Complaints about random number generation in the game usually sound like this:
"I lost concentration 5 times in a row! The number generator isn't random if it is giving the same thing 5 times in a row!"
There are many many flaws with this argument. To me the biggest is that when a player is casting 5 spells in a row, there are literally thousands of other random numbers being generated (for other purposes on the mud) between their specific spell casting actions.
A person believing they can decipher nonrandom events from an incomplete list of events, such as this, should surely be able to predict when they will occur (otherwise they would believe them to be random).
As a person who believes in personal responsibility, I therefore think it is the player's fault for losing concentration. They chose poorly when to cast their spell within the stream of random numbers and got a bad roll.
So, the next time that a person thinks they are smart enough to tell you that the number generator is broken, you can tell them that they are a fool for being a bad player and not taking advantage of it.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Builders Port Experiment Part 3
As I mentioned in two previous articles on the builders port experiment (part 1, part 2), we have started a process of letting people build without having immortals. Today was the opening of the first area that went through that process. I must say that it far beat my expectations.
A lot of congratulations go out to Rub for his effort and determination. I won't bother boring you with all of the details of the hassles that he went through, as they are pretty much on par with what I have discussed in those and other previous articles about building an area on a mud. Rub did an outstanding job navigating all of the administrative overhead (translated into kicking us in the behind every once in a while) to get it done.
We had hoped for, but never really believed we would get an area over from the builders port. While this is something to be happy about, what is truly an unexpected and pleasant surprise is the quality of the area. It has a well thought-out and cohesive theme with many unique features.
A lot of congratulations go out to Rub for his effort and determination. I won't bother boring you with all of the details of the hassles that he went through, as they are pretty much on par with what I have discussed in those and other previous articles about building an area on a mud. Rub did an outstanding job navigating all of the administrative overhead (translated into kicking us in the behind every once in a while) to get it done.
We had hoped for, but never really believed we would get an area over from the builders port. While this is something to be happy about, what is truly an unexpected and pleasant surprise is the quality of the area. It has a well thought-out and cohesive theme with many unique features.
- There is a unique way of getting to the area with its perils that some slightly greedy players have already discovered.
- There are some really cool differentiating effects like the loudspeaker.
- The mobs are smart and interact with each other and the players.
While we have quite a few areas which have this level of detail in them, it is extremely rare to see this from a new builder. I truley do appreciate the creativity, effort and determination which Rub put into this. I hope that it continues and we in for more surprises as we get closer to completion on a few other areas on the builders port.
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Slothmud Cheat Codes
In continuing with the theme of "what if Slothmud had..." Today I was inspired to think about what if Slothmud had cheat codes. I frankly don't know much about cheat codes these days, but the last time I looked you had to go to certain places in a game and type words. This is far to advanced for me, I'm old school when it comes to cheat codes.
In the old days of NES and Super Nintendo cheat codes you just used the controller. You did things like left right left right up down up down A B A B A A B B start to get yourself advanced to level 15. You had to do this right when you turned the game on and before the main menu appeared or it didn't take. It was awkward and the better the cheat, the harder the commands were to get to it.
I never figured out how people managed to figure them out or if the game producers just published them somehow.
So in the spirit of this here are some Slothmud cheat codes:
In the old days of NES and Super Nintendo cheat codes you just used the controller. You did things like left right left right up down up down A B A B A A B B start to get yourself advanced to level 15. You had to do this right when you turned the game on and before the main menu appeared or it didn't take. It was awkward and the better the cheat, the harder the commands were to get to it.
I never figured out how people managed to figure them out or if the game producers just published them somehow.
So in the spirit of this here are some Slothmud cheat codes:
- Go to the Innkeeper and do East West East West Up Down Up Down Offer Steal Offer Steal Beg Rent for Free Rent
- Turn fargate on with cast 'summon'
cast 'gate' cast 'gate' summon cast 'summon' gate enterfar enterportal - To turn off fargate do cast 'summon'
cast 'gate' cast 'gate' summon cast 'summon' gate unenterfar unenterportal - Go to the Storekeeper and do Bounce Bounce Spin Spin Sleep Wake Sleep Wake Beg Sleep Wake Sleep Beg for 100 free iron rations
- Find Guinex and say 'ali baba alakazaam' to change the live port to chaos mode
- Go to the armorer and do #20 {rem all;wear all} wield note to get access to five new types of newbie weapon equipment
- Go to Demogorgon and do West East West Spin cast 'faerie fire' Demogorgon flee flee flee hide flee flee flee for Fast Repop (better be quick on this one or you end up dead!)
