(fwd) Re: code for teleport

[s001gmu at nova.wright.edu]

On Tue, 7 Apr 1998, Ben Greear wrote:

> On Tue, 7 Apr 1998 coder at ibm.net wrote:
> 
> > An old post I'd meant to cross to the list but didn't:
> > 
> > From: "Thomas D. Lowe" <dlowe at boxtopsoft.com>
> > Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.admin
> > Subject: Re: code for teleport
> > Date: Mon, 25 Aug 1997 18:41:38 -0500
> > Reply-To: dlowe at boxtopsoft.com
> > 
> > Greg Munt wrote:

[gate spell rejection...]

> > Note on this...
> > 
> > On the mud I coded and am (still) working on, we scummed an idea off of
> > Raymond E. Fiest's Riftwar trilogy.  In every mage guild, there's a
> > "pattern room," with various "patterns" inside.  Mages cast teleport on a
> > particular pattern (which is described by words like wavy, woven, etc. --
> > they have to figure out what goes to which) and are themselves teleported
> > to another pattern room in another guild. Since teleport is on the
> > upper-mid level range on our mud, it works out well for enabling
> > transportation to different parts of the world, without actually putting
> > them into a "zone for killing things and getting xp."

Good books... It's been a long time since I read those...  
Anyway.  We were planning on something along those lines... limited
teleport, between cities/mage towers.  "Unlimited" gate capabilities are
fun, but can easily result in massive slaughter-fests.

> I have spells that will open a portal to another PC, and which will
> remain open for a short amount of time.  It is a one-way path at mid 
> levels, but higher levels can open two-way portals.  I got so caught up
> in the coding that I didn't think too much about what this would do to 
> game play.  However, I don't see it as disasterous....

Heh... famous last words.  ;)  Seriosuly, though, we had a 'gate' spell on
EoD, way back when.  I beleive it had to target a person.  The version of
DIKU that we used as our base had it coded so that if you put in a bum
name, it opened a bum gate (heck, it'd sometimes do that anyway, if you
didn't quite make that roll... >:-).  Walking through the bum gate
resulted in a very quickly dead character, with no corpse to go retrieve.
A favorite use of this was in combination with a charm spell...

   > Charm bubba
   Bubba looks at you and smiles.
   Bubba now follows you.

   >cast gate hell
   An unstable looking gate opens.

   >say 'buh-bye bubba'
   You say, "buh-bye bubba"

   >order bubba enter gate
   Bubba walks into an unstable looking gate.
   Bubba screams in agony as his body disintigrates.
   Bubba no longer follows you.

   >chuckle
   You chuckle.

   Bubba tells you, "Grumble... yer goin down!"

heheheh.  Another popular one was charming a big, NASTY, aggresive mob,
gating to a newbie area, and ordering the mob through, then closing the
gate... Tiamat wandered the hallowed halls of the smurf village many a
time.

I have to say that the game changed a lot when gate was removed...  people
leveled slower, and it made the world seem a lot larger.  The world looses
scale rapidly if you can just gate to the mobs you need, slaughter them,
and then gate home in time for tea.

I dislike "unlimited" gate spells... at least the cheap ones.  If it is
unlimited, it should be TERRIBLY expensive (like, mages should only want
to do it once in a LONG while).  Restricted gate, however, is nice, and if
used right, can keep players quite broke and always lookin for money.  :)

I recall discussing a similar thread late last year, in the context of the
size of the mud world, and how hostile it is to the PCs.