Ask the Producers and Administrators

[Desertman]

Kagor critter's hides?

[Nyr]

Kagor critter's hides?

Not necessarily planned in either direction you're suggesting, no.

[Desertman]

Kagor critter's hides?

Not necessarily planned in either direction you're suggesting, no.

*nod* *nod* Thanks.

[mansa]

In a text-based game environment, it is so easy to change the descriptions with a few words, yet some of the pre-written world hasn't changed in decades.


What is the current process to change some of the world that we see each day?   

What questions must be answered in order to get a change implemented?


I'm sorta looking for a broad concept answer, rather than a detail oriented answer, much like an editor would give.


Thanks.

[Adhira]

I'm not an editor, so I can't really give you an editor's answer.

So this is my answer.

Yes, it is simple to change a few words in a description. The question really is why. The saltflats look just the same now as they did 10 years ago. Could we change them up just because someone might be bored of reading that line? Sure, but I honestly doubt that they're reading that description that closely, or that they will bother to after the first 3 times riding through that room.

If you're asking why we don't change out NPCs regularly there are a variety of reasons. Some of them we love, they add character, and we want to keep them. Some of them we don't love, we just don't care about them, and don't care that they've been begging on that street for 20 years. Sometimes we're lazy and just don't want to do it.

With all the description changes a large part of it is that someone has to have the desire to want to go through and tweak descriptions or restring NPCs. And while that may be fun for a week or two, it gets old pretty quickly.

And here is the stuff you didn't ask for, details:

In terms of process for changing out the world - any staff member can add things like echo's, scent, night descriptions and so on to a room, or talk scripts, NPC brain activity and so on to an NPC. We usually ask them to get that stuff checked by an admin. Why? Because it helps us catch the typo's and so on up front. It's a pretty simple process. They go change the room, they list rnums in a request, we go check them and let them know if anything needs updating.  This stuff is great and it's on a list of things that we have up for new staff as things they may want to do.

If they want to change other rooms they'd need to let someone know first. If they're just changing descriptions because the description is old, not well written, could use some oomph we'd tell them sure. If they're changing it in a way that will alter what that room is, how it functions, what goes in it, that could very well be a different discussion and take more than a simple check for typo's.

[BadSkeelz]

dear producers

why are the waifs of allanak all so goddamn tall

thank you

dorf

[Adhira]

Dear dorf, it all comes back to the hair. When you don't have a shining bald pate you can tease up and add oomph to your profile by way of hair artistry.

[Nyr]

You know nak's all about that waif, 'bout that waif, 'bout that waif.

[Desertman]

You know nak's all about that waif, 'bout that waif, 'bout that waif.

Oh dear. I would be embarrassed if I weren't laughing.

And for a Question:

1) What is the most interesting/entertaining way that you can recall seeing one of those awesome expensive wagons in game get destroyed/lost?

I have never lost one, but I can always imagine the players of the PC's who are responsible for losing them just having a gut wrenching sense of, "I can't believe I just F*****G DID THAT!".

[Saellyn]

Does driving a wagon off a fall actually destroy it, or does staff have to add a destroyed wagon object?

[Delirium]

Staff has to add a broken wagon object or change the existing wagon object.


source: I drove a wagon into a pit 

[Rathustra]

You know nak's all about that waif, 'bout that waif, 'bout that waif.

Oh dear. I would be embarrassed if I weren't laughing.

And for a Question:

1) What is the most interesting/entertaining way that you can recall seeing one of those awesome expensive wagons in game get destroyed/lost?

I have never lost one, but I can always imagine the players of the PC's who are responsible for losing them just having a gut wrenching sense of, "I can't believe I just F*****G DID THAT!".

A newbie stole the wagon, took it on a joy ride across the Red Desert and then bombed it into THAT gulch. He then laid down and went to sleep - so the pilot NPC slit his throat.

[RogueGunslinger]

so the pilot NPC slit his throat.

That's fucking perfect.

[Welda]

Staff has to add a broken wagon object or change the existing wagon object.


source: I drove a wagon into a pit 

There isn't any "generic" broken wagon object. Which means we usually either change the existing one or build a new (broken) wagon and replace it (or a bit of both).

[Desertman]

You know nak's all about that waif, 'bout that waif, 'bout that waif.

Oh dear. I would be embarrassed if I weren't laughing.

And for a Question:

1) What is the most interesting/entertaining way that you can recall seeing one of those awesome expensive wagons in game get destroyed/lost?

I have never lost one, but I can always imagine the players of the PC's who are responsible for losing them just having a gut wrenching sense of, "I can't believe I just F*****G DID THAT!".

A newbie stole the wagon, took it on a joy ride across the Red Desert and then bombed it into THAT gulch. He then laid down and went to sleep - so the pilot NPC slit his throat.

