Hey all :)
I know I am new to this list, but this might as well be a good debut :)
Well here goes my pennyworth:
>Even if all newbies go out and buy a C book (for beginners), read ALL
>the docs that come with mud, read all the FAQ's, etc... They still will
>not understand it.
Ack, I have been dependent on a coder ever since I started my mud, but
as he quit a week ago I got all the responsibility of doing the code
(and I have never touched c before, and I do know that many of you guys
think that if the imp can't code the mud isn't worth anything). Well a
week ago from today, I knew only how to make the hello world program and
how to include header files, etc., but by reading through all the
snippets, analysing the source code of the mud I finally got down to how
everything was defined, and how things were to be added, changed, etc.
I know I have been using a great deal of the stuff from the contrib/ dir
on the circlemud ftp, but there isn't a single thing that I haven't
modified in a minor or major way (I even got down to modifying a few
things in OasisOlc - that actually worked).
So when you ask: "Is it fair to the Circle community to take but not
give back?"
Of course it isn't fair, but was it fair for Oppenheimer that he chose
to work with an immoral government creating the nuclear bomb? Was it
fair for the Africans that capitalistic Europeans made them into slaves?
None of this are deemed fair for those people who have some sort of idea
of human ethics today, and I do think that those who want to enrich the
CircleMUD community will do so, and I feel that I'd rather not be
flooded with different usages of how to do do_score for an instance by
all of those newbie admins there exists due to the availability and easy
configurability of CircleMud, myself included.
There will always exist people who leech off others, who live of other
peoples' great minds, that is shown over and over in history, time by
time, and we can find it everywhere we look. Why wasn't it the secretary
of the corporation that got promoted due to the new sales series that
she presented in a sketch for her director?!
I do not in any way feel versatile in coding any major improvements into
circlemud, but when I do get down to that (and make it work), I would be
happy to give back, you just need to think about the contents of what
you give back, we don't need hundred different approaches on how to
include races/classes. Just one or two _different_ ways, so that newbies
can analyse the code thoroughly and get an idea of how things work.
>The weakness of the CircleMUD community, IMO is the lack of support for
>the newbie!
Hehe, if you feel that CircleMUD is newbie unfriendly, why don't you go
play with AberMUD or the equivalent, then you won't find a single word
of help. There, if you can code, you code, if you don't you're lost.
THEN you will only get the rtf*.
I've worked as a part-time tech support on a hotline, and the gods
should know what you think when a guy phones in and asks where the 'any
key' is located, or a guy asking why the computer won't started when
switched to the 'OFF' hex value :) Those are times when you feel like
giving some weird answer :)
I've been watching this thread for a couple of days, and I must say that
this is the first time I've seen so fast responses to questions.
It is right, that the coding.doc is yet incomplete, but who cares? It is
all about analysing code. I learned to write my own commands, spells,
etc. in 5 days using about 10 hours a day (it's nice to have vacation
anyways), and that did it for me.
As someone pointed out, can't remember who, sorry: "Nobody minds the
newbies, just the clueless".
In my humble opinion (can't stand all those abbreviations), I think that
CircleMUD is one of the richest of mud communities on the net.
Sorry for the rather long post all :)
-Henrik
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Childhood is the land where nobody ever dies.
Nobody that matters that is.
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
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