he could *whip* *crack* "NO!" yelled Zied and the anger inside him boiled up, he whooped and blazing embers shot around the cave wounding Gomer who fell to the ground Zeid was unto him waisting no time he crushed Gomers head into particules. Zeid found himself in Timaran looking for some remedy that would cool him down, the heat within was unusually exhausting since he had the fight with Gober. Just remember, he would tell himself Gobers in hell, you free now, but Zeid grew angrier and angrier. he got tired of pummeling stray cats and large rats in Timarans streets and wanted to refine his skill, so Zeid made his way to the guild of warriors and begin his training.

Desc:

Tree trunk limbs on torso the size of a small home all clad in gigantic armor which is hot to the touch. Heat waves raise off the behemoth and no hair has grown off his large apelike head and face. Even his eyes seem dry red and bloodshot while perspiration causes a steam aura around him in freezing air. His voice is deep and very gutteral at first sound bearing resemblance to an animal or beast. Fizzling viens pump the boiling blood from his heart to his scarred muscles at a slow steady pace. These scars are numerous and seem to be lashes from some kind of metal segmented weapon.

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http://www.zalanthas.org/blogs/brideofson/archives/001413.html

Dear Domino,

Will you please give a basic rundown of the commonly known worldwide animals and plants, at least so far as they're decided upon thus far? Failing that, can you tell us which flora and fauna will likely make the transition to 2.arm from 1.arm, and give us a couple new highlights?

Tisiphone

Domino says:

This is a project that Vanth and I started to tear through a few months ago, but we put it on hold until the areas themselves are built. I'd estimate it as about 50% done, and I'm looking forward to a time when I can pick it back up.

Almost all of the herbs and plants that currently exist will be making the transition to Armageddon 2.0, with some alterations to the names and properties of some of them so that we can do away with any IP infringements. Most if not all of them will be fleshed out in regards to possible uses and the folklore surrounding them, and it's likely that they won't act the same way they did in Armageddon 1.0. There are literally hundreds of herb and plant items, and many more will be added as we make sure that each herb has a plant, and vice versa. I would also like to ensure that every plant has a way for PCs to reproduce it, whether by taking a cutting of it, planting seeds, or for the more exotic varieties, something else entirely. Purely "decorative" plant objects should be a thing of the past.

Since literacy will be far more common in Armageddon 2.0, I'm hoping to create IC documentation for players to pursue ingame. The most commonly well-known plants will probably be listed in the OOC documentation, but I want to include some extras for those who want to study the subject ICly, while leaving plenty of room for experimentation and further learning. Imagine reading some bit of folklore about a rare herb that only grows in the high mountains and is sacred to the fuzzy-wuzzies, then sending out an expedition to discover it and experiment with its properties, eventually finding out through trial and error that it's the only known cure to the deadly kankblotch plague - then writing your findings in a book and selling it, forever immortalized as the one who made the discovery. That kind of thing is what I want to make possible.

The same goes for animals, to a large extent. Just as the herbs, all of them have their own separate wiki page with a list of fields to fill out, detailing their habits and habitat. The most common ones will get a blurb in the OOC documentation, and the more detailed folklore and habits should be discoverable IC. I'm not alone in wanting to ensure that each animal type has a place in the overall food chain, and that the food chains for each areas make sense and can be observed and reported by PCs in the game.

More of the animals in 2.0 had to be dropped due to IP conflicts, but there is a slew of new ones, including a few rare creatures that existed in Armageddon 1.0's database but weren't brought into common play for one reason or another. Mounts in particular I'm really looking forward to fleshing out, as we have a host of new types, each of which will be ideal for certain situations and poor choices for others. There will be no "super-mount" like the kank was (may they rest in peace), but there will probably be a couple "average" mounts that can handle most terrain types and situations - just not as well as another more specialized mount might.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/mudreading/~3/233546891/three-space

Approximating three-dimensional space is an interesting challenge in a text-based game. It is very easy to create a simple, sufficient model. Complications run the risk of confusing players and piling on the work for builders. I’m going to look at a few approaches, their advantages and disadvantages, and talk about an idea that I haven’t seen used.

The standard MUD approach is to use weight as its only measure of not only weight, but also size. The capacity of a container is judged by how much weight it can contain, and a character’s encumbrance is simply their total carry-weight versus a maximum, generally derived from their various attributes.

This works well in general, and is conveniently simple, but there are a few cases that throw this system off.

