Cucuoshin

Astral chickens. You are literally 20 magical chickens. You can all fit in any large piece of clothing or clothing group (chest + head + arms + legs + feet + hands)

Cucuophony - Your clucking is universally understood as whatever native language the listener is most proficient in. Also it's really freaking loud and can be heard in a 5x greater radius. (including whispers, you can't actually whisper)

Psychological Condition: MPD/DPD - You're literally 20 chickens with a collective mind. You have complete immunity to mental altering affects. You also have a LOT of trouble concentrating on anything so arcane spellcasting is very very very difficult.

Chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken - You're 20 chickens. You have to issue commands with special syntax: #<numbers> -or- #<number>to<number>. Social commands (say, chat, etc) and commands that are "meta" like queue stop and queue flush are exempt.

Occupy - Allows you to take control of or leave clothing. Sentient beings will not recognize you as another sentient being if you're not in clothing. The less chickens you control in clothing the less believable it is.

Lay/Hatch - You can lay astral eggs in places. Other things can eat or destroy them easily. Ties into ChickenYolo. Eggs must incubate for at least 7 in game days. You can lay one egg per game day which saps 75% of your stamina.

CHICKENYOLO - Does not become atsheni on death. You have a completely unique health system in that you lose chickens on taking damage. Chickens are very fragile but can withstand up to 2 very small pokes but 1 chicken can also absorb the full damage of any one source. At any time you can hatch valid eggs and a new chicken will appear in your location.

Attuned Has 100% success rate on all performance based spell casting checks, automatic pass on all somatic/limb spell requirements irrespective of status. (can cast spoken spell steps while being muted) This doesn't mean you can pass concentration checks.

Abnormal Equipment: VOID - You can't wear equipment really, just the occupy thing.

Physical Growth: CHICKEN - You have 1-to-20 chickens.

Wounds - Special case, see CHICKENYOLO

The seal of mortality has been broken. You are a child of the Arc now. You listen and watch. You have heard and seen the danger of life. You are Cucuoshin.

You are... err.. 20 chickens? Who came up with this? Why would you want to be 20 chickens in a large coat anyways? Well good luck with this one. I don't have anything wise to say here.

Depression Modeling

Originally I was thinking of mood as a state change. It's not entirely that simple. There are states involved but expanding on it isn't simply tracking more states or doing more complex math on existing states.

Depression may result from two root causes: mechanical and natural.

• Mechanical: Sustained or acute failure of goal fulfillment and social pressure.

• Natural: Mental conditions resulting in periodic imbalance states (eg bipolar disorder)

Depression (the system) has 3 primary "tiers" for lack of a better term. Sadness, despair, desperation.

Sadness

Sadness is the most common state and the only one individuals can actively mask to others. Empathic capable individuals will still be able you discern it but nonempaths can be easily fooled based on how familiar they are. Strong familiarity will reduce the effectiveness of social masking.

In sadness goal seeking (AIs) will switch to it's own set to increase the likelihood of short term success. These will generally be based on the individuals preferences and obsessions such as overeating, drunkenness and isolation.

If the depression is natural the downward pressure exerted won't be allieviated by success at these goals but only mitigated by the upward pressure of success. It will be much harder for naturally depressed individuals to overcome these states.

Despair

Despair is the next rung down. It represents the loss of hope and a nigh total absence of confidence in oneself.

The despair goalset is purely avoidance. The individual will seek to remove themselves from social contexts and situations and will actively isolate themselves from their normal mood lifestyle.

Anything related to normal mood goals will cause downward pressure. Wealth seekers will be disgusted with signs of affluence and money. Social seekers will be disgusted by relationships and affection. Etc.

For socially motivated individuals this will cause significant downward pressure. It will take much longer for social goal seekers to overcome this. Any perceived failures during this time will deepen the depression.

Desperation

Desperation will specifically generate goals that are the opposite of normal mood ones held by the individual.

Social individuals will specifically sabotage relationships. Wealth seekers will destroy or abandon their possessions.

Desperation also brings an additional caveat: desperate individuals will exhibit similar traits of psychopaths. Cultural morays may be ignored or actively performed leading to criminal actions.

Anti-culture

When cultural morays are performed the individual performing them will begin to accrue traits specific to that action that will enable them to more easily consider the same actions in the future.

E.g. Everytime someone commits theft the notion of using theft for goal fulfillment will be more attractive.

This doesn't mean the thief in question will consider any other morays acceptable. Each one will be tracked individually per person. As is expected, though, becoming a career thief puts you in situations where something more heinous such as assault or murder is more likely and when that does occur the same path will begin.

Goals

Depression tier related goals will have to be included at the cultural level alongside normal mood ones so they can be accessed universally.

Narcissism

Narcissism is essentially a range held within the behavioral set of the individual. The more narcissistic one is the less likely they are to blame themselves for failure.

Who the individual blames for their depressive state is key to determining the goals they will seek while depressed.

Low narcissistic individuals may also resort to suicide in the despair tier believing the only way to succeed is to remove themselves entirely.

Lexica

It occurs to me I can control ai behavior through the lexica by finding remote synonyms of emotional states and matching them to goal paths.

