New to this mailing list

[Richard Woolcock]

Hello all, I have just recently been invited to this list by Martin Keegan.
Although it was suggested I just read the posts for a week or so, I'm
afraid I'm somewhat impatient - particularly when I see messages that
I'd love to reply to.  Therefore I will give a brief introduction...

My name - as is obvious from my mail address - is Richard Woolcock.  I am
22, graduated a year ago, and have been working as a Software Engineer for
just over 9 months.  I started writing text-based games when I was about
12, on my fathers BBC micro, and have never looked back.

I got into mudding at university, and was eventually made an imm on a 
friends MUD.  He opened up a stock envy, and made a few changes, just
for a bit of fun.  I found him a site, and the mud went on from there.
He eventually tired of mudding and the mud vanished.  However in the
mean time I had downloaded a stock Merc2.1 to 'teach myself how to
code muds (tm)'.  I also taught myself C at the same time (which is how
I got a grade B in 'C' programming despite only handing in half the
coursework and missing most of the lectures while mudding ;)

The MUD proved very popular, and my coding ability grow.  The MUD I now
run - Dark City - is based on that very same old code...almost 4 years
on.  I know a lot of you are anti-stock (particularly Mr Greg Munt), but
as far as 'stock based' muds are concerned, my mud is hardly generic.
About 85-90% of the total code was written by myself.

The mud is based on the World of Darkness, has no levels, classes or
races.  As per WoD I have vampires (with over 180 powers), werewolves,
and half-finished mages (no spells as such, they type what they want
to do and it happens - keyword checking).  And no, I don't have any
stock areas.  I'm currently in Beta testing, but hope to be done by
the end of September (not that I believe I'll ever finish the mud - 
I just want to have it fully playable).

I have got a huge amount of other 'features', but I don't want to 
make this look like an advert.  If you ARE interested, then I don't
mind opening a few of my ideas up for criticism (anyone else coded
mudsex, with the chance of pregnancy and child birth?).

KaVir.