- Go to West Gate and do #20 {page this game sucks} to get a free demotion to level 1 (may be delayed based availability of immortals)
- Go to Shallah and do rest #10 {gossip AFK :)~} and instantly gain access to 5 of Brad's level 40 characters which he has forgotten. Hurry, only the first 500 people a year to do this get unique characters.
- From anywhere do inv inv inv inv inv inv inv inv to ensure a pthief hasn't taken your inventory
- To get advanced to level 46 do drink aaa (maybe this one is for another mud)
Some of these cheat codes may already be wel known, but there are also many secret cheat codes within the game. You'll have to make your own website and publish them as you find them....at least that's what might happen if there really were cheat codes.
Sunday, February 04, 2007
Taxes
It has occurred to me on several occasions that Slothmud does not have Taxes. But imagine if it did? The IRS (Immortal Revenue System) would have an entire manual full of tax codes.
If you mess up, you could get audited by an IRS and possibly wiped for cheating on your taxes. It would also require a new set of terminology, but I'll do my best to translate it to the U.S. tax system definitions.
For example:
In any case, it's not a pretty world to consider. But as the old saying goes, "The only two certainties in life are death and taxes." At least the first half holds very true with Slothmud.
If you mess up, you could get audited by an IRS and possibly wiped for cheating on your taxes. It would also require a new set of terminology, but I'll do my best to translate it to the U.S. tax system definitions.
For example:
- You are taxed for every head you take while in a chop group. This is called the capital gains tax.
- You are taxed for all the gold you during your normal exp runs. This is called dividend tax.
- You are taxed at a higher rate for gold that you get while cycling island gold. This is called Alternative Minimum Tax.
- You are taxed for all items shipped and received to your alternative characters. This is called the Generation Skipping Tax.
- You must pay an additional tax for every alternate character created over the 40th character. (This is known as Brad's Tax).
- If you are evil, or in DoT, you only get to take the standard deduction.
- If you bought a house or mansion, you can deduct depreciation on the house, but only if one of Brad's characters has ever been there (This is a common deduction).
- However, you can't deduct the house if you are storing someone else's equipment in the vault as this then qualifies as a commercial property and is subject to different tax law.
- If you are not in a clan, you can consider yourself self-employed and take a small deduction.
In any case, it's not a pretty world to consider. But as the old saying goes, "The only two certainties in life are death and taxes." At least the first half holds very true with Slothmud.
Monday, January 29, 2007
Spammers Are Better Crawlers Than Google?
As I mentioned in a previous posting (comment spammers) there is an ever increasing trend of comment spam by automated system. The game forum got hit, which sort of makes sense. It is on a highly used forum platform, on a site with a decent page rank and gets a fair amount of activity per day.
It took me a while to find it on our site because it wasn't in a highly used section, in fact, it seemed the that it was specifically targeted toward older pages that wouldn't get as much attention. That's good for the spammers for a couple reason. First, it takes it longer to get noticed. Second, the pages that were around longer are more likely to have links to them, which also helps the value of the spammer's links.
I was much more suprised to see comment spam show up on my blog. Granted, I hadn't enabled the simple, yet annoying, CAPTCHA that Blogger provides. I figured that my site doesn't have any page rank whatsoever (I can't find a single link to it in the Google index), so what are the odds of anyone targeting it? Apparently the spammers are in some ways better at crawling than Google is, because they found the links (which are smattered about the web). I can't really imagine any other way that their system found my blog except a voluntary submission. While that is not out of the realm of probability, I haven't found a "spam your enemies forum with my links" website come up in any conversations on the subject.
Anyway, sorry for having to turn on the CAPTCHA, even though the comments are few and far between.
It took me a while to find it on our site because it wasn't in a highly used section, in fact, it seemed the that it was specifically targeted toward older pages that wouldn't get as much attention. That's good for the spammers for a couple reason. First, it takes it longer to get noticed. Second, the pages that were around longer are more likely to have links to them, which also helps the value of the spammer's links.
