Re: [Idea] Jumping between muds

From: Daniel Koepke (dkoepke@CALIFORNIA.COM)
Date: 10/11/97


On Fri, 10 Oct 1997, Gerhard Poul wrote:

-+What are you thinking about jumping between muds (with a portal or a magic
-+door, ...)
-+
-+So that Characters can be teleported from one mud to another mud, or
-+teleport themselves from one to another!
-+
-+But this can only be realized with ONE codebase i think...

The trick would be properly synchronizing activities and abilties in
the other muds.  The problem is that it doesn't necessarily require
the same code base (and it certainly doesn't simply for communicating,
like InterMUD) or world, but the same mechanics in the muds and
balance among the muds.  The problem is that because very few
people can even manage to balance a single, solitary mud to some
imagined standards, it'd likely be harder to balance and keep
balanced a series of muds.

Essentially, the basic problem is that the mechanics between the
muds can't differ too greatly (they have to have the same spells
and skills, and abilities otherwise you have undefined or strange
behavior potentially occurring [August has the spell 'fire wisp'
in MUD X, but MUD Y doesn't have that spell, therefore August
can't use 'fire wisp' in MUD Y; or worse yet, the spell number for
'fire wisp' in MUD X is the same as 'too-powerful spell' in MUD Y,
and a level 3 suddenly finds himself very powerful in MUD Y, and
hence can become more powerful in MUD X]).  Balance will be very
difficult to maintain, and with the world's mechanics having to
act very similar for a smooth transition to occur (if you don't
mind not having a smooth transition, then you just throw out all
non-common spells/skills; and hope that they all function the same),
the results are less grand than one would hope.

In other words, you end up with multiple servers acting as
extensions to the same world; and it's slower and more complex
than simply having one unified mud.  Unless you can see ways
around it, and as good an idea as it is, I doubt it's worth your
while to implement...


--
Daniel Koepke -:- dkoepke@california.com -:-  [Shadowlord/Nether]
"Human language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes
 for bears to dance to when all the while we want to move the
 stars to pity." -- Flaubert


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