HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: guddt@uniwa.uwa.edu.au (David Bennett)
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.admin
Subject: Re: ATTN: skill based muds
Date: 16 Nov 1992 14:30:09 +0800
Organization: The University of Western Australia
NNTP-Posting-Host: uniwa.uwa.edu.au

rossw@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz (Ross Williamson) writes:

>	At the mud I admin we are just about to upgrade to a new
>driver and with this we are also looking to go to a solely skills based
>system.  
>	We have found that this has it's pros and cons.  One of the
>more interesting ones is how do we now compare players.  With the 
>current xp systems, it's easy the highest xp is tops.  But
>with skills how do we handle it, are some skills better than others
>are they all on the same footing.

Well....  Either an average system...  Or use the highest skill they
have, or a weighted average.  maybe the top 5 skills averaged.  Or
base the skill for the top level on the guild they are joined to...

The later is how we do it at Discworld.

David.
[DDT] Pink fish forever.
-- 
  David Bennett,  guddt@uniwa.uwa.oz.au | University Computer Club
     Where Pink fish swim backwards.    | c/o Guild of Undergraduates
These words I am singing now mean nothing more than meow to an animal - TMBG
Disclaimer: Any spelling mistakes in this article are all entirly my fault.  Any grammer errors spotted in this article were put there because I could.
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.admin
From: jamie@kauri.vuw.ac.nz (Jamieson Norrish)
Subject: Re: ATTN: skill based muds
Organization: /u/student/jamie/.organization
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 05:44:06 GMT
	<TRSNYDER.92Nov12185045@queen.mcs.Drexel.edu>

In article <TRSNYDER.92Nov12185045@queen.mcs.Drexel.edu> trsnyder@mcs.Drexel.edu (Bob Snyder) writes:

   Dragon's Den does this.  There are no experience points, only skill
   points, which increase with use.  Levels are determined by your skills
   proficency.  The more you use a weapon or spell, the better you get at
   it. 

This is certainly a step in the right direction. However, why have
levels at all? As far as I am aware, their only use is to increase
hit-points, so that the player can take on tougher monsters. This
really has no justification in reality, and is simply a hang-over from
*D&D, which certainly has a lot to answer for.

IMHO, combat should be deadly. That is, characters should have few hit
points, which don't increase (unless something changes the character
physically), and damage is debilitating. That is, the fewer hp you
have, the greater the penalties on your skill rolls. And after two or
three good blows, any human should be dead.

Obviously this would require a radical change in the whole set up of
MUDs, but I believe that the idea is worth exploring, especially in
conjunction with a skill system which has a large number of
non-martial skills, and the opportunity to use them.

   This is what we have in mind for guilds, once we get a chance to
   actually write them.  :-)  Guilds would offer better training, or
   skills that aren't availble to be learned elsewhere.  The player
   would, of course, have to give something up to join the guilds, and it
   would be up to the different guilds to determine if they will let
   members be parts of different guilds....

Quite; and the people who did the training, and who decided who could
join would be none other than the players themselves. Anyone with a
high enough level in a skill should be able to teach someone who isn't
as good in that particular skill. There is nothing which says there
must only be one guild of each type. Of course, chances are the
players involved in one guild will not appreciate their profits being
diverted into someone else's pockets.

Guilds, when composed entirely of players, would no longer be faceless
organizations; they would be dynamic, with power struggles for the top
job, financial troubles, feuds with rival guilds and so on. And the
most wonderful part is that it is all down to the players.

Thus player interaction is born....

Comments and ideas, anyone?

Jamie
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.admin
From: agri@pa.itd.com (Howard)
Subject: Re: Question about Sockets...
Organization: Space Remote Sensing Center
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 92 19:16:51 GMT

In article <1992Nov16.155618.29055@eng.ufl.edu> jdb@crane.cis.ufl.edu (John Brothers) writes:
>In article <92320.145038IO10081@MAINE.MAINE.EDU> IO10081@MAINE.MAINE.EDU (The Xanadian) writes:
>>Okay, I know that there are at least two different types of sockets,
>>Ioctl and Fnctl (if memory serves).  I administrate a MUSE and am curious
>>if anyone out there knows what kind of sockets must a machine support for
>>a MUSE to run on it?  Thanks.
>
>There are not two different types of sockets.  There are sockets, and 
>file descriptors.  In most cases, however, sockets can be treated as file
>descriptors.  (sockets might be called a 'specialized subset' of file
>descriptors).  In any case, certain ioctl, and fcntl calls will work on 
>sockets.  check the man page on ioctl and fcntl for more information. 
>
>In any case, as long as your machine supports Bsd-style socket driven
>interprocess communication, you should be ok.