First, object shape is not taken into account. In my experience long, skinny objects cause the most weirdness, as the game mechanics don’t see any reason to protest putting a spear in a belt pouch.

Second, objects that vary wildly in density can cause confusion. If a player has a bag that can carry an entire wardrobe of silk they may be suddenly confused when a 7 pound sword cannot fit inside.

I have seen a few attempts to solve the size problem. The simplest is a single “size” field, separate from weight, that is then used instead of weight when determining the amount of space taken up in a location or container. This works well enough as it represents density, but it does not help our spear scenario.

In some cases further size fields are added. In the next step we start to approximate each object as a geometric shape. With two fields, width and length, you effectively consider every object a cylinder. This works well: it is able to represent those troublesome spears, and a cylinder with equal length and width is sufficient for less exotically shaped objects.

The other approach I’ve seen is including a height, width, and length: a cube. In terms of MUDs, the difference between this and the cylinder representation is not extremely great. Generally the most important checks on size involve fitting objects through openings such a door or a chest’s lid. Since such an opening is two dimensional, the smallest dimension does not play into the calculation.

I haven’t seen an attempt to create any more complex representation of size and shape. Allowing an object to be one of various geometric shapes would be maddening for a builder, much less do any calculations with, and the advantages of this level of simulation are unclear.

I’d like to propose a different approach to shape and density. I assume this is not a truly novel idea, but in my experience I haven’t seen it done in a MUD. If you know of a MUD that does this I would be fascinated, so please leave a comment about it!

Lets assume (as I always do) that we want to minimize builder effort and have extremely consistent objects in our game. We will have size and weight, as they are both useful pieces of data, and we are going to use width and height for size, as this is a sufficient representation of shape for our purposes.

The implied field is density. Say we have an object that is 12 inches high, 6 inches wide, and weighs 3 pounds. Approximating its shape as a cylinder, the object’s density is about .0088 pounds per cubic inch. Every object will have a density, based on the builder-supplied height, width, and weight.

An inconsistency has arisen, be it a subtle one. Lets say two builders create iron swords. They approximate the dimensions and weight as best they can, and each value seems appropriate. However, the density for each object is different due to the natural deviation you would expect in such an approximation. In reality, iron, as a substance, has a given density that does not vary so much.

We can remove this inconsistency and reduce builder effort at the same time. Assuming objects have a material type (most MUDs I’ve seen do) we can attach a density rating to each material type. A quick look on Google shows me that the actual density of iron is around 0.284 pounds per cubic inch, so lets use that.

Now, we can figure out everything we need to know simply by asking the builder the height, width, and material of an item. The weight can be determined automatically.

Lets say I create a sword of height 3 feet, width 1 inch, and material iron. A little math on the game’s part tells us that such an item should weigh eight pounds. This is about what a three foot sword weighs in real life!

36 * π * .5^2 * .284 = ~8

This approach sounds good to me, and I’d love to see it used in the future. I’ll leave an open question though: What MUD features might require a more complex representation of size, and how would it be done?

http://www.zalanthas.org/blogs/brideofson/archives/001412.html

Thinking up names is Serious Business.

Domino: I need help thinking up names for the Adevari settlement.

Domino: because corada sounds like a beer.

Adhira: She needs a non-beer related name.

Morgenes: ok, how about: gihness

Adhira: Mor-gihness?

Domino: Grylsch.

Morgenes: or: buhdlyt

Vanth: Pahbzt

Shalooonsh [M40097]: Grylsch...

Morgenes: yes please

Xygax: Lesgihness, Morbass, Blactan

Vanth: High Nakin.

Domino: Xyngling.

Adhira: Ohhh Xyngling!

Morgenes: emgeedee

Vanth: D'Osekis.

Xygax: Never order a black&tan in front of an Irishman, also, if you'll pardon the seeming non-sequitur.

Domino: You guys are hopeless.

Morgenes: ya, Hope died a long time ago

Adhira: Call it Hope!

Xygax: Hefvisen

Adhira: Then it can be like a soap opera town.

Domino: that's actually the best idea I've heard so far. but doesn't really fit their history.

Morgenes: actually looks like Hope didn't die, she just quit playing around 1999

Morgenes: *misses having Hope leave the world of Armageddon*

Tiernan: Hope has forsaken Armageddon

Vanth: make it a 2-word name, like Gol Krathu or Vrun Driath.

Adhira: Haha. That's great.

Adhira: I like the 2-word name idea.

