Re: [Circle] IDIOTS

From: Jeremy Elson (jelson@circlemud.org)
Date: 11/05/96


> I cant sit back and watch this go by without a small portion of my .02$
> in.  I have some experience coding, none in C, and a TON of mudding in
> general experience.  I am one of 4 imps on my mud, and i do alot of the
> little coding cause that is all i can handle with my current skill level.
> 
> I am however, IMHO, the guy with the big vision, the one worried about the
> balancing of the mud, the whole big picture guy, the other imps have lots
> of ideas, but i spend my tinme fitting those intot he picture.  Am I
> _LESS_ of an admin cause i cant seem to figure out how to sue a struct on
> my own?  I think not, If I were th ONLY imp on this mud, i wouldnt thing
> that I should be running it, but with 2 full coding imps, and myself, I
> think we are doing ok.

I think the point a lot of people are making, and a point I agree with, 
is simply: You can't expect to run a MUD alone unless you know C.  
Therefore, the CircleMUD mailing list should not be a place for basic C 
questions.

Although I think a MUD should have one top-level IMP (so that there's a
final word on disputes), I definitely agree with you on your point that a
MUD ideally should have several co-imps, some of whom are policy related, 
some who know game balance, and some who know code.  You are one of the 
policy or game/balance admins, or as you put it, the "guy with the big 
picture."  The fact that you don't know C doesn't make you any less of an 
imp.

What it *does* mean is that if you have some newbie C question that could 
be answered by anyone who knows C, you should ASK YOUR MUD'S CODING IMPS, 
or anyone else you know who happens to know C.  If you have an idea for 
your MUD which seems simple but you're not quite sure how to code it, ask 
your coding imps to do it.  Isn't that the entire reason for having 
coding imps -- to code?

I think the problems come when people try to run MUDs without having even 
a single coding imp, and then try to use the mailing list as a surrogate 
coding IMP instead.  That's when you see people asking newbie questions 
that get flamed.

Moral:  If you have a coding IMP, use him.  If not, get one.  If you feel 
like it, learn C in the meantime so that you can be your own coding IMP 
down the road.



On a slightly different topic, I want to make one last point on the 
"Perfect MUD" debate which I didn't get a chance to say while the thread 
was still alive.  Someone made the point in response to my mail saying, 
"But I thought that the whole point of Circle was to be a blank slate?"  
You're absolutely right - my point was just that the idea of what the 
blank slate should be is always changing.  If there is some feature that 
everyone agrees is standard, then it might be added.  Aliases, or a MUD 
mail system, are exmaples: they were originally "gee-whiz" features that 
custom MUDs would add, but now everyone considers them so indispensible 
that they are part of the base.

I'm trying to keep the base evolving so that it's useful; of course, I 
don't always succeed.  But the point is, customization will always be 
required in order to make your MUD original (by defintion!).  When 
CircleMUD was first released, you could have a pretty spiffy MUD just by 
downloading it because not many other people had.  But the base has 
become recognizable enough these days that unmodified Circle is just 
boring.  (Except to me :-))

Regards,
Jeremy



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