I was much more suprised to see comment spam show up on my blog. Granted, I hadn't enabled the simple, yet annoying, CAPTCHA that Blogger provides. I figured that my site doesn't have any page rank whatsoever (I can't find a single link to it in the Google index), so what are the odds of anyone targeting it? Apparently the spammers are in some ways better at crawling than Google is, because they found the links (which are smattered about the web). I can't really imagine any other way that their system found my blog except a voluntary submission. While that is not out of the realm of probability, I haven't found a "spam your enemies forum with my links" website come up in any conversations on the subject.
Anyway, sorry for having to turn on the CAPTCHA, even though the comments are few and far between.
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Quests Participants and Non-participants
There's a low intensity, yet long running debate about quests and peril to people who aren't participating. The crux of the matter is there are some quests where the entire mud becomes a pretty dangerous place whether you are involved with the quest or not, so characters who are unaware of what is happening can be killed.
An example of this is the "blue steel gang" that went into towns and hunted players. As many of you may remember, players severely criticized it during the event, but afterward there was much praise about the quality and theme. Certainly there were players who are often away from the keyboard that were disgruntled even after its conclusion. In fact, there was significant debate among the admin during the quest as to whether or not this type of event should be allowed to be done again or even if that one should have continued. In the end, a well thought out theme that made the mud more dangerous was accepted as an improvement by the admin.
One of my beliefs is: The mud should be a dangerous place. Expecting to amble blissfully about or go away from the keyboard with no consequences is something people have gotten away long enough for it to be comfortable. That doesn't mean it should be this way. Few argue that exploring shouldn't be dangerous, but they argue walking around town should be safe. It is most of the time, but in my opinion, there's no halo around towns. Players sack towns constantly; why should mobs be excluded from hunting players there?
I'd like to see us make it more dangerous by putting in themes and long running (like several weeks or months) quests that can cause disruption to existing play. The quests, will of course, have rewards. These don't necessarily all have to be drachma, spells, skills, but will be worthwhile for those who participate. They may be simply for the larger good like something as simple as the mud is a safer place for the next few weeks. Long running quests that increase danger are disruptive and SlothMUD players like certainty and predictability. And while I believe we shouldn't provide either, we certainly don't want random, purposeless death, either. Any increase is sure to stir a controversy with players.
There are plenty of reasons to go away from the keyboard for extended periods of time. The only really safe way to do it is to rent out. This has a small cost associated with it and players often try to avoid this by not renting. That's a risk/reward which currently has nearly zero risk. If the mud is a more dangerous place the risk goes up and fewer people will take it, at the expense of paying a little more in rent. A few that do take the risk will be unlucky and face the consequences of trying to figure out what happened while they were away.
A counter argument states that we have the "join" command that allows people to participate or not. So why not just use that for all quests and themes that might attack players? I'm all in favor of this when the event has a declared reward is time boxed. However, in the case where the reward isn't obvious, or even that there is a clear objective, I'm not in favor of using this. Nobody would ever have the join flag on outside of the clearly announced events.
By no means is this a done deal. These are my own opinions and I haven't convinced the rest of the admin of this, so we aren't moving forward on it yet. We shall see if we can harness some creativity and muster the effort to implement a broader, more permanent theme that will indeed make the mud more dangerous.
An example of this is the "blue steel gang" that went into towns and hunted players. As many of you may remember, players severely criticized it during the event, but afterward there was much praise about the quality and theme. Certainly there were players who are often away from the keyboard that were disgruntled even after its conclusion. In fact, there was significant debate among the admin during the quest as to whether or not this type of event should be allowed to be done again or even if that one should have continued. In the end, a well thought out theme that made the mud more dangerous was accepted as an improvement by the admin.
One of my beliefs is: The mud should be a dangerous place. Expecting to amble blissfully about or go away from the keyboard with no consequences is something people have gotten away long enough for it to be comfortable. That doesn't mean it should be this way. Few argue that exploring shouldn't be dangerous, but they argue walking around town should be safe. It is most of the time, but in my opinion, there's no halo around towns. Players sack towns constantly; why should mobs be excluded from hunting players there?
