IDEA: Toggle to publish Room #s to help with Mapping

[mansa]

Hey,

I was thinking about the problem of mapping the game, and how sometimes there are rooms that look like this:


X - X - X - X
|           |
X - *       |
|   |       |
X - X - X - X


And there's a "east" entrance to the * room
And there's a "north" entrance to the * room

But the room is different going east and different going north.

A way to solve this problem is to remap the whole game so there is doesn't happen.   However, that can ruin the roleplay and the appearance of the zone, if you wanted to have small shops you can enter.

Another way to solve this is to actually have the room #'s published (with a toggle so people who don't care can hide it) so that maps can be created using various mud client softwares that can help players traverse the game.


Perhaps it doesn't have to be /all/ rooms, just the rooms in Luir's Outpost, Allanak, Red Storm, and Tuluk, and maybe rooms 5 rooms out from the city, but it should be able to help with traversing those areas of the game.

[oggotale]

For any non mudder, even if they enjoy roleplay, I think the absence of a map is the number 1 hurdle.

Anything that makes mapping easier seems like a priority.

How exactly would the # help though, out of curiosity?

[mansa]

The room #'s are a unique identifier for each room your character is in.

So, in my example here:


X - X - X - X
|           |
X - *       X
|   |       |
X - X - X - X

Let's make it:

A - B - C - D     A - B - C - D
|           |     |           |
E - F       J     E   L       J
|           |     |   |       |
G - H - I - K     G - H - I - K


When you're going "east" from E, it leads to room F
When you're going "north" from H, it leads to room L

But, instead of a simple alphabet, it might be:
Going East from room 120001, it leads to room 120140
Going North from room 120004, it leads to room 130120.

If you know the room number, then you can reference that in built-in mapping software for MUD clients.

[creeper386]

For any non mudder, even if they enjoy roleplay, I think the absence of a map is the number 1 hurdle.

Anything that makes mapping easier seems like a priority.

How exactly would the # help though, out of curiosity?

Unless Clients have come a long way I'm not really sure mapping in a client is newb friendly even with this change.

[Brytta Léofa]

For any non mudder, even if they enjoy roleplay, I think the absence of a map is the number 1 hurdle.

Anything that makes mapping easier seems like a priority.

How exactly would the # help though, out of curiosity?

Unless Clients have come a long way I'm not really sure mapping in a client is newb friendly even with this change.

This makes it possible for a client to map accurately, which means you can hand newbs a mapping client that works (rather than one that "kind of works").

[Lotion]

If this was done it should probably be done with MXP. Something so obscure it doesn't even have its own wikipedia page.
https://www.zuggsoft.com/zmud/mxp.htm
The best documentation I could find with a bit of super quick searching.

[Brokkr]

GMCP, MSDP and MXP all support sending room numbers in a way that the data is not displayed on your screen at all, but can be used by your client if they support those protocols.

[mansa]

GMCP, MSDP and MXP all support sending room numbers in a way that the data is not displayed on your screen at all, but can be used by your client if they support those protocols.

That's awesome!  I always felt there was /something/ that existed, I just didn't know the name of it.

Now, the question is... how much effort is it to implement something like that in our game?

[Night Queen]

Oh nooo I was hoping staff wouldn't really take this seriously because of how important the scale of the world is in this game - I don't like cut and paste room descriptions in general, but on a lot of areas I figure it was done intentionally so that people that are not careful and get lost, or are intentionally left alive and dumped somewhere unconscious have to find their way - Having the room number instantly available would completely remove a lot of stuff like that (direction sense moved you? No problem, it's got the invisible room number and everything is fixed instantly with no problems - literally cheating), and I say this as someone that recently made a request about finding a probably years-old set of rooms and going back in time, I like exploring, I don't like the idea of it being easy, the world SHOULD be hard to grip and confusing and scary, that's the fun challenge to it

Also I know another MUD that added GMCP and it definitely added a big divide in the players to those that use certain clients since it's not used in the same way on most, I think MXP is better on that from what I remember reading, but I'd still say really really really this is a bad idea :s

(Also think of keeping it equal chances for the blind people, too! One thing that is actually really nice about this game is that I've seen a few posts about blind people playing the game without being locked out of being able to be on the same level as everyone else like with most every other multiplayer game, I think that's something really nice and unique about MUDs)

[Alesan]

Oh nooo I was hoping staff wouldn't really take this seriously because of how important the scale of the world is in this game - I don't like cut and paste room descriptions in general, but on a lot of areas I figure it was done intentionally so that people that are not careful and get lost, or are intentionally left alive and dumped somewhere unconscious have to find their way - Having the room number instantly available would completely remove a lot of stuff like that (direction sense moved you? No problem, it's got the invisible room number and everything is fixed instantly with no problems - literally cheating), and I say this as someone that recently made a request about finding a probably years-old set of rooms and going back in time, I like exploring, I don't like the idea of it being easy, the world SHOULD be hard to grip and confusing and scary, that's the fun challenge to it

Also I know another MUD that added GMCP and it definitely added a big divide in the players to those that use certain clients since it's not used in the same way on most, I think MXP is better on that from what I remember reading, but I'd still say really really really this is a bad idea :s

(Also think of keeping it equal chances for the blind people, too! One thing that is actually really nice about this game is that I've seen a few posts about blind people playing the game without being locked out of being able to be on the same level as everyone else like with most every other multiplayer game, I think that's something really nice and unique about MUDs)

Honestly, I did not read Brokkr's post as an interest in implementing this feature, only as an explanation that the protocols exist.

[Lotion]

I don't like cut and paste room descriptions in general,

Big this. As a newbie I noticed that many rooms in caravan road had the same name so I took that as a lesson that room descriptions don't contain important information and I mostly ignore them now.

[Brokkr]

I have zero interest in showing room numbers and zero ability myself to implement those protocols anyways!

As for rooms, there are two components to a room description.  There is a background description and a description.  Description is what you would expect.  Background description comes before description, if it exists.  A background description is done per zone, once.  You then reference by number to that background description.  Lots of city rooms have both.  A paragraph that is the background description, then a Description.  With the unique features being in the description.  And a lot of wilderness rooms, like the Salt Flats, only have a background description because it all looks the same.

Anyways, if you understand this, you just read the paragraphs after the first one, if the first one looks like something you have read before.