[MUD-Dev] New Topic: Butthead features

Jeff Kesselman jeffk at tenetwork.com
Tue Aug 26 22:09:24 CEST 1997


At 05:31 PM 8/26/97 PST8PDT, you wrote:
>In <3.0.2.32.19970819222205.008a1670 at mail.tenetwork.com>, on 08/19/97 
>   at 10:43 PM, Jeff Kesselman <jeffk at tenetwork.com> said:
>
>>At 09:59 PM 8/19/97 PST8PDT, 
>>JCL wrote:
>
>>>On my end I'm a lot more interested in building what I think might be
>>>an interesting system, and then seeing what people will do with it,
>
>>Okay,
>>So your building a test-tube and Im building a recreational device.
>
>>Its a fair and pretty major difference.
>
>Not exactly.  Both are intended as recreational devices.  One attempts
>to achieve that end is a pre-planned manner such that "fun" occurs in
>largely pre-known ways by defining a known and well defined game
>method and purpose.  The other builds a set of thought-to-be

Hmm.  An ointeresting analysis.  I think its fair, though I suspect soem
others  interpret it as mroe srestrictive then it really is.  It IS
predicated ona  couple of basic role play assumptiosn that coem from my
many many years of pen and paper, and my somewhat traumatic experineces
with DSO.

Frankly, I personally believe that UOl is starting to encounetr soem of the
same expericnes we had, I'll be inetrested to see how they deal with them.
I already knwo of groups in UOL (thanks to some infromation lines I
develoepd to dela with DSO problems) that have catalogged ways to defeat
what limited saftey measures the game posesses and abuse holes in the balance.

BWT Raph, my UOL accoutn is dead, won't reregister (I never reregistered
after the last wipe) and ive had no response from support in 3 days... you
wanan help me get this resolved?

>interesting mechanics, and then gives players free-reign with them to
>see if they create amusing games within the mechanical interactions. 
>The key is that one pre-defines the game and the game mechanics, and
>the other pre-defines only the game mechanics and leaves the
>definition of the game to the players.

Hmm.....   i think thats a very subtle differentiatio nto make so cleanly.
I coudl easily argue im not definign the game either... the game will take
whatever shape the systems ive built drive it and the controls we've buitl
allow it.

We havent defined what the game will be, only what it wont be.
We do certainly encourage certaibn approaches to the game though.

I guess the dsitinction Im drawing is that to my eyes DSO I defiend what
the game 'was" because of hard coded quest scripts.  Our current project
has none of those.

JK
Jeff Kesselman
Snr. Game Integration Engineer
TEN -- The Total Entertainment Network -- www.ten.net

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
     Version: 3.1
     GCS/CC/E/IT/MC d+(++)@ s: a C++++$ ULSC+++(++++)$ P++(+++)$ L++ 
     E--- W++$ N++$ o+ K--? w++(+++)$@>--- O+(++)>$ M+>$ !V PS++ PE+ 
     Y+ PGP- t+ 5+ X- R+(++)$>+++* tv+ b+>++ DI+++ !D G e++ h r+++ y+++
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------ 

Speak Geek!
http://krypton.mankato.msus.edu/~hayden/geek.html



More information about the mud-dev-archive mailing list