Morgenes: how do you know if you're old staff?

Domino: Now I just need to make a character named Hope.

Xygax: Wow, Hope was a (class edited out)

Morgenes: you remember Hope leaving Armageddon

Shalooonsh [M40097]: Grylsch-Schlaggah

Adhira: Mor Gihness

Xygax: In the (clan edited out)

Xygax: Which explains a lot.

Domino: "Hope has entered the world of Zalanthas in the Gladiator and Gaj tavern."

Morgenes: Moor Gihness

Domino: Hah, that's neat.

Xygax: Hope is a (edited out) woman.

Adhira: She sounds spooky.

Domino: Totally.

Xygax: I wish my dumb cstat code didn't smash keywords.... I should fix that.

Morgenes: apparently Hal didn't think much of her roleplaying

Xygax: I just typed "purge hope", and the game said "Ok."

Domino: Looon, you're my only hope. I need two-word names.

Morgenes: Ok

Domino: *grin*

Xygax: And then I typed it again, and the game said, "I don't know anyone or anything by that name."

Adhira: Hope was Crazy.

Shalooonsh [M40097]: Serious about the Grylsch-Schlaggah... or Omi-Yullara

Domino: Hope was wild.

Morgenes: Beh Eer

Xygax: Yager.

Shalooonsh [M40097]: Gol-Thryzdu

Domino: siiiigh.

Shalooonsh [M40097]: (if the thryzyn have anything to do with it)

Adhira: Vrun Hope.

Adhira: It's an elven settlement,

Adhira: Maybe your delves!

Adhira: Vrun Elan.

Vanth: Dar Hopa

Shalooonsh [M40097]: DOH... Adevari, right! Ha!

Morgenes: Darth Chad

Shalooonsh [M40097]: okay, let me grind something out, gimme a minute, in scene here

Adhira: Or just Elan.

Adhira: That's classy - it has Elan.

Vanth: Hopa Vari.

Shalooonsh [M40097]: Abi'situn could work (Dusk of the Land)

Domino: We're probably going to do away or mostly away with the (edited out), though.

Vanth: Elan Vari.

Xygax: Beerbelly

Domino: I want something that sorta translates into "we're tough motherfuckers, and we've survived the worst, and this place is our rock to cling to."

Domino: So, uh, fit that into two words.

Morgenes: kehgger

Domino: Perfect.

Adhira: Jager Meister

Vanth: Deh Waryurz.

Morgenes: Kanking Heroes

Domino: I'm seriously tempted to blog all this for the players.

Morgenes: Serenity

Vanth: Deh Ayteem.

Vanth: you should.

Morgenes: Mehk Guyer

Tiernan: The Chad is Rad

Domino: Someone duct tape Morgenes.

Shalooonsh [M40097]: Jee eye Joh

Vanth: Bee Esgee

Domino: Dude.

Tiernan: Koh Brawr

Domino: And then I can have an NPC named Jinx.

Morgenes: Bee Esgee Ray Zoor

Morgenes: oh, I know, call it Chuck

Domino: Elan sounds like a possibility.

Morgenes: oooh, or Bob

Morgenes: Planet Bob

Vanth: Bayoh Bob.

Tiernan: What are we making up names for again?

Morgenes: Degobah

Vanth: the Adevari settlement.

Tiernan: Like NPC names or what?

Domino: It's in the northwest tablelands.

Domino: nah, the settlement itself.

Domino: The original name sounds like a beer.

Vanth: the settlement name itself, it was Coruna, then Corada, but they both sound too much like Corona.

Domino: Corona. I mean, Corada.

Morgenes: Coruscant

Tiernan: Whatever you do, avoid apostrophes

Morgenes: Adevaria

Tiernan: Nothing worse that trying to talke about M'Rhgf'hgashs'hgashd'-smith

Vanth: that sounds like an Iron Realms game.

Domino: Planned to avoid em, yeah. Thinking of going with a two-word name though.

Tiernan: Helm's Deep

Tiernan: Oh wait, LotR

Domino: Everyone will shorten it to one name anyway.

Vanth: Ade Lehmon.

Morgenes: use a name generator, there's plenty out htere

Domino: Are there any "allundean" words that translate to "refuge"

Shalooonsh [M40097]: yes

Domino: yeah, and they all suck, but it's a possibility

Vanth: there's an allundean lexicon?

