Speaking as an Implementor and a "hack" (no not a coder a hack, which is defined as a wannabe learning how to code), I've seen quite a few projects in my time, being around and playing doctor with the very first diku to hit the computer screen. Now, some of the things I am going to list others may or may not agree with, but here goes.. Oh, and be warned, I'm a wordy bastard but I'm trying to keep this to the point if at all possible. :P Things that I do immediately: 1. Convert to Ascii. Binary Player files are a pain and don't offer much in the ways of easy pfile fixes in the cases of pfile corruptions. In my opinion, it should be a standard practice in the next release. 2. Add Copyover/hotboot. I can't tell you how nice it is to be able to add new code on the fly without having to reboot the mud, kick players off, and generally annoy the population when you need to add fixes or updates to your source. This in my opinion should be a definate addition. 3. Add Easy colors. Another nice addition which adds to the flavor of a beginning mud is the ability to use color, although this is not a "important" addition, its all the more pleasing to new admin when they don't have to waste their time working on some of the smaller and more annoying additions. Kudos to those who made the Easy Color snippet. 4. Add Oasis/Dg Scripting. Possibly one of the largest issues is the addition of Oasis OLC, granted Oasis is chaos in itself, but it works. For new admin, this poses the most real problem because Oasis tends not to like to be added to a mud with even a speck of change in the source. Why not just for kicks add it into the Circlemud releases? New Admin would definately benefit from having it, and it would save worlds of time and allow the admin team to work on their personalized systems and features. 5. Remove castle.c from the code and modify spec_assign.c .. Although it seems amusing having the castle.c stuff in a stock mud, 90 percent of all the muds I've been on, don't use it, and find it to be more annoying than amusing. Why? Heck, I don't know.. Seems to me however that with Dg Scripting available, hard coding mob personality and interaction is redundent. 6. Remove all stock zones except zone 0 and zone 12. The removal of the stock zones would sure speed things up quite nicely and eliminate a few space issues. Sure, stock zones are great if your just wanting to throw it on a machine, configure/compile, and boot, but in essence, only two zones are needed, and god help us if we need to change the zone file structure or room structure. I'd say, release the stock zones seperate from the mud source, and just include zones 0 and 12. 7. Add Misc modifications. Normally, I do much more than the list above explains, but in the gist of things, I try to set it up so that we have a good working mud with all the tools we need to successfully run the mud from online. The builders get their building tools, the coders get their code tools, and the immortals get their commands. Once this is all done then essentially we begin on our features. Awhile back I ran across a Smaug mud that had configuration available in game, don't know if this is the case for all stock muds, but it sure seemed like a great idea for Circle. Being able to set your mud up from online including the amount of zones, the loadrooms, donations, etc, sure seems like a great idea to me, and would make it a great deal more convenient than having to dive into the code all the time to make a simple change. Summing things up, what I do is give my team the tools that they need, and then expand upon the mud with features or what have you. What would be nice is if in the next Circle release, those tools were indeed provided and preferably working correctly, so that the new CircleMUD administrators could start out without having to backtrack nearly immediately to fix issues in OLC or what not. Think of it like a house being built. Foundations first, give the tools to the crew, and let them build the rest from the foundation. Once again, I apologize for this email length, and to be clear on this post, this isn't a demands list, it's a general layout of what "I" would like to see, and gives those newer members an idea of what steps some of the more experienced Implementors and team members often do as first priorities in the great list of development. Jeremy M. aka Riodan jkm4802@hotmail.com _________________________________________________________________ Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963 -- +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | 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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