I'd like to see us make it more dangerous by putting in themes and long running (like several weeks or months) quests that can cause disruption to existing play. The quests, will of course, have rewards. These don't necessarily all have to be drachma, spells, skills, but will be worthwhile for those who participate. They may be simply for the larger good like something as simple as the mud is a safer place for the next few weeks. Long running quests that increase danger are disruptive and SlothMUD players like certainty and predictability. And while I believe we shouldn't provide either, we certainly don't want random, purposeless death, either. Any increase is sure to stir a controversy with players.
There are plenty of reasons to go away from the keyboard for extended periods of time. The only really safe way to do it is to rent out. This has a small cost associated with it and players often try to avoid this by not renting. That's a risk/reward which currently has nearly zero risk. If the mud is a more dangerous place the risk goes up and fewer people will take it, at the expense of paying a little more in rent. A few that do take the risk will be unlucky and face the consequences of trying to figure out what happened while they were away.
A counter argument states that we have the "join" command that allows people to participate or not. So why not just use that for all quests and themes that might attack players? I'm all in favor of this when the event has a declared reward is time boxed. However, in the case where the reward isn't obvious, or even that there is a clear objective, I'm not in favor of using this. Nobody would ever have the join flag on outside of the clearly announced events.
By no means is this a done deal. These are my own opinions and I haven't convinced the rest of the admin of this, so we aren't moving forward on it yet. We shall see if we can harness some creativity and muster the effort to implement a broader, more permanent theme that will indeed make the mud more dangerous.
Monday, December 04, 2006
Pure Java is Better Than Starbucks Coffee
I enjoy a cup of joe Starbucks like most people, but when it comes to coding Java, there ain't nothing like Intellij IDEA from JetBrains. Those people know Java and those people know IDE's. I've done a lot of coding on a lot of different platforms and I think that I come back to Java a lot when I don' t know what else to choose simply because of the quality of this piece of software.
Some of you hard core guys out there will never use an IDE because it takes too long to learn or for some other reason that escapes me now. It took me a long time to get over the hump, but now that I am, I won't go back. Features like refactoring, method extraction, integrated debugging and drag and drop GUI widget just can't be done with vi or notepad.
If you are just starting Java or some other language, by all means get out notepad and start making mistakes so you know what all of the different things in the language do, but if you know the language, try an IDE. I don't particularily like Eclipse for Java, by the way; It just doesn't have the coolness factor of IntelliJ IDEA.
Here's a screenshot of an standalone Java application that I'm working on as a tool for builders who will be working on an upcoming Sloth enhancement. Just a teaser for now, but I will have it fully functional soon.
It is a Java Swing application that I developed with a lot of drag an drop, trial and error in the IDE to get it to behave exactly like I want. It would have taken me four or five times as long to do this without and IDE or else I would have stopped short with an inferior product.
Perhaps I'm just a poor coder whom uses the IDE as a crutch, but I don't think so.
If I get a little time soon, I may even describe in some more detail what this project is if Kjartan doesn't get around to it. In any case, it will be something unique to Sloth.
Some of you hard core guys out there will never use an IDE because it takes too long to learn or for some other reason that escapes me now. It took me a long time to get over the hump, but now that I am, I won't go back. Features like refactoring, method extraction, integrated debugging and drag and drop GUI widget just can't be done with vi or notepad.
If you are just starting Java or some other language, by all means get out notepad and start making mistakes so you know what all of the different things in the language do, but if you know the language, try an IDE. I don't particularily like Eclipse for Java, by the way; It just doesn't have the coolness factor of IntelliJ IDEA.
Here's a screenshot of an standalone Java application that I'm working on as a tool for builders who will be working on an upcoming Sloth enhancement. Just a teaser for now, but I will have it fully functional soon.
It is a Java Swing application that I developed with a lot of drag an drop, trial and error in the IDE to get it to behave exactly like I want. It would have taken me four or five times as long to do this without and IDE or else I would have stopped short with an inferior product.
Perhaps I'm just a poor coder whom uses the IDE as a crutch, but I don't think so.
If I get a little time soon, I may even describe in some more detail what this project is if Kjartan doesn't get around to it. In any case, it will be something unique to Sloth.
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