You can't be serious.....you just.....can't.

How did this newbie even get access to the wagon to take off in it? Uggh. Uggh. This hurts me inside. It hurts my insides.

[HavokBlue]

So the most effective way to create a lasting impression on the game world is to roll a wagon off a cliff.

[knight]

Originally posted in Ask the Storytellers:

I'm a software/web developer with a little spare time on his hands. What kind of tool are you guys interested in? What kind of features? I could throw together a quick demo and host it somewhere where you guys could check it out. Then maybe we could talk further.

Shameless self-plugs: my blog, and my projects page (neither of which are really up to date with my current projects, but hey, whatever).

[wizturbo]

Similar vein to Knight's topic, for anything he/she can't tackle:

It's not like using a word processing program, so it's not actually easy to change anything with little effort. We don't have a sekret magickal web editor to do this stuff for us. (If we had something like the web bio tool, but for objects/rooms/NPCs that would be literal fucking heaven.) There's really no "few words" when it comes to building new portions of the world or tweaking old ones. There are STs who vehemently dislike the building aspects of staffing, and I have to believe it's partly because our tools aren't great.

This sounds like a problem that if fixed could add an enormous surge of productivity for staff.  The same tools could be used for PC character creation as well I suspect, which might improve conversion rates!  What if we crowd sourced a bit of funds for the staff to outsource this project (or ones like it), to give the game a jump start on tech/tools?  

I spoke with someone who runs a software tools building team and explained the general problem.  He said that a great option that he's suggested to small start ups or anyone on a tight budget is to post projects up on sites like www.freelancer.com where coders (mainly in China/India) take on projects at pretty low rates.  For instance, a small project like this may be only $250-$750 USD for an experienced coder to tackle (won't really know until you post it up for people to bid).

Just a thought?

[Marauder Moe]

You can't out-source integration.  It would be like... hiring a plumber who can't step foot in your house.

EDIT: If you wanted to be productive in fixing the text editor problem, the best way would be to write MUD client extensions that encapsulate all the Armageddon text editor commands and break up the lines appropriately.

[wizturbo]

You can't out-source integration.  It would be like... hiring a plumber who can't step foot in your house.

EDIT: If you wanted to be productive in fixing the text editor problem, the best way would be to write MUD client extensions that encapsulate all the Armageddon text editor commands and break up the lines appropriately.

I understand.  I'm saying outsource work that can be taken out of the house and brought to the shop, so to speak.  Throwing that out there as an option to jump start the tech/tools, without having to recruit new coding staff.  Won't work for many things I'm sure, but there's probably some places it could, and those might be high-value/low hanging fruit items.

[BadSkeelz]

I believe I've also heard that the game's code isn't really modular, that you can't just give access to one part. It's all or nothing, which means you need a huge amount of trust before you let anyone work on it.

[Marauder Moe]

I understand.  I'm saying outsource work that can be taken out of the house and brought to the shop, so to speak.  Throwing that out there as an option to jump start the tech/tools, without having to recruit new coding staff.  Won't work for many things I'm sure, but there's probably some places it could, and those might be high-value/low hanging fruit items.

I understand what you're saying.  Software development just doesn't work like that in reality, though.  Programming a text editor is easy.  Plugging it into an existing system that was not designed to readily accept such a thing is hard.

Client extensions are your best bet.  Bonus in that they require no staff assistance or even consent to implement.

[wizturbo]

I believe I've also heard that the game's code isn't really modular, that you can't just give access to one part. It's all or nothing, which means you need a huge amount of trust before you let anyone work on it.

There are no doubt areas that are too sensitive/important to let anyone muddle around with.  Making a tool that converts text into a format that Arm accepts doesn't sound like something that requires all the keys to the kingdom to get to work though...  But I'm certainly no expert.  I just wanted to introduce the idea that maybe we could crowd source some help

[Malken]

I have the best solution ever!

Sell Armageddon.org (the name) to some crazy and super wealthy end of days Church for like $500000 (something they'll recoup in under a year from all the "donations" they'll receive for that sitename) then buy Armageddonmud.org for like $5 from GoDaddy or whatever, then with your new gained fortune pay yourself a salary, hire a part time coder and give me 10% for that genius idea 

[Adhira]

It's an interesting idea wizturbo, and definitely something I have considered (whether we could pay someone to do some dev work for us). In the end that kind of decision I leave up to folks like Nessalin, Morgenes, Tiernan and Nathvaan.  I don't want to weigh in on it not being doable, because I'm not code savvy.

What I can add is that we have had staff work on versions of web based tools for adding things to the game. Nessalin does actually have mostly complete web front ends for NPC making and web based character generation.  The sticking point with these was making them talk with our code base. I believe (and a coder person may want to get in here and correct me if I'm wrong) that part of the solution was moving the game over to a db.