Nothing much to report today, but if you’re doing some testing feel to play as many characters as you like, including on different sides of the racewar. No better way to test grouping and fragging and all that related stuff than to stage a 6v6 PvP battle all made up of characters controlled by you. 
Bots are cool too, of course. Anything that exercises more of the code more often is all good in my book.
I spent a while doing various fixes. Here’s what it added up to:
* The dice command has been fixed.
* The visible command has been implemented.
* Drag corpse has been fixed.
* Fixed an issue where mobs would sometimes fail to ride mounts they’re supposed to be on according to the zone file.
* Fixed or improved a handful of immortal commands.
* Fixed or improved messages for a bunch of commands, including track, whirlwind, report, sleep, split, practice, disembark, forage, and train.
* Fixed a bug with moon phases that caused the world data file not to save.
* Made some fixes to and enhanced carve corpse.
* Fixed a problem that would cause people to show up on the who list more than once.
* Fixed an issue that would prevent a player from being able to follow a mob.
* The compare command has been fixed.
* Fixed a problem that would sometimes cause renting to fail.
* Fixed a problem that was preventing shops from being associated with their shopkeeper mobs when they load.
Here’s another editor update:
Object Editing Changes
* Added spell editing to certain types of objects (wands, staves, potions, scrolls, etc.) The spell can be selected from a drop down list, or typed in manually for custom spells that aren’t in the editor. That means you can declare spells that don’t exist yet and when they’re added to the game they’ll work.
* Default object template is now carryable and usable by anyone.
* Added some text labels to the object edit dialog.
* Changed object item type to a drop down list — no typing nonexistant object types into the box anymore.
* Fixed a crash bug with certain item types (drink container and missile weapon).
* Changed affect edit box to only allow selecting items in the drop down list — no keying in affect types that don’t exist.
* Value edit window now reflects currently selected object type even if the object hasn’t been saved yet.
Area Settings Editing Changes
* Changed justice type to only allow selecting items in the drop down list — no keying in justice types that don’t exist.
Basternae 1 and 2 had a huge number of total hours played. Lots of players rose to prominence and some became pretty much legendary. With all that adventure
If anyone wants to write up any fairy tales, legends, or lore of the past based on previous incarnations of Basternae and either characters of their own, past immortals, or others they knew of, it might be a fun thing to post on the website as backstory or just general world lore (i.e. something along the lines of ‘St. Daeron and the Dragon’. In fact, if someone feels so inclined to write any sort of back story beyond ‘everyone kills everyone’, they’re certainly welcome (and encouraged) to.
The world of Basternae 3 takes place somewhere between a few hundred and a few thousand years in the future after Basternae 2. Among other things, the Flind race has faded out and have been overtaken by their more successful Gnoll cousins and the Githyanki have hunted the Githzerai nearly to extinction. The world has been reformed somewhat, with rising water levels reshaping or destroying many of the land masses of the past (nobody has explained why they rose yet — global warming, superheating from a major war, bombardment by meteors, change in the planet’s orbit, who knows?). The Artifacts have all been destroyed or reclaimed by the gods.
Nobody has really ever said anything about the major religions of the world, the number of moons, what the climate is like. I could probably come up with something, but it would be more fun to have your input.
I posted a page that gives an overview of some of the ideas that are being used to guide design here:
Basternae Game Design Philosophy
It’s entirely possible that I failed to address some concepts, but that’s the general idea of it. Are there any topics I failed to mention?
Most MUDs have mobiles of very limited intelligence that stand around waiting to be killed and often don’t even bother to remember that you attacked them ten seconds ago. Some games have more intelligent creatures that actively try to defend themselves and take down the enemy by the most effective means (always fireballing trolls, dispelling undead opponents, etc.) What MUDs have you played with more advanced/detailed mob AI? What was it like?
Sure, there are the obvious ones from the Basternae ancestry, but I’m looking for the ‘best of breed’ so I have a standard to measure against.
I put up the MUD server so I could do some development. Telnet basternae.org port 4502 and feel free to report anything you find. I haven’t fixed everything since the last test run, but did fix a handful of things.
I don’t have a restart script running, so if it crashes, that means it’s going to stay down until I check it again.
For those of you who want to use the old version of DikuEdit, I added a link to it on the sidebar. I would like to get a bit of feedback on the new editor, so feel free to try that and let me know what you think of it so far.
I have a test port of Basternae 3 running on basternae.org port 4502. This is only temporary for the purpose of testing.