Maybe this will help.

NAME
     socket - create an endpoint for communication

SYNOPSIS
     #include <sys/types.h>
     #include <sys/socket.h>

     int socket(domain, type, protocol)
     int domain, type, protocol;

DESCRIPTION
     socket() creates an endpoint for communication and returns a
     descriptor.

     The socket has  the  indicated  type,  which  specifies  the
     semantics of communication.  Currently defined types are:

          SOCK_STREAM
          SOCK_DGRAM
          SOCK_RAW
          SOCK_SEQPACKET
          SOCK_RDM

     A SOCK_STREAM type  provides  sequenced,  reliable,  two-way
     connection   based   byte   streams.   An  out-of-band  data
     transmission  mechanism  may  be  supported.   A  SOCK_DGRAM
     socket  supports  datagrams (connectionless, unreliable mes-
     sages of  a  fixed  (typically  small)  maximum  length).  A
     SOCK_SEQPACKET  socket  may  provide  a sequenced, reliable,
     two-way  connection-based   data   transmission   path   for
     datagrams  of  fixed  maximum  length;  a  consumer  may  be
     required to read an entire  packet  with  each  read  system
     call.  This facility is protocol specific, and presently not
     implemented for any protocol family.  SOCK_RAW sockets  pro-
     vide  access  to  internal  network  interfaces.   The types
     SOCK_RAW, which is available only  to  the  super-user,  and
     SOCK_RDM,  for which no implementation currently exists, are
     not described here.
From: ssurpeat@csug.cs.reading.ac.uk (Richard T Peat)
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.admin
Subject: Re: Arguments in favor of MUDS
Date: 18 Nov 92 10:41:02 GMT
Reply-To: ssurpeat@csug.cs.reading.ac.uk
Organization: Dept. of Comp. Sci., University of Reading

In article 24772@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz, rossw@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz (Ross Williamson) writes:
>
>	I'm just filling out parts of the FAQ for this group someone
>at some stage asked me to include a section on reasons for MUDS (ie
>to tell sysadmin's)
>
>	Can anyone help with the good reasons to have a mud :)
>
>
>TIA
>
>Ross ( FAQ author : yes it's on its way (:  )

When it's finished, could somebody send it to the sysadmin here?

:)
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.admin
Subject: Re: Wizardhood on LPMuds.
From: jamie@kauri.vuw.ac.nz (Jamieson Norrish)
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 02:01:38 GMT
 ord.EDU><By3y3A.or@acsu.buffalo.edu><1992Nov22.165525.24118@midway.uchicago.edu>
Organization: /u/student/jamie/.organization

In article <1992Nov22.165525.24118@midway.uchicago.edu>
tuff@ellis.uchicago.edu (Geoff Tuffli) writes:

[Fears of players causing mass extinctions]

   concern in my mind. As it is, particularly with the rpg emphasis and not
   combat emphasis (combat is very dangerous and deadly), I don't THINK it will
   prove to be a problem...

If a handful of players can destroy mosters such as goblins easily,
then combat is not deadly enough. IMHO, even an excellent fighter
would find fighting more than one opponent tricky. Not only can only
one be hit at a time (assuming no multiple attacks), but it is much
harder to get into a good fighting position when you must constantly
be on guard against one of your opponents circling behind you.

Combat, IMHO, should be restricted to maniacs, times of war, single
combat, or people with some HUGE advantage. If this is the case, then
it's very unlikely that any offensive creature is going to be hunted
to extinction. As an example, when people used to hunt wild boar, it
was considered a dangerous operation, and a large number of people
were involved.

Jamie
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.admin
Subject: Arguments in favor of MUDS
From: rossw@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz (Ross Williamson)
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 22:25:47 GMT
Organization: University of Auckland, New Zealand.


	I'm just filling out parts of the FAQ for this group someone
at some stage asked me to include a section on reasons for MUDS (ie
to tell sysadmin's)

	Can anyone help with the good reasons to have a mud :)


TIA

Ross ( FAQ author : yes it's on its way (:  )
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.admin
From: ksdavis@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Karleenus Schwartz Davis)
Subject: Re: ATTN: skill based muds
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 05:35:53 GMT

In article <1992Nov16.030136.3141@leland.Stanford.EDU> whale@leland.Stanford.EDU (Stephen Schmidt) writes:
>
>A related and much more practical question is: how do you know when the
>player makes wizard?

