Lightside Needs Help

[Thrasymachus]

Any of these coders Thrasymachas is talking about reading this thread and can chime in on the scope of a project he is talking about? I only took 3 intro programming classes in college so I can only guess on what it would take to accomplish half of what is being thought up for a dedicated client... Yikes!

Anyone want to brainstorm up a newbie package of scripts and map support for zMUD with a full tutorial explaining how to install and use? I could help with that.

I plan on buying cMUD, researching and converting my script library over to it in the next couple months. Could help with cMUD version while doing that. Prolly help me learn faster.

My zMUD scripts are posted on wotmudarchives.org forums zMUD section, if anyone needs any help shoot me a mail.

Taziar

Putting up a sticky on the Help and Newbie Area part of the forums, with links to download a few of the main clients with maps and packages and good instructions about getting them set up and working, and mirroring all that on the wiki, and keeping them current and providing ongoing support for anybody that still has trouble with it, is probably the next best thing. It doesn't quite reach the ideal of having one download and an easy configuration and setup process to get all the tools one needs, but at least it would consolidate everything into one place that's easy to find. And it's at least a good stopgap until the feasibility of a dedicated client is determined and such a client could be created.

I can tell you that my own most recent return to the mud was hampered by just this thing, as well as the last couple of times I tried to come back. First it was CMUD that didn't seem to want to work with Windows 8, then it was trying mudlet and finding a semi-up-to-date map, and a few packages that I didn't understand how to use or what they did, nor how to make my own, but at least made it more tolerable than a bare telnet client and having to manually type everything out all the time and not knowing where I was relative to anything else 90% of the time, and at least it broke out narrates, tells and chats from the main window. And now back to CMUD again, though an earlier version of it as apparently earlier licenses for it don't transfer to the newest version. At least that's a client I can write some of my own basic scripts in, and understand how to configure and work with the map, even if the only version I can easily find that works is 4 years old. And I'm still in the process of getting CMUD set back up close to the way I had it years and years ago when I last played at all regularly. It has been, and remains the biggest threat to the prospects of my continuing to try to play, wrestling with getting something set up that provides basic, minimally comfortable playability.

[Elysia]

I was messing around with the Ways again. Sure, I can make a mob scout out a safe path room by room, and the mob can then spit out safe directions for everyone who "looks marker" afterwards, so one person could scout it out and everyone following after that boot would just have to "look marker".

Only... Machin Shin kills mobs, making the whole thing pointless. End of attempt.

[Mantorok]

Could you feasibly just make the zone a lot smaller? The changing connections etc each boot isn't horrible in theory, the problem is the zone is massive for that kind of game logic to play out.

[Elysia]

The connections are all coded, so there's nothing that can be changed about it.

[arkaza]

Silly question incomming. Can you just close up the old ways zone and make a whole new ways zone? Who cares if exits stay the same, people are evenrually going to figure it out anyway, and the important thing is speedy transport with a modicum of risk... or hell at this point i'd take no risk at all.

[arkaza]

Maybe the waygate doors would be locked and youd have to hit a mob to get a leafy key to open it, and maybe only a few "pk gates" would be able to be opened per month. Just brainstorming here.

[Theia]

*coughcolumnscough*

[Elysia]

Silly question incomming. Can you just close up the old ways zone and make a whole new ways zone? Who cares if exits stay the same, people are evenrually going to figure it out anyway, and the important thing is speedy transport with a modicum of risk... or hell at this point i'd take no risk at all.

Everything about Ways is coded, so we can't even shut them down. E.g. Seanchan gate just had to have the exits to the surrounding zone cut off.

Columns have their own set of coding related problems. As May 2014 demonstrated: hours spent on a temp change involving columns and I ended up throwing a hissy and not doing temp changes that month at all because coding got in the way.

I'm just posting these to demonstrate that we try things, chances are they won't work out and you will just see no change to the game whatsoever. Lack of new things is not an issue of imms sitting back and doing nothing, to a degree it's not even a matter of too few imms, or even giving up too soon, but just that mobol and the games commands have its limits. We've pushed the limits, but despite all the hours spent, all the angles tried, sometimes it's all for nought.

[arkaza]

Yeah thats what im talking about... Just close off all the exits so you cant get into old ways period and make a new one thats just a zone with some dts... Or does it take coding to link different places in the m:d like that...

Im gonna shut up now.

[Elysia]

That would take adjusting every zone that has a waygate, plus it would bring with it the problem of any new zone always being the same, every boot, which would make it way too easy.