This definately is a weird thread. No matter what the product, you get
people who steal, even in the case of code. It seems pretty stupid, but
although the code is free, many authors put something about giving them
credit on it as a type of license, so it is a form of theft when people do
not give the credit to the author. This I can remember was one of the
reasons that CAW gave up..if I remember correctly. They said they came on
some muds and saw people taking caw's names off of the zones, and placing
their own names on the zones. Of course it is not fair, but also it is
not worth punishing the many because of a few people who think they are
really cool "hackers" and "software pirates" just because they stole some
code and put their name on it. If it isn't fair, give me a "hell no".
But anyway no matter how good you are at something, there will always be
someone better. Even the people who consider themselves the best coders
will meet someone who is better than them some day, and from that person a
lot can be learned. Also, some people can read a coding book and learn C,
while others can take a giant program, and start to interperate it to
learn C. The good thing about snippets is that the person can look at the
code, and be like, "Oh I'm such an idiot, that's the only thing I was
doing wrong, geez louise I'll never make that mistake again." Also
someone may make a giant piece of code that is really complex, but be so
tired from it that they just need another person to look at it, because
perhaps it will not work because of a stupid little error, but because the
person is so tired of the code he or she will not notice it. Maybe it is
something stupid like using the wrong %* in a sprintf statement, and
someone who just read the chapter in a C coding book will be able to help.
And even the best C book doesn't teach everything.
The whole point of this list, or what I think is the point anyway, is to
SHARE information. Newbies will always come, and given a few years they
may become the ultimate coders. Everyone here knows that there was a time
in their past when they posted the stupid newbie questions, or hounded
someone who was already a coder for the answers. In fact, I have a friend
who used to run a mud, but when his coder left him he was in a big panic.
He tried to code himself, but ended up ruining a lot of the mud code.
After some help and telling him where he went wrong, he started to put out
good code, and after another hundred questions and some experimentation on
his part, he became a very good coder. Even some of the people who rip
off code and don't give credit for it will eventually make some code and
release it, and have it ripped off without credit from them, and they will
realize how stupid and inconsiderate they were, and probably never do it
again. Everything serves some type of function, no matter how irksome it
can be.
As far as other lists, this mailing list is not one of them, it is the
circle list. Compared to other lists, who cares what this list seems
like. This list is the circle list, and if the people inside the list
feel it is not nice to newbies at all, and justify it by saying it is
nicer than other lists, they are just fooling themelves. Although I have
seen many newbies getting answers to their question, in addition to the
flames and RTF* messages. Instead of giving them the answers why not just
give them the address of the FAQ, and then ask them nicely to read it, and
if they have any questions afterward, invite them to post to the list,
asking a more specific answer.
Also I see many people who when a program crash, they post the asm
registers and stuff from a win95 dialogue or whatever. It would be more
helpful if you debugged the code and then posted the stack trace, and the
lines of code where the debugger thinks the mud crashed on. Also I'm not
sure if win95 gives signals in its debuggers, but most of the UNIX
variants do, and that would also be helpful, like SIGSEGV or whatever
other signals.
ObCircle:
I was wondering if it sounds cool to make a scifi mud with space and
planets and stuff like that, and where you must travel in a space ship to
get to the various planets, and somehow limiting the command parser in the
space ship to just fly the ship, raise shields, and fire on other ships.
Also, maybe weapons that run off of a power pack, and various power packs
that can be bought and each use a different amount of power. Also bionic
limbs where objects can only be lifted or moved if you have them, with an
IS_BIONIC flag or something like that. Also, perhaps the limbs can be
damaged and disable the person or something. Also, maybe have some
martial arts techniques for people who have real body parts, such as Kung
Fu or something. Just a little something that might be interesting :P
I'd like to know your thoughts
+------------------------------------------------------------+
| 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