Messages

46

Roleplay / Re: Role Play Games/Mini-Session Ideas

« on: November 06, 2013, 11:04:06 am »

If you can implement this, I'd like to see it on the Gladiator Arena too.
I always wanted a possibility for an audience to monitor the fights there.

47

Roleplay / Re: Role Play Games/Mini-Session Ideas

« on: November 01, 2013, 11:01:37 am »

Actually there already IS a Theater in 4D.

It's downstairs from the Blue Dragon Inn, which is the Medieval Roleplay Inn in Olde Yorke. The door down is locked, not sure why, but probably because the intended feature never was implemented,

The way I remember it, this was an idea from Once, who also had planned to do some code, so that the public in the adjacent Inn could follow everything that was done on stage. We built the theater but, needless to say, he never provided the code. Story of 4D...

There is an interesting thread in TMC's Roleplay Forum, about how to reduce spam during  roleplay in large groups, so that most participants can restrict the ones you interact with to a group at your own table, while some people - (the performers) - can be monitored by the entire room.
http://www.mudconnect.com/SMF/index.php?topic=78147.0
Several RO enforced Muds use code like this, so it shouldn't be impossible to add here too. That is, if we can get a coder to take an interest in the project,,, Story of 4D...

48

Roleplay / Re: Role Play Games/Mini-Session Ideas

« on: November 01, 2013, 02:01:56 am »

Heh - those ideas are funny, Calypso.
And typically naughty...

I remember in the past, when Kalten and I used to have our bedroom quarrels in public, involving whoever was on line and demanding they take sides.

We weren't really virtual lovers of course, since mudsex just isn't my thing.
Kalten, on the other hand, was very much into it. Being who he was, he probably had mudsex with every female in the game - (including cows and goats) - except me.
That is probably why we stayed best friends for so long...

49

Building Board / Re: Building / Scripting Materials

« on: October 30, 2013, 03:56:23 am »

Hmm, I am a computer idiot myself, but I'll see if this works with the latest edition of the Advanced Scripts file:

50

Suggestions & Ideas / Recent events concerning perzes and house recalls

« on: October 30, 2013, 02:58:28 am »

As most of you know there has been a glitch of some sort, which caught several perzes to duplicate.

Now, as most of you also know, duplicates are not allowed.
The reason for this is mainly that the hardcore PKillers go bananas if they have looted a perz from an enemy, and then find that the perz was restored to the owner by some unknowing imm, who had no clue about it being looted in the first place because the looter logged out with it.
And the reason why they go bananas is apparently that it isn't nearly as irritating for the owner, that someone else is holding some of his priced personal belongings ransom, if he managed to get a duplicate for it himself.
Now, personally I may find this all rather petty and childish, but it is a rule that has been established long ago, at the explicit wish of the players, and since I don't really care about it, I let them have their way.

But I can also see why players would like to have a spare in their house if they happen to lose the original in a DT and there is no imm on line to reload it immediately. So I gather that is why people decided to keep the duplicates, even though they knew well enough that it isn't allowed. That is also why there won't be any punishment apart from losing the extras without compensation.
However, rules are rules, and should be respected, so when it was reported I posted a note to everyone, telling them to junk their dupes, or we'd do it for them with a coded script.

What irritated me a bit about that is, that the only player to apologize and junk the duplicates on her own ackord was Calypso, while some others decided to keep their dupes in spite of heavy hints to get rid of them. It actually irritated me enough to go into some houses and junk them manually, instead of waiting for the script.

The script is going to be implemented however, and that brings me to a technical problem - House Recalls and Keys.
These items may have the alias perz along with the name of the house owner, but they aren't really perzes. It's also allowed to have more than one House Recall or key, since there usually are several guests to each house. And a script isn't intelligent enough to determine if the alias should be there or not.

So, if any of you know that you have an item like that, with the alias perz, please note me or Kvetch, so we can remove the alias before the script is implemented. Otherwise a lot of people might suddenly find themselves without house recalls.

51

Building Board / Re: Building / Scripting Materials

« on: October 27, 2013, 03:35:42 am »

I keep upgrading the Advanced Scripts file with new and better examples as I get across them, so maybe I should mail you the latest copy, Kvetch?

However, the entire file is a jumble, with no logical order, and I only find my way around it myself because I usually remember where I put the examples. Still, I refer to the file whenever I am working on the scripting part of a zone, and since my memory is so bad I probably couldn't do without it.