Promote someone with the ability to code and administrate and
encourage player involvement to wizard.  Why must he "win" the game to
wiz?  Why not keep an eye out for the people whose ideas are
worthwhile and who is generally someone you'd like to have on your
team?  You can set up some arbitrary numbers, but as I mentioned in an
earlier post, the higher-ranking players are not necessarily the most
interesting or the best role-players.  In fact, on vanilla muds you
can wiz in a week (if you skip meals and sleep, that is) -- is
persistance really your only requirement?

-sz
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.admin
From: whale@leland.Stanford.EDU (Stephen Schmidt)
Subject: Re: Wizardhood on LPMuds.
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 92 08:27:24 GMT

Yep, I forgot about the lower bound :) That is kinda important if you
don't have resets, isn't it?

The only thing that strikes me is to use the children efun to detect
the death of the last monster, and have it appear in a random (empty)
room. The latter is probably a non-trivial problem..

Well, all the more reason to have a group working on it :)

Moby
-- 
Steve Schmidt			<><		   whale@leland.stanford.edu
I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist
indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist
conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids!
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.admin
From: jdb@crane.cis.ufl.edu (John Brothers)
Subject: Re: Question about Sockets...
Organization: Univ. of Florida CIS Dept.
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 92 15:56:18 GMT

In article <92320.145038IO10081@MAINE.MAINE.EDU> IO10081@MAINE.MAINE.EDU (The Xanadian) writes:
>Okay, I know that there are at least two different types of sockets,
>Ioctl and Fnctl (if memory serves).  I administrate a MUSE and am curious
>if anyone out there knows what kind of sockets must a machine support for
>a MUSE to run on it?  Thanks.

There are not two different types of sockets.  There are sockets, and 
file descriptors.  In most cases, however, sockets can be treated as file
descriptors.  (sockets might be called a 'specialized subset' of file
descriptors).  In any case, certain ioctl, and fcntl calls will work on 
sockets.  check the man page on ioctl and fcntl for more information. 

In any case, as long as your machine supports Bsd-style socket driven
interprocess communication, you should be ok.




Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.admin
From: uk09395@nx19.mik.uky.edu (gordon l teachey)
Subject: Re: ATTN: skill based muds
    <1992Nov15.194821.4786@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz> 
    <1992Nov16.030136.3141@leland.Stanford.EDU> <BxsHFD.7H7@acsu.buffalo.edu> 
    <1992Nov16.213036.19708@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz>
Organization: University Of Kentucky, Dept. of Math Sciences
X-Path: nx19.mik.uky.edu!uk09395
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 02:33:19 GMT

n article <1992Nov15.194821.4786@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz> rossw@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz (
Ross Williamson) writes:
>>
>>A related and much more practical question is: how do you know when the
>>player makes wizard?


 After years of having anyone and everyone wizzing, we at Swat opted for
a petition system for wiz-hood.... allowing other players on the mud to
comment on those up for position. We required that they still achieve
the required experience and complete quest requirements, but they still
have to pass a voting procedure, consisting of the muds hierarchy of
wizards.  This system has it flaws (waiting periods due to the time
involved with voting, "popularity" contests, etc) but it 1) allows us
to control the flow of folks into wiz-hood, and 2) weed out "undesirable"
folks who we don't think would make good wizards at this point in time....

 to be fair, we decided on having a new level of players "between"
normal playing and wiz-hood, which we, for lack of a better word call
"superplayers", which basically gives them  more playing time, and some
added benefits, like unlimited stat advancement....  this allows folks who
have no desire to ever "wiz" to remain viable characters with some sort
of "goal" rather than festering at level 20.... also it gives those who
fail the petition process to continue playing the mud, and give them
some hope of rectifying any problems with the wizards and maybe wizzing
at a later date.....

Dufus@LpSwat

Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.admin
From: mjb@doc.ic.ac.uk (Matthew J Brown)
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.admin
Subject: Re: MudOS
Date: 20 Nov 92 04:38:48 GMT
Organization: Department Of Computing, Imperial College, London.
NNTP-Posting-Host: oak23.doc.ic.ac.uk
In-reply-to: dikumud@atlantic.mps.ohio-state.edu's message of Thu, 19 Nov 1992 17:17:58 GMT

In article <1992Nov19.171758.22822@pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu> dikumud@atlantic.mps.ohio-state.edu (Dikumud) writes:
>Uh, don't wanna sound stupid, but what exactly is MudOS?