The inordinately young-spirited Shalooonsh [M40097] sends:

"I'll fire you a list of good ones in a moment here"

Tiernan: Milliways

Domino: awesome

Shalooonsh [M40097]: not a whole lexicon, but I believe refuge/safety are covered in the Sun Runner docs, if not I'll configure something

Morgenes: http://nine.frenchboys.net/country.php

Domino: whoa, morgenes rocks.

Domino: Definitely staying away from 'B' names

Morgenes: Utul Marsunas

Morgenes: Iteos Ursor

Tiernan: Nydia

Relleu: that was a weird point in the conversation for me to log in... nine frenchboys.net... definitely staying away from B names!

Tiernan: I googled "latin refuge" and got this hit:

Tiernan: Nydia : NIH-de-yuh : latin "refuge"

Domino: Neat.

Adhira: Wai Tangi

Tiernan: The Chronicles of Nydia

Domino: Good point

Domino: But that would be kinda fun, roll up a scribe

Relleu: I knew a Nidia in school, and I had a Nithia as a student

Domino: Write 'the chronicles of Nydia' and stick it in a library.

Vanth: Ombaal is the (info edited out).

Domino: That's a neat one.

Vanth: and Sejah is (edited out).

Vanth: alternate spelling of Ombaal in same docs is Oombaal

Shalooonsh: in game it's typically Oombaal

Domino: Actually, access to the d-elf tribal documents would be a huge help in writing the Adevari docs, because I want to pull in flavor from all of them, as well as from some of the human tribes, to make up one comprehensive whole.

Domino: A huge mish-mash of previous arm culture, shaken and stirred.

http://www.zalanthas.org/blogs/brideofson/archives/001411.html

Based on the feedback from everyone we've made some changes to Tyleki, from how it was when we first announced it.

We've gotten rid of the mindbenders, they're simply outlawed from Tyleki and discovery of one will either result in its death (if the person dealing with it is confident their militia can take it down and that the person actually is a mindbender) or exile (if they're uncertain they can take it on or if they're uncertain it truly is a mindbender). They aren't trusted or accepted by normal people in Tyleki, although a good way to get rid of a competitor, if you can afford it, is to bribe a ruling family member and then accuse the person of being a mindbender.

However with mindbenders gone, we were left with trying to work out a way for the Tyleki ruling families to keep magickers under control. We had considered uniting the three militias into one force, as they'd be more effective that way, however the three separate militias seemed fairly popular. Instead we decided to have a special herb used in a tea that when drunk, limits the ability of a magicker to use their magick (doesn't negate it completely, but does make it more difficult). This herb will be foragable from where it grows, but specific details have yet to be worked out. The tea also has the side-effect of being extremely addictive and also causes changes in the person's physical appearance (which changes are yet to be determined) so that magickers have a harder time hiding.

Also there won't be widespread acceptance of magickers. Instead it will be up to players to decide their opinions on magickers, although most Tylekans would probably consider them to be dangerous to a degree with non-drugged magickers extremely dangerous.

This will help lower the tensions between the ruling families and ordinary citizens a bit as they won't appear to have super weapons pointed at each other.

Unrelated to the above, people were confused with this paragraph:

While only the Council can make laws, they cannot enforce the law and are instead reliant on the founding family guards to do this. In earlier times, the Council had more control over Tyleki. With the recent tension between the ruling families and the townspeople, the families have taken back much of the control from the actual Council.

In a ruling family there are two ways to gain power: become the family's leader or become the family's council representative. The power the Council representatives have within their family differs from family to family, but at their most powerful they have greater control then the family's leader.

The reason for this dual-power is because of a law was passed early in Tyleki history by the Council, that forbids the family leader from also being the Council's representative. This is fertile ground for tension between the leader and representative of a family. Sometimes the two have a power struggle for many years, other times one has dominated the other. In some family's this is more likely then in other family's, because of how the council represntative is chosen within a particular family.

A lot of other questions, comments and concerns were raised on Tyleki, however I'm not sure if this addresses them or not, so please ask again any questions you still have.

Oh and Ovirne from a previous post is a war hero ;)

http://www.zalanthas.org/blogs/brideofson/archives/001410.html

Just wanted to show you guys some examples of ideas we've kicked around but are ultimately not going to be in the game and why.

1) Approach: When we were working out how rooms would work in 2.0, we considered having to approach people and things in order to interact with them. We decided that adding even more roundtime/lag would have more 'ick factor' than 'wow factor'.