You can set up a script in many different ways to reach the same result at the end, and each scriptor seems to have their own style and preferences. Scripting is more like coding than building, which is probably why our coders are much better than me at setting up scripts. The problem is that whenever I ask any of then for help I get something so advanced that I don't quite understand how it works. It's much harder to copy parts of something you don't fully understand, so I mostly prefer to use a more straightforward, but usually longer and more circumstantial ways of doing things.

Some day, when I get the time and energy I'm planning to organise the examples in the file in an order that makes it easier to navigate. The problem is that I seem to get inevitably diverted by something more urgent...

52

Suggestions & Ideas / Re: Blind Players

« on: October 07, 2013, 11:54:16 am »

Excellent idea.

I'm not a coder myself, but we do have several, although not very active.

But hopefully one of them will find the time to implement this.

Then we can announce it on the Mud sites, and hopefully get some new inflow.

53

Suggestions & Ideas / Re: Blind Players

« on: September 23, 2013, 04:37:14 pm »

I am not prepared to remove something that a majority of our players are used to and like, to accomodate a very small minority, however sympathetic I may be to making it easier for blind players. That goes for both the log-in screen and the worth/gold commands. I also don't see the log-in screen as a big problem for blind players, since you only come across that once in each session.

My recommendation would definitely be a toggle, so that you can turn the graphics off if you want to. Toggles are generally good, since they leave a free choice.

The same thing goes for Brief. I don't see any way around that, you either toggle it on or off, and if you toggle it off, you WILL risk missing info. It's a choice you'll have to make. (And it's not like we have that many repetitive descs either, it's usually just in mazes and grids).

The credits to the original Diku teams are obligatory, we'd violate the Circle Licence if we removed them, so that is a big NO.

I'm not sure it's such a great idea to put the mobs and objects before the room desc. Again we have to consider that there is a majority of players who also have preferences, and that there is a reason for things being set up in the order they are now. To me the room desc is usually more important than the mobs. And given the fact that there can sometimes be scores of mobs in the same room, the negative outweighs the positive to me.

Also putting objects before the desc in a room would immediately reveal the fact that there are !display objects in the room, to everybody BUT the blind players, meaning that it would just put them at another disadvantage.

One thing that WOULD be nice is if it could be set up so that several similar mobs would be bunched together on the look, scan and look <direction> commands, in the way that several similar objects are bunched together in the inventory command. So it would say for instance "You see (5) the soldier:  immediately to the west" instead of "you see the soldier, the soldier, the soldier, the soldier, the soldier: immediately to the west".

The other suggestions sound good to me.

Tiers should definitely be displaysd in another way, perhaps t1, t2 etc. to separate it from the [T] for trainer?

54

Suggestions & Ideas / Re: Blind Players

« on: September 17, 2013, 02:12:13 am »

Some of the blind players have actually contacted the staff and told about problems, and we've made some fixes already.

The tier symbols havn't been fixed yet however, and I really hope some coder will do that soon.
Do you hear me, Coders?

One of the main problems is of course ascii art, which comes out as gibberish.
We don't have much of that in 4D, just a few rooms in the Mediterranean Sea, and I don't think these are a problem.
One particular problem mentioned was however the archeology quest in Carthage Bay, where the shards you collect are represented as ascii pictures that you are supposed to puzzle together, so we made some additions there. I believe what I did was to add info about the number of pieces to each item, and each set of shards also has a different feel desc, so you can identify what item the pieces belong to).

The only other places where I know that ascii art is used are the Worth and Gold commands, but I think they can read the text part on those regardless. At least to my knowledge nobody has complained about those so far.

But talking to the blind players and finding out what else we can do is a good idea. Perhaps someone could ask them about the worth and gold commands.

55

Suggestions & Ideas / Re: Pre title and log messages

« on: September 05, 2013, 01:45:00 am »

So..now that the zone is open, where is that RP event, Molly?

Heh - that event was supposed to be based on Snowbird's return to Utopia and 4D. (She is really into roleplay). But since she bailed out on me again, I'm out of ideas for now.

Perhaps someone can think something out for the grand opening of the Gellindril zone, which is imminent. Toch would be the natural person to lead that, but he seems to have been engulfed by the army again.

Anyhow, having something for Halloween sounds great. :-)

56

Suggestions & Ideas / Re: Object OLC for WEAPONS - Weapon standardization

« on: August 17, 2013, 01:00:35 am »

Currently we have 13885 prototype objects.

To my knowledge there is no way to sort out which of them are type weapon, but a coder might be able to answer that.

Meanwhile I agree with Kvetch that there is no way I'd do it myself.

I've been stuck holding the baby in three mass changes so far. Never going to do it again.