LPMUD.

Say no more.

-Matt
--
| Matthew J. Brown  | Dept. of Computing | If God intended for us to go to   |
| mjb@doc.ic.ac.uk  | Imperial College,  | lectures He wouldn't have created |
| mjb02@cc.ic.ac.uk | 180 Queen's Gate   | double-sided photocopiers.        |
| Morven on Lambda  | LONDON SW7 2AZ     |          -IC RagMag 1991/92       |
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.admin
From: rene@hamel.uucp (Rene Mueller)
Subject: Re: Becoming a wiz (was Re: ATTN: skill based muds)
Organization: Free University of Berlin, Germany
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 16:18:47 GMT

I'm planning to open a Mud on my own (LPMud 3.1.2) and for this one I have
following system:
A player can advance up to lvl 30.
If he reaches lvl 20, he can go to Leo and become an "Apprentice Wizzard", which
means that he plans to become a wizzard in future time.
As Apprentice he has the right to program little objects, such as new weapons,
armours, treasures...
Before these are public for all players they MUST be approved by any wizzard.
This prgramming is for learning purposes.
And when there are rights, there must also be done something in exchange:
A player has the right to ask an Apprentice for little help, cause a wizzard has
full read-rightpermission to the questdocumentions and so it's forbidden to help
to a player if you're Wizzard.
The Apprentice may help by giving hints in some heavy situations he may also kill a monster.
The only new commands an Apprentice will get are read/write commands. If I will
see that someone programms objects which gives him more rights, he will be set to lvl 1!!

If the Apprentice thinks that he's advanced enough in programming LPC, he can
ask for promoting to wizzardstatus.
As Wizzard he should programm a quest or should help other Apprentice's in
learning LPC.

After a while the "Conference of Elderwizzards" can ask him to become an
Elderwizzard on his own.
As Elderwizzard he may help Wizzards in programming quests, he can look after
guilds (give them new advanteges are delete old ones) or test new quests and
add them to the quest list (I didn't have a quest object any longer).

From those Elderwizzards I will choose the Archwizzards.
These Archwizzards have writepermission to all mudfiles except "/secure/*"
and "/save/*", so they can correkt error in the mudlib or add new objects,
programmed by any Apprentice or higher.

	Shea Ohmsford, the flying Wizzard
	    (rene@math.fu-berlin.de)
From: guddt@uniwa.uwa.edu.au (David Bennett)
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.admin
Subject: Re: ATTN: skill based muds
Date: 17 Nov 1992 15:49:29 +0800
Organization: The University of Western Australia
NNTP-Posting-Host: uniwa.uwa.edu.au
Keywords: skills

No one replyed to my nice articles!  I am going to sulk now.

David.
[DDT] Sulking.
-- 
  David Bennett,  guddt@uniwa.uwa.oz.au | University Computer Club
     Where Pink fish swim backwards.    | c/o Guild of Undergraduates
These words I am singing now mean nothing more than meow to an animal - TMBG
Disclaimer: Any spelling mistakes in this article are all entirly my fault.  Any grammer errors spotted in this article were put there because I could.
From: jgostlin@malloco.Ing.puc.cl (Javier Gostling)
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.admin
Subject: Re: Arguments in favor of MUDS
Date: 23 Nov 92 19:49:18 GMT
Organization: Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL5

I have had no problem with my sysadmin here. As a matter of fact, he asked me
to setup a MUD running here. Anyway, I need to convince them to  allow me to
open the game to  the whole world (until now, it has been open for local
users only).
As to  the reasons you can give to your sysadmin to allow you to play them, I'm
still looking for a good reason to convince the sysadmin of an intermediate site
to open muds for local people. They argue the sattelite gets overloaded. So,
they closed ALL mud ports for all the sites behind them, including people from
another organization. It has been argued that game closing should be made by
local sysadmins, that they must offer the full Internet services, and lots more
I don't recall now. If you have some stronger reason to give them, please post
here.
Thanks
Javier Gostling D.
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.admin
From: ludwigj@CS.ColoState.EDU (Vilkata (Joe Ludwig))
Subject: Re: Wizardhood on LPMuds.
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 1992 20:42:37 GMT
Organization: Thealir Construction Company

In rec.games.mud.admin, jamie@kauri.vuw.ac.nz (Jamieson Norrish) writes:
>
>	   I think it would be ideal to start the game as little more
>   than a barren land, where players' skills bring about life and
>   civilization.  All forms of money and most of the objects on the game
>   will be created by players.  I do not yet know the practibility of
>   this idea, but I definitely think it is worth thinking about.
>
>This I am not so sure about; I think that this might well lead to a
>fairly chaotic jumble of ideas, as everybody builds what they want to.
>I think that it might be better to give them a set base to work from,
>so that they will know what sort of thing is expected from them. Of
>course, this entirely depends on whether you have a predefined idea of
>what you want before you start. Otherwise, starting the players from
>scratch is a great idea. It would certainly force them to work together.

