Some features of Iberia - present and some of the future

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Viriato
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Some features of Iberia - present and some of the future

Post by Viriato »

As promised, in this post I'll write things already coded in Iberia, and also things I will code in the future. This is for your knowledge, but also for suggestions, new ideas, fixes, etc.
NOTE: the features I'll write will be only the unusual ones comparing to other muds.

General:
- I am writing helpfiles for the mud at the speed I am coding things. You can log in and type \"help\" to check it (the files with a minus before are not coded yet but already with a reference).
- Playlist - there's a helpfile in the mud with a thematic playlist suggestion to hear while you are logged to Iberia.
- There's already implemented OOC comm line and a news system in the mud. It doesn't warn you yet when there are new news, but will in the near future.
- Time - my idea is this: in the year of 148BC, XX day and XX month, Iberia had XX tribes, their tribes were in war against XX enemies, etc, etc. In resume, Iberia has a past and has a present at that date, and that date will be the start point of this mud. Players must act thematically, but the future of Iberia MUD is shaped 100% by the players (in real life, the Lusitan war lasted 9 years, but in the mud can be totally different).
More about the time (that can be changed at any time): each day lasts 2 hours RL time, each room dinamic phrase is written each 2 minutes (perhaps should be increased) and the weather will change each 9 minutes.

Terrains (rooms):
- Concerning weather, each terrain is classificated from 1 to 4, where 1 means bad weather and 4 good weather (a room with 1 may have good weather though, but it wont happen frequently). This will prevent world with the same weather (like in other muds, where in one room or 20000 rooms away the weather is the same), and also permit have regions with different weathers, as in real.

Characters:
- Surname can be only edited one time - a surname is the name of your family. You should choose carefully, and will make heritage something to worry about.
- Also concerning equipment, the body is divided in arms, feet, head, torso, back, waist, legs, hands, rings and necklaces. Each of these parts have 3 layers - the first represents imediately next to your skin, the second one the intermediate layer, and the third one the outer layer. This permits you to wear a t-shirt (1st layer) and a ringmail (2nd layer), for instance (in other muds, if you use a ringmail, you couldn't use anything more on your torso - here, each piece of equipment is assigned to a part of the body and to a layer). In this last example, you could also use a cape or a tabard in your torso as well (would fit in the 3rd layer of the torso).
- I have considered everything as a skill - languages, farming, smithing, everything is a skill.
- Admin are players as well (if well thought, this can happen without any kind of problem).
- The skill AWARENESS will represent your knowledge of the world that surrounds you. In this way, every NPC, item or room will have 2 different short descriptions, the generalistic one and the exact one, and will have also a variable that tell the minimum awareness needed to see the exact description.
Example (using already our first room): if you have less than 30 awareness you will see this short description: \"Entrance of a small village\"; if you have more than 30 awareness, the short description will be \"Entrance of Lorica\". My doubt is how awareness will increase... You could pay (study... not necessary spending money) to raise that skill, but I also thought about increasing it when aging.
Viriato (João Afonso)

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Post by Viriato »

Future:
- One of my HUGE doubts (even have an idea how it should be better): will players have levels? if yes, will they level for experience only? average skills? I am more turned to a leveless system, or a experience based level system.
- Combat, another big doubt - not coded yet. I want a system real, tough. Its strange a newbie, just because he's newbie, need to fight agains mice and birds to train fighting... I mean, you create a character, a man. It is supposed you have like 20 years old or more... it is logical if you fight against a mouse with a sword and you hit him ONCE, and he stills in good shape? If you hit a bird, he stills in good shape and wanting to continue fighting? You could smash the mouse with your foot, and the small bird for sure would fly away. Even if they could fight equally to you, a hit from a man wielding a sword or knife would kill them in the first strike. A more realistic example, a man with a dagger backstabing another one with success, this last would die imediately... I pretend, so, a real system of combat.
- Deaths, another doubt - one system I like is this one (it is a reasonable solution for permanently deahts and playability at the same time): each player has 3 lives (can be \"killed\" 3 times), and the 4th death will kill him PERMANENTLY (this is not so tragic at all considering a leveless sytem and giving some importance to heritage, as it is supposed and has happened at 150BC). Right after dying in one of the 3 deaths, the player will read something like: \"you have lost your senses...\" and \"you regain conscious, and all your body is in pain\", and losts temporarly some skills (in 30 minutes or so, the skills lost would return to the previous value).
After 12 hours of age, for instance, he would get one life more. Example: Viriato died 2 times, and just have one life more. After 12 hours of age, he will have 2 lives. After more 12 hours of age he will have 3 lives again (a player cannot have more than those 3 lives).
- Eventually in your life as Iberia citizen you can get scars, loose a hand, etc, that influentiate your future (can't wield double handed weapons, for instance).
- As you could figure out, Iberia is maybe more like a mush... but very similar to a mud. I pretend to a balanced system of gaining exp, where a farmer, miner or warrior get similar experiences fullfilling their duties.
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Post by Viriato »

More in the future:
- Have a complex wound-based system of damage representation. Suffer gashes, bruises, punctures, burns, and fractures, in result of a combat or disease or whatever - this seems nice, very real, but needs hardwork to create it (code is easy, idealizing it is the difficult part).
- A command to send a thematic log to administrators to give experience to players.
The best example is this (most of you know what I am talking about): some knights have the duty to defend their home city from enemy corsairs. These last invade the city and start to kill their citizens. One of the knights who was patrolling the city find the foes, give the alert, and a team of knights come meet the corsairs in order to expel them from the city. A battle starts, some die because was their oath to give his life for protect the city, others die to protect their brothers in arms, and the battle ends. Also, every talk between knights and corsairs was thematic, with corsairs, lets say, with a drunk accent and knights with firm and polite words.
In resume, after this battle, a corsair that liked to RP against the knights could send his log to administrators, saying knights are good at RP, and the opposite could happen as well. And so, administrators give extra experience points to the players involved in such battle.
- Complex system of crops and type of terrains (a terrain better suits this or that crop).
- Law system - like the law system of that time in Iberia. Criminals could have his hand cut off (a custom among Lusitans), or could be killed in honor of a god or goddess. Anyway, a player killing a player is considered a criminal but, of course, a player killing a man NPC is also a crime.

This are some features I've thought already, some others are in my mind, and many others need to be thought by any builder/player. Hope you like what already exist and the ideas for the future, and that this post gives you will to contribute to Iberia.
Viriato (João Afonso)

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Post by Siliniez »

A great list of ideas. Regarding the scars and loss of limbs idea, I think it's awesome and I hope you implement it one day.

I'm always open to discussion if you ever need just someone to listen and give feedback.
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Post by Viriato »

Now that you returned to activity I do things faster regarding code. Also, with you working in other areas, Iberia will give a great step ahead. Hope Elhost returns as well, and I believe in short time we can advertise in MUD sites again, so others may join the team :)
Viriato (João Afonso)

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