57

Suggestions & Ideas / Re: Sweetheart PK Tournament

« on: August 11, 2013, 01:48:44 am »

In case you don't get enough competitors, here's a suggestion:
Make a couple of rounds with "mixed couples", for instance

- Jaros and Calypso 
- Estidn and SyntacticSugar
- Jason and Tamyrlin
- Tocharaeh and Kitolani
- Stile and Sarias

Would be interesting to see how those couples would work together...

58

Building Board / To those of you working on old and new zones in the Buildport

« on: July 30, 2013, 07:54:47 am »

At present there is an unusually large number of players working on zones in 6002, and some of you are new to 4D, or to building in general.
This is just a reminder that in 4D we have a lot of neat extra stuff in our OLC, that not all Muds can provide, which gives us the opportunity to build unusually challenging zones.

I am going to list a few of them below, might add more later;

- Listen/smell/taste/feel descs for rooms and objcets, that can be used to put Quest hints in
- Night descs, that can be used for mere atmosphere or hints
- Moon Phases and Seasons; Events can be set to occur only during a particular season or moon phase
- Room Sectors that hurt you, unless you use protection (f.i  Sector DESERT, UNDERWATER, SPACE)
- Lately we also added the Room flag IRRADIATION, which has both negative and positive effects
- The mob flag SKINABLE (remember you have to also make a skin object, if an object doesn't already exist for it)
- Various types of portals that give different messages when entering them;
  36) room portal 
  42) climbable   
  50) descendable
  51) bush portal         
  52) water portal
  53) hole portal
- You can also make a portal harder to detect, by using a teleport script instead 
- The DG scripts are extremely versatile, a good scriptor can do almost anything with a trigger 

That's all that comes to mind today.
Feel free to contribute, if you have more neat tips for Builders.   

59

Typo Change Announcements / Re: Typo Fixes

« on: July 22, 2013, 01:49:45 am »

Lharc         - Jul 17 - 19685 : The Utopia Herald Reception, Obvious exits, North - The Editors Office  utf-8/
latin1 problem?
***
I couldn't repeat this problem so couldn't correct.  Besides, it's Utopia, Molly can deal with it. 
***

Hmm, at least MY descs had the apostrophe in the correct place in "Editor's Office". Can I typo report a typo report? 
I have no idea what Lharc means by  "utf-8/latin1 problem?", do you?

I couldn't reproduce the error either, but I found something else totally weird in the adjoining room, while looking north - a grubby child playing in the dirt.
The child had no business being in that room, it wasn't reset there by mistake, and both rooms are flagged !mob, so how on earth did the brat get there?

Sometimes this mud is just plain... weird...

60

News & Announcements / Re: Building Contest

« on: July 09, 2013, 01:07:54 am »

To clear up some rules for the Building Contest;
Many of the zones are old ones, that have been left in the Buildport and then finished by someone else.
1. The original Builder will always get credit for the zone, on a plaque and in the zone list, and so will the new one.
2. If the original Builder is still somewhat active, they'll share the token reward with whoever completes the zone.
3. If the original Builder no longer is active, the entire reward goes to the one that completes the zone.
4. Normal rules for submitting a zone are still valid, i.e the zone needs to be checked by a Headbuilder (Molly or Kvetch) before being put in the Game Port.
5. Any zone opened in the Gameport before New Year 2014 is eligible for the contest

Already opened:
- 195 Utopia, built by Snowbird, finished by Molly (200 rooms)
- 350 Utopia II -  the Outside, built by Molly, Lionheart helped with scripts, Xeriuth with code (100 rooms)
- 523 In the Grass (Quix II),  built by Sonya and Mireille

The zones I know of that are being worked actively on, and probably will open in 2013:

- 44, 131, 280, 360, Dragonports, built by Kvetch
- 280 Dragon Forest,  built by Angel, updated by Kvetch, as a complement to the Dragonmaster zone
- 268 Killer Klowns, started by Alabastor, continued by Diandra, finished by Jaros and Gilgamesh
- 304 Fun Fair, built by Gilgamesh, merged with Killer Klowns as a joint venture between Gilgamesh and Jaros
- 208, 227, 271, Planet Qu and the Enki Planets, built by Alpha, finished by Molly and Xeriuth
- Tocharaeh's massive project, (Several zones, not sure of the numbers and which of them it will be first.
  Toch needs to provide more info on this)
- Can we hope for 460, 462, 463,  Destroyed Jedi temple (Joint venture between Nanukimo, Erwin and Iwku)?

Any of you working on a zone, that you think will be finished in 2013; feel free to post on this thread. Give the zone number, zone name and number of rooms in the zone.