At 06:56 PM 6/25/98 -0400, you wrote:
>I will say this much, It is fair! If it was not, there would be no reason to
>post it and provide it on any site. Yet a lot of snippets are available
>on MANY sites. Many players like certain features, it is benificial for
everyone
>to post the snippets that the players like so the coder's/administrators
>or whomever can install them. Maybe with the attitudes lately we should
>all install linux and develop our own muds, take circlemud code out
>completely. Hell, your using freeware (or whateverware) and adding more
>freeware to it. Is it is fair? Yes.
The original question was this:
Is it fair to the Circle community to take but not give back?
My response to that question is "not really." People should give back the
CircleMUD community. A great deal of them do. But is it fair to the
CircleMUD community to give back but not receive credit? No, not really.
Your direction is that I'm obligated to supply you with code so that every
player on Earth is happy. You're not even answering the question but
creating a new one. How is it less beneficial to be given an idea (I'll
just use AutoExits, the extended version from the snippet pages) and do it
yourself, rather than just receiving code? Your players, if you are
dedicated and read up on your C, will still receive the same thing, but you
personally get the added bonus of learning that much more about how
CircleMUD works.
The attitudes say nothing about making your entire new MUD, they point you
in the direction of trying to do something yourself.
>How about going back to DOS 5 or 6 and writing your own version of
>Windows 95/98?
Not the same. You shell out $$$ for Windows 95/98, and, in some bizarre
culturally-influenced way, that's paying credit to the authors. Credit
goes on a Visa, too.
>The weakness of the CircleMUD community, IMO is the lack of support for
>the newbie!
Lack of support? I don't feel that I'm stretching when I say that the
CircleMUD community is one of the most newbie friendly coding communities
that there are. It's just that newbies need to do some work on their end,
too.
>Even if all newbies go out and buy a C book (for beginners), read ALL
>the docs that come with mud, read all the FAQ's, etc... They still will
>not understand it.
Pure assumption. I did not learn how to code until I bought a C book. I
learned. I even did a couple "Hello world." proggies to start with.
Silly? Maybe. Necessary? Definitely.
>Even after messing with the code for quite some time,
>I do have a lot better understanding of what is going on, but I still do
>not know how to do a lot of things. The books do not tell me how to do
>it, the code does not tell me how, the docs do not tell me how, and so
>far I have not gotten anyone to show me how either.
The man (or woman) who invented the wheel knew only that it was hard to
drag square things. It's by testing that the wheel was created, and, with
a slight stretch of the imagination, you'll see that you have to test
things yourself before you'll actually learn something.
>I quit asking
>because so many out there feel they will write the code for me. Hell.. I
>never asked anyone to WRITE IT.. I asked for help on HOW to write it.
When people ask for advice, they are rarely ignored. The most often
ignored questions are "How do I add races?" and "How do I add classes?",
or, to fit your example, "How do I write races?" Why would they be
ignored? Because the person asking has chosen to ignore freely available
snippets/docs/patches/etc which would describe this to them, and no one is
obligated to breastfeed you.
>Time and time again, you see statements like "I was afraid to ask
>because I am a newbie". They still don't ask.
I've yet to see this happen. People need to have a clear concept of what
they want before they ask how to do it. I'll tell you how I code. With a
pen, and a 150 page spiral bound notebook. I say, "Hmm, if I was going to
write archery code, how would it work? Well, they wouldn't use the bow for
a weapon because if battle was initiated, it'd be kinda ridiculous. So
holding is good. Gotta make sure that this doesn't occur in close combat,
either. It'd be good if there was a place specifically for arrows, too.
Maybe a quiver worn on the back would hold arrows which would be
automatically pulled out and launched when fired..."
Now I might ask myself, well, would it be better to make a new item type or
add something to the ITEM_CONTAINER setup? Why not ask the list!?
>You probably think, thats what the newbie list is for. I have not seen a
>single message, question, post in a few weeks. I posted my question
>there, and started to get some help, but the person who started to help
>never replied to my last. I think that if most of the people on here can
>get rid of this attitude of RTFM/RTFC/RTFFAQ and get rid of the
>attitudes that they will write the code for someone and tell them HOW to
>do it vice write it for them, the person asking will LEARN how to write
>the code and in turn will be MORE willing to help the next person down
>the road.
Whoa, nellie! You can't complain about the quality of another list and
blame it on this one. Very ridiculous, indeed.
There are two attitudes: one of them is that people need to learn to code
for themselves, and that the list is a place to ask questions which
influence the learning how to code. The other is that as a member of the
list, everybody is obligated to inform you how to code whatever you want.
Now, you can tell from the slant of this message where my stance is.
>Right now more and more are developing the bad attitudes,
>because that is all they get from people on this list. Granted there are
>a few on this list that don't fall into this catagory, so if *YOU* do
>not have these attitudes.. do not take it personally! or think that I am
>saying *YOU* do.
Hmmm, reiterate the same point over and over again, flail your hands
wildly, and people will believe you have a point. There's no way to
determine exactly which is the bad attitude, as I'd say it's the
"List-Mommies, feed me!" attitude that needs to be flushed violently down
the toilet.
>One last note:
>For all of you who think it is not fair, I suggest removing circleMUD
>and write your own. I will bet there is only ONE out there that would be
>able to do it. A few others would make an attempt at it and give up. The
>rest would not even attempt.
A lot wouldn't make the attempt because its pointless. You're saying that
since a lot of us don't want to give out all of our coding work, or
instruct you how to do it (which is little less than giving the code out
directly), we should just write everything ourselves. At risk of a flame,
that's stupid.
*kicks himself for entering this thread after promising himself not to*
Tony Robbins, who, for the sake of the argument, *DOES* release a good
amount of code to the community.
+------------------------------------------------------------+
| Ensure that you have read the CircleMUD Mailing List FAQ: |
| http://democracy.queensu.ca/~fletcher/Circle/list-faq.html |
+------------------------------------------------------------+
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : 12/15/00 PST