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Loriel · 03-06-2003, 10:40 AM

This thread seems to have become "Why does xmud handle equipment saving this way?", and as such it's not really a coding question.

It's easy to add the saving/reloading of equipment in an LPmud (most LP mudlibs already have it), though it's rather more difficult to errortrap it fully so that faulty equipment doesn't mess up the loading of the rest of the inventory.

On the question "why save/don't save", personally I'm strongly in favour of the "save" option, and I mean "auto save at logoff", not rental of storage space.

The choice does strongly influence the feeling of the mud - to me, having to return equipment to a storage locker changes the mud from being immersive to something akin to "entering a theme park to play paintball, then storing your paintball gun in the locker room on the way out."

I can understand that there are compensating advantages - ie the "locker room" area becomes a social gathering point, though it seems a little OOC even if you disguise it as a lodging room provided by the local Lord.

The other problem I see with the "non-save" system is that it favours the frequent/long session player, against the occasional/short session player (and also discriminates heavily against those who lose their links, or have to log off suddenly and unexpectedly). This penalty comprises the time taken to travel between the locker room and the "playing area" at each end of the session, or the time taken to acquire the "lost" equipment in some other way (buy/beg/steal/borrow/loot or whatever), and the cost incurred in that (eg a daily/weekly storage charge, which penalises the occasional player).

An alternative that seems more logical (though it would seem strange to "traditionalist" players) would be for the player's character to become a npc when the player logs off, until the player logs back to take control again.

The points above are most relevant to a mud with a strong "hack and slash" element, where a player would not wish to lose his "+6 longsword of troll-slaying" after spending the whole session killing the appropriate monster to acquire it, and would be somewhat less valid where the aim of the mud is something other than the "kill monsters, get better equipment, get experience, get levels" scenario. Nevertheless, it seems that RP-oriented muds would also see significant problems with hand-crafted and personalised items that don't save.

03-06-2003, 10:40 AM	#10
Loriel Member Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 49	This thread seems to have become "Why does xmud handle equipment saving this way?", and as such it's not really a coding question. It's easy to add the saving/reloading of equipment in an LPmud (most LP mudlibs already have it), though it's rather more difficult to errortrap it fully so that faulty equipment doesn't mess up the loading of the rest of the inventory. On the question "why save/don't save", personally I'm strongly in favour of the "save" option, and I mean "auto save at logoff", not rental of storage space. The choice does strongly influence the feeling of the mud - to me, having to return equipment to a storage locker changes the mud from being immersive to something akin to "entering a theme park to play paintball, then storing your paintball gun in the locker room on the way out." I can understand that there are compensating advantages - ie the "locker room" area becomes a social gathering point, though it seems a little OOC even if you disguise it as a lodging room provided by the local Lord. The other problem I see with the "non-save" system is that it favours the frequent/long session player, against the occasional/short session player (and also discriminates heavily against those who lose their links, or have to log off suddenly and unexpectedly). This penalty comprises the time taken to travel between the locker room and the "playing area" at each end of the session, or the time taken to acquire the "lost" equipment in some other way (buy/beg/steal/borrow/loot or whatever), and the cost incurred in that (eg a daily/weekly storage charge, which penalises the occasional player). An alternative that seems more logical (though it would seem strange to "traditionalist" players) would be for the player's character to become a npc when the player logs off, until the player logs back to take control again. The points above are most relevant to a mud with a strong "hack and slash" element, where a player would not wish to lose his "+6 longsword of troll-slaying" after spending the whole session killing the appropriate monster to acquire it, and would be somewhat less valid where the aim of the mud is something other than the "kill monsters, get better equipment, get experience, get levels" scenario. Nevertheless, it seems that RP-oriented muds would also see significant problems with hand-crafted and personalised items that don't save.