From: gnort@daimi.aau.dk (Lars Balker Rasmussen)
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.diku
Subject: Re: Diku II, is it better than the state of the Art Diku?
Date: 15 Sep 92 21:00:48 GMT
Organization: DAIMI: Computer Science Department, Aarhus University, Denmark

Did make a followup to this earlier, but I think my greedy newsserver ate it.

twolf@cs.utah.edu (Tom Wolf) writes:
>boserj@netcom.com (Jeffrey Boser) writes:
>>Well, Diku][ is supposed to be coming out soon..  but what I saw of
>>it didnt impress me.  It looked like some simple enhancements, and
>>didnt make the game more playable or workable.

>I agree with this. I have spent many hours playing the new Diku II and though
>it has some good ideas, such as:

>	1) A learning system for skills
>	2) A learning system for use of each particular weapon

>Overall, it is not very playable. The game moves slow,
*groan*
And here I thought that the concept of LAG had reached the states...
Trust me on this... With the tidying of the internals of dikuII the LAST
thing you can possible say is that it's slower than diku1 (or Lp, tiny etc)

>the user interface
>does not seem anymore thought out than the original version of diku. Such as:
Ah.... So diku1 was weak design too? And here I thought that was the 
strongest point of diku1. 

>	1) When fighting a monster, once it is unconscious the fight stops.
>		I hate having to type: kill monster, again. The only reason
>		I can see for this is to allow a high level player to whip
>		a large monster so a newbie can finish the monster off and
>		get lots of experience. Seems unfair to me to allow this
>		in the first place. And for the 90+% of the time this does
>		not occur, results in extra typing for the player.
I see what you mean... MAJOR hassle... From what I remember from my gaming
days, this was only ever changed in bigboy's code? (versions based on that
code need not apply...) But I see what you mean... typing kill fido twice
must be very stressing for your young mind.

>	2) Exit command no longer shows you the room's exits. You have to
>		type the whole word exits. What a pain!!!
Indeed.. I might even show a glimmer of agreement with you here... fret not
though, you CAN use DOOrs instead. I must admit that I don't see this as a
major design flaw though.

>	3) A lot of the almost standard diku commands aren't there, such
>		as:

>		a) Split	- split gold amoung players
Great.... And I though I HAD coded that! Let me check... Oh I did... 
Well, one of two options. Either I'm insane, or you are stating arguments
you haven't tested yet.. (probably both - this IS a subgroup of rgm).

>		b) Attribute	- shows your ability/ac/stats, often combined
>					with score
And them numbers in score means... ?

>		c) Where	- shows who is in your zone
I disagree with you there... This is a WAY too powerful command in my eyes
to give to mortals. So you can check on who's in your zone.. Always?
Yeah, I remember using it for testing for thieves on Sejnet back in ancient
times.. when asleep... in the sewers... 
You can get an enjoyable game without a generalized where... (Austin doesn't
have one... and you did classify that rather highly in your list beow).

>	4) To get stuff from corpses requires more typing than in Diku I.
>		Instead of: get all corpse  (or g all corpse),
>		you need:   get all from corpse (or g all from corpse)

Which in turn improves the possibilities of a LOT of command.
True, the words 'to' and 'from' are there for efficiency of code, but look
at what you can do with just this extra word!
'buy the studded leather jacket'
'get the ancient black sword from the green bag'
'give the long sword to Clueless'
etc... No more buying the wrong piece of leather equipment from the armourer,
(ah... the old logs of alfa.)

>		That additional from is silly and annoying from the player
>		point of view.
Probably.

>In summation, of the game systems I have seen that are derived from DIKU,
>I think the Silly/Sneezy and Sequent variants are the best still around,
>followed by Austin, Darkshadow, Epic, Copper, and then Diku II. Note, I would
>place all of the above muds higher in playability than Diku II. Individual
>preferences in the muds, depends upon the players. Also, I mention Silly here
>to give credit to the originators of the code that Brutius developed into
>Sneezy. I definitely do not recommend Silly due to my experience with some of
>the gods there.

>Edone

Gnort, Prime Suspect
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.diku