Just a minor update here. The IRC daemon is as done as I am planning on making it for a long while. Some of the messaging has been cleaned up and it now keeps track of listening users.
You can see who’s on IRC with the normal ‘who’ command:
% who
-----== PLAYERS ==-----
[Admin] Allaryin needs to write quest journals (right adjusted)
[Admin] Malap has several legs (chaotic banana)
[Ancient] Polar bears enjoy eating Sora (lawful good) [idle]
-----== CHAT USERS ==-----
[irc] @Acius
[irc] @allaryin
[irc] @Harkins
--== Players: 1, Wizards: 2, IRC: 3 ==--
When I add jabber support, it will be integrated together with this. Linking of IRC/MUD accounts is future tech that I don’t want to think about quite yet… but when the futuretime comes, I’ll try to set it up so all three services play happy together somehow.
allaryin news chat, irc
In response to a suggestion from Sora, I’ve finally implemented a universal ‘rest’ command.
It may not be used during combat and requires you to be seated.
When you rest, you will regenerate some endurance at the cost of a large amount of readiness plus 1 heartbeat of ‘busy’ status per point of endurance healed in this way. At present, the cost is 250 readiness + 75 per end. This means you will be able to recharge 13-15 points of endurance per activation but will be disabled for 40-50 seconds.
In the future, I will be changing the cost to include a (minor) stat debuff for a short period after resting in exchange for a slight reduction in the ‘busy’ cost. This change should reduce the complete disabling duration down to 20-30 seconds but will weaken you for 30-60 additional seconds.
In addition to this command and the longstanding invigorate spell, there should eventually be some guild-specific ways of recharging endurance as well as some crafted consumables.
allaryin news abilities
There has been a healthy level of activity recently. GPF/Shentino has made a few fixes to Witac and I know Acius has done… something.
Apart from my posts here and lots of discussions with community members, I’ve just launched a pair of new (big) features.
Read more…
allaryin news chat, forums, irc
A lot of discussion has happened over the last week or so on how to deal with overlapping buffs.
At present, there aren’t very many objects that give stat buffs - and there aren’t any that give skill buffs. Aside from my strong desire to avoid unbalanced +con buffs floating all over the place, the biggest reason for this sort of thing is probably just how horribly difficult it is to implement reliably.
The current method for giving someone a temporary stat buff is by giving an object a query_str_bonus() method (or con, dex, spd, int, etc…) and dropping it in the player’s inventory. You then wait until recalc() is called on the living - it is called very frequently. The result of all query_str_bonus() calls on the player’s entire inventory is added together in a stat_bonus[] hash that’s stored on all living objects and the contents of stat_bonus[] are then added to all stat queries…
there is a better way
In stead of requiring individual objects to track every buff and in stead of requiring frequent iteration over a player’s inventory and calling 10 methods on every object they’re holding… I think a single buff manager is in order.
Read more…
allaryin idea buff, hunger, magic, stats
At present, hunger is really quite complicated. It does its damage in weird scaling ticks that vary in rate from race to race. Eating different items of food provides an assortment of unreliable and difficult to track buffs (that may be abused horribly). Eating habits will affect your character’s weight - with most players trending toward skin and bones as a result. Gurgling stomachs can interrupt spellcasting, and sufficient hunger results in a penalty to strength, constitution, and dexterity.
Not only is this too complex and involved, it’s too harsh and arbitrary. Yes, player characters should need to eat (it’s part of the mudlib’s original vision). No, they shouldn’t die because they idled out. Yes, wolves should eat deer. No, peasants shouldn’t starve to death because their employer’s player went on vacation for a week.
What we need is a simpler system that motivates people to eat - requires them to eat if they want to play the game at all, but does not penalize them for periods of inactivity and does not require the balancing of quite so many variables.
Read more…
allaryin idea buff, crafting, hunger, stats
Since one of our biggest concerns at present is organizing the mudlib development and resuscitating the community, my first priority is improving communication between everyone.
Initially, this means two things:
- forums
- mudmail
We have existing systems for both of these, but both systems stink for one reason or another. Malap’s forum system served us very well for a number of years, but eventually began to fade around the edges, showing age and lack of maintenance. Mudmail… is pretty much a joke. The in-game client is mediocre at best and unusable in many cases.
Read more…
allaryin news forums, mail, plans
A lot of server drama has plagued us over the last year. Walraven is back up and running for the first time in a few months - on a brand spankin’ new machine.
I still have every intention of reviving the project, but am the only admin with any active interest at present (others have poked their heads in, but I haven’t heard any overwhelming desire to dive back in from any of them).
I’ve spent a few hours today pondering the ponderables. Garvin has been a valuable sounding board and will be receiving wizard credentials (on an additional character specifically for performing wiz duties). A few of the other select old guard players will also be given this opportunity if they come back.
We’ve got big plans and I hope to see some of them actually happen.
The first thing I’ll be doing is installing an authentic bug tracking system (something better than the old forums we had).
I’ll be updating here - and on our twitter feed as things progress.
(And no, I don’t plan on making the entire site live inside of Wordpress, this is just the easiest way to get the dynamic blog and front page for now.)
allaryin news operations, plans