I think it would be best to have a pre-defined world and have the players
start out as outsiders.  If your system is capable of allowing players to
rise through the ranks (not skills, but rather prestige, wealth, influence,
and military power), then the players can and will modify the world as they 
play.

-- 
+--------------------------+-------------------------------------------------+
| Vilkata, the Dark King   | "It's better to rule in hell, than serve in     |
| ludwigj@cs.colostate.edu |  Heaven."  -- Paridise Lost??                   |
| Vilkata@Most MUCKs       | "Maybe she sat on something sharp." -- Piper    |
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.admin
From: jelson@circle.cs.jhu.edu (Jeremy Elson)
Subject: Re: Diku Help
Organization: Johns Hopkins Computer Science Department, Baltimore, MD
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 04:57:16 GMT

In article <1992Nov16.155812.8942@ra.msstate.edu> sec1@Ra.MsState.Edu (Stephen E. Canfield) writes:

>CHECKPOINT shutdown: tics not updated
>
>Any clues as to why this happened, and how to fix it?

This means that somewhere in the vast sea of code which makes up your Diku,
there is an infinite loop.

It means that SOMEHWERE, someone did something that caused the mud to loop
infinitely, until finally this "checkpoint shutdown" occurred -- i.e., the
mud senses that its stuck and kills itself after 15(?) minutes of "stuckness".

How can you fix it?  A little tough.. one way is: stay logged on until the
mud freezes, then send it a SIGILL (NOT sigkill, but sigill) by typing
"kill -SIGILL <processnum>".  This will cause the mud to abort and dump
core; then you can use dbx or gdb to find out where the mud was looping.

Or, it sometimes works to shout to everyone "what was the last thing you
did right before the mud froze??"  *Smirk*

-je

-- 
Jeremy Elson
jelson@server.cs.jhu.edu (Internet) / jelson@jhuvms (Bitnet)
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.admin
From: ludwigj@CS.ColoState.EDU (Vilkata (Joe Ludwig))
Subject: Re: Wizardhood on LPMuds.
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 02:00:52 GMT
Organization: Thealir Construction Company

In article <JAMIE.92Nov23140759@kauri.vuw.ac.nz> jamie@kauri.vuw.ac.nz (Jamieson Norrish) writes:
>Why as outsiders? The only reason I can think of is that it saves a
>lot of work - you don't need to write large amounts of background
>material for the players, introducing them to this new world. However,
>it's not a very elegant thing to do, IMHO. Where do these "outsiders"
>come from? And who lives in the world you've set up? Who built it,
>etc.?

The problem with giving PCs a history is that at least some of the NPCs would
need to either know about or be connected with that history.  As for where the
PCs came from?  I dunno. :) The world however is populated by and was created
by the NPCs.  They need to be complex enough to play their roles, of course, 
but there is no reason a player couldn't be suddenly dumped into a world 
manned by NPCs.  (Maybe even without any kind of history, and a population
that doesn't much like people who act strange. )

>
>At the other extreme, instead of just preparing one background text
>for all players, a separate background knowledge file could be set up
>for each player. A lot of hard work, and probably not worth the effort
>unless you have very dedicated players. However, I notice that on
>Mua'Kaar beginning players are "guided" through background creation by
>whichever high-up they happen to ally/apprentice to. Much the same
>thing, in effect.

This could work, despite the work.  A library of histories could be created,
and new players could be assigned a role.  (Either at random, or by looking
through and selecting the one they like the best.)

-- 
+--------------------------+-------------------------------------------------+
| Vilkata, the Dark King   | "It's better to rule in hell, than serve in     |
| ludwigj@cs.colostate.edu |  Heaven."  -- Paridise Lost??                   |
| Vilkata@Most MUCKs       | "Maybe she sat on something sharp." -- Piper    |
Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.admin