Re: Whats the point?

From: George Greer (greerga@circlemud.org)
Date: 06/27/02


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?

To lower the grade point average of college students world-wide.  Somehow I
suspect we're actually raising the average of some, at least in their
Computer Science courses...

>Most muds out in the wild so to speak either have totally rewritten the
>areas and have added a few commands, rewritten the load messages etc. But
>what I really want to know is where all this is heading?

I forget where the mission statement is written down, but Alex said it in
his reply.  We like when people make their own zones.  The existing ones
are there for example and to provide something usable until they're
replaced.

>Ive seen the circle code evolve from bpl11 onwards but where does it stop?

Whenever we finish coding.doc, or die trying.  Lots of progress on that
lately.  Then I'm freeeeee~~~~! Bwahaha! *cough* *cough* I'm better now.

>All we have seen recently is more efficient ways of doing things but is the
>codebase ever going to evolve?

Feeping creaturism isn't part of the mission statement.  We could add every
feature under the sun but then there isn't much left to differentiate the
MUDs.  Besides, the lack of OLC has lead to at least two good alternatives,
OBuild and OasisOLC.  Now if only somebody actively maintained them...  :)

>Why should every newbie coder have to implement color codes, races,
>abrreviations, and just about every snippet ever posted to the ftp site?

Do they want abbreviations? Do they perhaps have a better way of
incorporating color?  I still think color wants to be metadata but I can't
think of a good way to handle that (interval tree?).  Making an OLC system
that takes a snapshot of a zone instead of fumbling through menus may be
better.  If you already have a bad implementation, it might be "good
enough".

>Basically what I am getting at is why dont you incorporate each new
>snippet on its merits, (ie, this could enhance the codebase) and let it
>grow. I personally would love to see a circle codebase with manual color,
>olc, dgscripts, buildwalk, etc that evolves with every new realease rather
>than the stripped down version that needs so much patching to get it
>almost usable.

I'd love to put ASCII player files in, but I can't.  Redesigning the entire
special procedure system for more events in an easier fashion would be
nice, but I can't.  Embedding Perl would be excellent for scripting (who
needs a MOO anyway?), but I can't.  Desire to frustration, to burnout,
which leads to greener pastures.

You're lucky the changes done lately are _all_ we've done... See above.

--
George Greer
greerga@circlemud.org

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