Here’s a list of things that need to be tested. Feel free to spend as little as 1 minute testing, or as long as the server is up. I only plan to have it up for a few days or less. Please report any results to xangis at the yahoo dot com email service. One big email is far better than lots of little emails. Also let me know the name you’d like to be listed in the credits as (up to you whether you want to use your handle/nickname or your real name). As I receive testing reports I’ll post what sections of this list have been covered so there’s not too much overlap of effort between testers.
1. Tester: Create one character of each race and one of each class to make sure that:
- The help file/info is displayed properly for each race and makes sense.
- The help file/info is displayed properly for each class and makes sense.
- The character creation process is logical, sensible, and user-frieldy enough that someone who has never played a MUD could make sense of it.
- Nothing weird happens.
- Nothing looks too un-customized.
- You actually start in the Kobold Village instead of a room with no exits.
- Text formatting glitches are under control.
Report any ideas/suggestions/observances during the process.
2. Tester: Check help entries for all commands and report any that don’t exist.
The “commands” command will give you a list of the commands available. “help <command_name>” should display the help for that command.
3. Tester: Check help entries for all skills and report any that don’t exist.
Type “skills” to show the skills available for your character. “help <skill_name>” should display the help for that skill.
4. Tester: Check help entries for all spells and report any that don’t exist.
Type “spells” to show the spells available for your character. “help <spell_name>” should display the help for that spell.
5. Tester: Test all spells available to you and report any that don’t work.
Until I have the “auto advance to max level” stuff going there’s not a whole lot you can test with this. In addition, spellbook/scribe classes will have trouble. Just do what you can.
6. Tester: Try all commands without arguments and report any that malfunction, fail to give any feedback, give badly-formatted responses, or give responses that look like a stock codebase.
For instance, try “score”, “attributes”, “who”, and any other commands shown when you type “commands”.
7. Tester: Try all socials and report any that malfunction, print output that is garbled or nonsensical, or looks like a stock codebase.
Type “socials” to get a list of the available socials. Then try these different combinations with each social:
<social_name>
<social_name> me
<social_name> <some_mobile_in_the_room>
8. Tester: Try combat and see whether you’re able to successfully kill a mobile. If anything strange happens, report it. This includes messages that don’t make sense, like getting kicked by a creature with no legs, bitten by a creature without a head, etc.
During the history of Basternae (1 through 3) there have been issues with combat round timing, corpse creation, and deathblows. I’d like to identify any of those as early as possible.
9. Tester: Try combat and see whether you’re able to successfully get killed by a mobile.
During the history of Basternae (1 through 3) there have been issues with combat round timing, corpse creation, and deathblows. I’d like to identify any of those as early as possible.
10. Tester: Log in with two characters and see whether you can successfully kill another player in PvP combat. If anything strange happens or if you’re unable to fight another player, report it. Try with characters on the same racewar side (i.e. Troll vs. Ogre) and with characters on opposite racewar sides (i.e. Dwarf vs. Orc)
There’s all kinds of extra logic involved in PvP combat and there’s plenty of room for weirdness.
11. Tester: Check help entries for all bard songs and report any that don’t exist.
This assumes you’ll be able to create a Bard and that they actually have songs defined.. I haven’t tried.
12. Tester: Walk through a zone looking at mobiles, objects, and rooms and report anything that is formatted weird or doesn’t display properly.
Although issues of that nature are usually zone file related, it’s entirely possible that with our entirely-new socket and text formatting code that something will look wrong.
13. Tester: Download the Basternae client and try using it with Basternae 3.
It’s available here: http://www.basternae.org/BasternaeClientPreview_08-04-09.exe
I know it’s only barely functional (none of the extra windows do anything yet), but it’d be nice to get a little feedback, and to know what it would require before you’d consider using it as your main MUD client (if you’d consider using it). And, of course, if it doesn’t run on your main OS that’d be nice to know too. It’s probably worth running it side-by-side with another MUD/telnet client to make sure that text comes across OK (it’s entirely likely that the text parser isn’t 100% right). If anything looks wonky, screenshots might be helpful.
14. Tester: Download and try to use the Basternae zone editor and take note of what parts of it are confusing and/or unclear.
The basternae editor can be downloaded here: http://www.basternae.org/Basternae3EditorSetup_v0.39.exe
There isn’t any documentation for the zone editor yet, so it might help to have some input as to what a new zone writer would want to know how to do and what guidelines should be made clear. If you’re feeling really brave you could write a basic conceptual overview or intro tutorial.
