On Thu, 27 Jun 2002, Eamonn A. Sweeney wrote: > Forgive me if I seem totally stupid here. But what is the actual point of > circleMud? Best to quote Ras: "On the other hand, if you're looking for a highly stable, well-developed, well-organized "blank slate" MUD on which you can put your OWN ideas for spells, skills, classes, and areas, then Circle might be just what you're looking for." > Are you trying to build a mud that is AD&D 2nd edition compliant as seems > the case or just trying to make the original code as clean as can be? I think "clean as can be" is the main goal. > changes in circleMud, ie between bpl19 to bpl21 things have changed > dramatically, few snippets prior to bpl21 will work with the latest patch > level and that itself leaves newbie coders out in the cold. I'm a newbie coder. I don't feel left out in the cold. The snippets still work. Just as the snippets from other mud source codes work. You just have to try and figure out WHY something is being done, then figure out how Circle does it. And if you're really that worried, you can visit the "old betas" section of the ftp site. From there you CAN start at bpl19 if you'd like. > Ive seen the circle code evolve from bpl11 onwards but where does it stop? > All we have seen recently is more efficient ways of doing things but is the > codebase ever going to evolve? Why should every newbie coder have to > implement color codes, races, abrreviations, and just about every snippet > ever posted to the ftp site? Color exists in bpl21. It's just not the kind of color that a lot of people seem to want. Personally, for me, I like it. I'm not a big fan of color, so the circle implementation is fine. As for races? They're not difficult, and should be a matter of a few hours to implement even for a novice coder. > potential implementor wanted so do we settle for a codebase packed with > features or a stable codebase with which we have to work our butts of to > make it playable? My quest to decide upon a codebase recently consisted of me downloading and running a few codebases. Tartarus (ROM 2.4base) crashes when you die. Embermud (most recent, is in current dev, and they claim stability) crashes when you type skills as an Imp. Others have similar sad and tragic issues with crashing inappropriately. I decided I'd rather work my butt off with designing the system than with cleaning up someone else's mistakes. Quote honestly, I believe it's going to be easier in the long run to go from a piece of code that is efficient and contains minimal bugs to a system which is feature rich, than from a feature rich yet bug-ridden codebase to one which is then stable. Personal preference, you may feel differently. > usable. I hope I havent offended anyone who actually posts here or > contributes and I realise just how much work you all put in, but again I > ask where does it all lead and to what purpose? Why don't you take whatever version of circle you'd like to, then incorporate all of those things? Then when you're satisfied that it is a stable release with enough features, you can release it. In this way your ideas of what a mud should be will be available to those who might wish to start from your base. The reason there are so MANY Merc and ROM derived muds is because those communities spawned a movement which essentially caused everyone to dump their favorite snippets and areas into a mud, then release it so others could do the same. Just a philosophical thing . . . that and the fact that ROM was a very popular mud which happened to have a public codebase. Which very popular muds actually distribute their codebase (in any form) today? The ones that do actually have people creating their own versions of that codebase in many cases. -Mathew -- +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | FAQ: http://qsilver.queensu.ca/~fletchra/Circle/list-faq.html | | Archives: http://post.queensu.ca/listserv/wwwarch/circle.html | | Newbie List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/circle-newbies/ | +---------------------------------------------------------------+
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