2) Pirate Class: Blasted landlubbers made this idea walk the plank.

3) Wood mage: Djarjak has the idea of "A new mage type that manipulates plants and wood in the way that others manipulate stone or water. (the lost element) " but at this point we're focusing primarily on the elements found in 1.0.

4) The Quicksand Sea: This was to be the basis for the pirate class (Arr!). Shalooonsh and I were going to place it smack dab in the middle of the world so you had to cross it to get anywhere *evil grin*. Perhaps we made a tactical error in calling it "The Sucking Sea"

5) Messenger System: aka the Pony Express, NPCs and PCs would take jobs delivering messages between cities. The presence of psionics and the departure of its proposer, Ashyom, left this idea in the dust.

6) The Gelid Chasm: Eniriah proposed an arctic area composed only of rock and ice. While it was very creative, the consensus was it wasn't quite right for Zalanthas.

7) Broken Mountain: Naiona proposed an underground cavern area with a race of mutants descended from interbreeding of humans and elves. This proposal suffered from endless "Brokeback Mountain" jokes. Another 'cavern' settlement, Kalamoor, was approved instead.

8) Marsh Dwarves: Tlaloc proposed a new race based on the bald DS dwarf, but without a focus.

9) No Middle Class: Naiona proposed a system where almost everyone would be dirt poor with no chance of advancement, and "wealth in tiny amounts - with the average PC [having] little chance of ever achieving it". This was eventually scrapped in favor of a player-driven economy.

10) Magick city: There were a couple of different proposals for cities that were not only accepting of magick, but entirely populated and ruled by magickers. At this time, nothing like this is planned for implementation.

http://www.zalanthas.org/blogs/brideofson/archives/001409.html

RMBT, the graphical web-based program for MUD world editing that we developed for the Armageddon Reborn project, is now open source. You can download it at http://lemonlimesoftware.com/

I'm hoping to see other MUDs out there using it someday! It was a lot of fun to develop but there is still lots of improvement, so it'd be great if it became a community effort.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/mudreading/~3/220807916/rmbt-is-now-

I feel cheesy having my first news post be news about something I myself did, but I guess I have nothing to gain from this, so I’ll forgive me.

RMBT, a graphical web-based MUD building tool developed for ArmageddonMUD, is now free software.

The RMBT project lives at lemon lime software.

Interested in seeing what the community response is.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/mudreadingcomments/~3/216782389/muds

MUDs and OSS

I’m pretty sure I once saw a video of RMBT somewhere and it looked neat. Looking forward to a release!

http://www.zalanthas.org/blogs/brideofson/archives/001407.html

Seeing some discussion on the GDB about the Gone command, I decided to post some documentation on what we currently have implemented in the game engine for the gone command. Note that when we started designing the game engine, we have aimed to make it easily configurable and modifiable on the fly. That said, some of what is posted about in 'Code' posts about the Game Engine may never be used by Armageddon Reborn, but I include it here to show you the process we've gone through.

The gone command itself remains largely unchanged. It is an out of character command that lets you notify others in the room with you that you are no longer actively playing the game. The syntax, remains the same:

[Everybody oooh and ahh that there's a consistent 'syntax' command...you're welcome]

Here's an example of using the gone command:

The following is an excerpt from an internal doc (modified for the audience) on the features the game engine provides to support the gone command.

Gone Warning [engine default true]

If you're marked gone, a message is sent to anyone who refers to you in a command.  For instance, if Amos (the brown-haired man) is gone, and you want to give him some coins, you would see:

Notice the command still happened, you'll just get a warning letting you know that they're gone.

Gone shows in rooms [engine default true]

[GONE] is placed in front of gone character's long descriptions.  A user settable option to show this or not is something that likely will be added.

Example:

Idle Gone Timeout [engine default 5 minutes]

A timeout can be set to automatically mark you gone if you're idle for longer than a specified # of seconds.  The message is 'You are gone idling.'  This likely will also get a user option to disable it.

Idle Timeout [engine default 1 hour]

If you're idle for more than the specified time your link is automatically dropped, leaving you link-dead.

Link-dead Timeout [engine default 30 minutes]

If you're link-dead for more than the specified time, you are automatically extracted from the game.

Note that if we chose to use the link-dead timeout, it will allow a ranger-quit for non-rangers with the cost of having to leave yourself exposed for the delay specified.

In closing, please remember that this is just what the engine currently supports, more features could be added, and some, if not all of these might not be used at all.