The editor currently only runs on Windows and requires the .NET framework (you’ll already have it if you have Windows).
15: Tester: Download the Basternae zone editor and try creating a 2-3 room zone with a mob, a quest, and an object.
Just try it out and see if it works, offer usability suggestions, and/or report anything weird. Once you’re done, send me the test zone and I’ll see if it actually loads in the MUD engine. Quality does not count — this is only a test. You could create an entire zone if you want to, but I don’t recommend it until after these tests are done because there could be some breaking file format changes.
A few things to be aware of:
The code was written and compiled on Windows and is currently running on Linux under Mono. Since Mono doesn’t have full support for everything in .NET there’s a chance something will go haywire at some point. While doing some initial testing a few weeks ago I saw CPU usage on the server spike to 100% for no obvious reason. If this happens, I’ll have to kill the process because I have about 15 or so other sites running on the server and I can’t let them be taken down.
I’m sure some of these tests will not really be able to be run effectively without some code changes/fixes.
THIS IS NOT A FULLY FUNCTIONAL MUD. THIS IS JUST SO I CAN BUILD MY “TO DO” LIST OF THINGS THAT MUST BE FIXED OR REWRITTEN.
One of the things I’ve been worrying over is how to write a new scripting and artificial intelligence engine that integrates all the buttery goodness and capabilities of MobProgs and the homebrew probability-based AI system I wrote for Basternae II along with the only-used-once movement scripts I put together. They were all pretty powerful, but the bad things are/were:
1. Too many pieces of code to maintain.
2. Required a programmer’s full attention — far too complex for a zone writer or newbie-level web scripter to use.
3. Always required a recompile if changes were made.
4. Always required a reboot to load new changes. This made it un-tweakable. Want a mob to cast fireball half as often? Change it and reboot the MUD.
5. Extremely zone-dependent. If we unload the plane of fire, we still have all of the plane of fire scripts active, including hard-coded mob names and numbers.
It definitely shouldn’t require a restart of the game just to make a troll kick someone in the head more often. This naturally leads me to Python and/or IronPython, since it’s my current obsession. I have some reading to do, but don’t be surprised if I come up with a scripting engine of pure awesomeness.
The MUD Connector has an interesting review of Duris posted:
http://www.mudconnect.com/mud-bin/new_prev/review.cgi?rid=25705
I’ve always enjoyed Duris and still play it off and on (maybe half a dozen weeks a year), but it has always had so many flaws that I end up getting fed up and walking away after a while. Part of it is administrative, sure, but a lot of the problems are core game design — at the core it’s an excellent MUD, but so much of it is an unnecessarily frustrating mess that it doesn’t really have much longevity for me. I think it comes from the original philosophy of the design — the creators really didn’t differentiate between “difficult” and “irritating”.
For example (and I’m mainly referring to Duris from a few years ago because that’s what I know best):
Randomly killed by random-spawn unpredictable scan-track mobs in the underdark for no logical reason, or = annoying.
Instantly killed because you were attacked by a drunk orc when you try to leave the inn in your hometown and since you’re level 1, assisting guards one-shot you (and your class doesn’t have sneak) = annoying.
Getting killed in artifact-wielding players in low-level zones and having your corpse looted of spellbooks/totems that you are too poor to replace because you’rer a newbie = annoying.
Player-wiping because you want to refresh the player base, purge an overabundance of equipment, or replace the world maps, or cover up the fact that the game mechanics still need some work = annoying.
Needing to use your head to come up with a strategy to defeat mobs, complete a zone, or accomplish a task = difficult.
Being forced to rely on your wits and diligently reading room descriptions to solve quests or puzzles = difficult.
Optimizing your equipment and stat bonuses based on how you want to perform in combat and doing so by real combat experience rather than reading the source code = difficult.
Somehow they seem to think that and difficult are both beneficial. Difficult makes players keep playing because things aren’t too easy. Annoying makes them log in to WoW.
I still find it incredibly amusing that I was more-or-less programming for Duris during the 2000-2001 “arms race” with Basternae 2 — every time I added a feature or convenience command that was neat but didn’t affect game balance it would show up on Duris a week later.
Even so, I can’t really say I have anything against any of the admins of Duris. After all, I’ve never even met any of them (except Xyzom from old Duris, who I actually lived with for a while and worked on Illustrium Arcana with — nice enough fella but we haven’t kept in touch). All I can do is judge by their product, Duris: Land of Bloodlust, which needs some work.