On Thu, 2 Apr 1998, R. E. Paret wrote:
> While I tend to agree with your assessment of circle flourishing because
>of its open-endedness, I have to say that I think that adding features to
>stock circle (such as races, for example) is a bad idea. The reason I
If I was to ever do it, I would add one race, period. Nothing fancy,
nothing special, just one race.
>choose to work with Circle in my mud projects (aside from familiarity) is
>because of that open-endedness, which I think would be inhibited by adding
>featured code. For example, the reason I don't work with code bases like
>Smaug, RoM, etc. is because they are far too customized (or featured, if
Personally, I want to break down the PC/NPC barrier in CircleMUD. If you
do that, then your NPC's act more like live things instead of cardboard
cutout targets.
>as sublime as PC or NPC races can turn into a problem, for instance if I
>want to set my mud in the future (sci-fi) or I wanted to use a different
>type of game as my base (Rifts over AD&D or whatever), I'd have to alter
>or remove the race code. This might not seem like a big deal (it really
The basic race (if I did), would be RACE_NONE, that should fit anywhere.
(Would be RACE_NOTHINGSPECIAL but that's a lot of typing.)
>(if I were doing a sci-fi mud, for instance). If I wanted a ZipMud (sorry
>George) chock full of features, I'd dl Smaug and be on my way.
Hrm? I didn't invent the term. If you're referring to my page full of
patches, they are there to fix bugs and do other things. People are free
(and encouraged) to do something their own way if they have something
better. Perhaps a few months down the road they'll decide they want it to
work a different way, that's great.
>However, you do have a point. Adding races to stock is just as much
>tedium as removing it, I suppose. So thats why I'd suggest something of a
Sort of like that huge table of class titles? :)
>modular distribution. In essence, its the same thing as patches, except
>they are already patched in. So on the web site you'd see something like
>this:
>
> Download stock CircleMud 3.0
> Download CircleMud 3.0 + (races, clans, mounts)
> Download CircleMud 3.0 ++ (ascii pfiles, item affects)
Sounds like CVS branches. :)
>I think the module idea is probably the best idea (although the web page
>example above probably isn't the best implementation) because it allows
>Circle to retain its open-ended identity while allowing "instant" featured
>customization for those that want it.
Perhaps if I have enough success with OasisOLC's future module system,
we'll be able to use something similiar for CircleMUD. Although there is
nothing wrong with CircleMUD at the moment and sometimes a modular aspect
would be far too confusing for the worth.
(Although on my MUD you can set flags and conditionally compile out certain
features, like boards, olc, special procedures, shops, mail, aliases,
prompts, etc.)
--
George Greer - Me@Null.net | Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity
http://www.van.ml.org/~greerga | is not thus handicapped. -- Elbert Hubbard
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