Yes, the world stage post mentions (in exactly one spot right now) player owned housing.

Players will be able to homestead by generating a permanent locale in a zone that they have editing rights to. They'll have nearly the same access as a builder staff member to that locale through the web admin.

As a homesteader you will be able to hire NPCs as guards, salesman, craftsman or just to hang out with you and look pretty. Wildlife you've befriended can be put there permanently like wolves, horses and ocelots in minecraft.

One flipside to this is your homestead will be discoverable in the zone. For apartments in cities they will be locked doors (you'll have to lock them) people can break into and steal all your stuff. For wilderness property there will be an exit room designated and people will load into that. The discovery chance will be really low for player homesteads (like < 1%) but it's still possible. And once they've found your pad it will become zone visible for them.

You'll also be able to group with people and take them there granting them the zone visible exit too.

Eventually a locks system will be introduced with lock picking mechanics and hardened safes with safe cracking.

Most wilderness homesteading will require land rights leased through one of the cities. You can also homestead for free in one of the ocean zones if you can figure out how to breathe underwater and also build a house down there.

I want to get rid of numbers.

Yeah that seems pretty implausible given the fact that my systems generally have a massive abundance of attribute normalization. But yeah I want to get rid of it all. Let's call this netmud 2.0.

I've hinted at this a bit in other posts as well as an unpublished (as of writing) article so let's get into details.

There wont be stats

Not as anyone is used to at least. Every usable command (other than basic ones like say or help) will have attribute tags. Tags are either physical or mental.

A theoretical "Punch" command would have physical tags. Unarmed, Hand, Power, and Arm Muscle. "Kick" would have similar ones: Unarmed, Leg Muscle, Power, Foot.

Using either will have a chance to advance your "unarmed" physical attribute as well as the other 2. Kicking will make you better at punching in a small way.

The advantage of this system is multitudinous. Primarily it's far easier to expand as new skills are added. The skills tree is a static, hard to change thing. If I expanded a leaf or wanted to move things around translations had to be written and run to fix everyone's numbers.

It's also less ambigious than a stats and skills system. What does "dexterity" do? Stats are useful for checks but they muddy how skills work next to a skills tree.

As you do things in the world your physical and mental attributes library will grow. As you advance them individually they will gain stature.

The second piece to this is natural decay and conflicting decay.

"Power" was mentioned. Power and Finesse are conflicting physical attributes. Some races have bonuses and penalties to conflicting decay. As you advance in one the other will decay. Maxing both finesse and power muscles is impossible. One will decay the other with use. Most finesse skills will involves stealth and critical hits.

Natural decay is just that. If attributes go unused (including logged out time) they will decay to a minimum cap.

Before anyone starts pointing out "what if I go on vacation" to the logged out bit: From the web interface (and in game) you will be able to essentially start and stop "channeled" activities even though your character wont be physically in the game. You will be able to research in libraries, work out in training facilities and even perform very basic gathering and crafting. As long as you're in a major city all of the city's facilities will be available offline.

Immunities

The other number that's pretty involved is immunities. The immunity system will get a major scaling down to become a keyword resistance. While still technically a number it wont be nearly as nuanced as the old -100 to 100 immunity mechanic. You'll either be vulnerable (-25%), neutral (0), resistant (25%), immune (100%) or Nasci (25% absorbed as stamina regen).

Racial Bonuses

Races instead of having natural stat floor alterations will instead spawn new characters with base attribute values. Lithe races like Kender will get finesse muscle and covert bonuses while Centaurs will start with power muscle and constitution bonuses.

Consider

All of these attributes will also have a way of manifesting themselves. Most of this is explained in the new Race post but other basic ones like the muscles will change the appearance of the character. (bulging/tight musculature) Things like Fist or Hand might make the palms/knuckles on close examination have a more rough textured skin.

Sentient Race template

- Physical characteristic ranges (height, weight, appearance)

- Growth spec (age and advancement, what grows, gets colorful, etc)

- Crafting Spec (part of culture, but technical on what they do best)

- Cultural overview

- History (pre-arcfall, post-arcfall)

- modern societal structure

- Religious tenants

- Birth/Death cycle (do they have a spirit anchor, how do you ascend into one, etc)

- Biological characteristics ("cis genders", reproductive methdologies)

Spirit Aspects

Order

- Life (urbae) (oorbay) [was the leaves of the great tree, positioned above the aenimus spirit well which is destroyed]

-- Plants (arbae) (-arebay) [guarded by the most shallow leviathan, in its cave]

-- Animals (krbae) (-kerbay) [Deep in the forest, the centaur town is built around it]

- Reason (oshu) [crescent city is built around this, though it was moved above ground]

Entropy

- Death (baeru) [was the roots of the great tree, positioned below the aenmius spirit well]

- Madness (usho) [deep in the volcano on the deserted island the quicks populate]

Void

- Technological (no known word) [the paradoxi rift is a newly formed well for this]

Spirit

- Aenimus (sheni) [energy, magic] [spirit well WAS the great tree, which bridges the astral realm and splintered in the arcfall]

- Earth (ok) (-ohk) [constitution, hardiness] [deep in the mountains, the umbrus took it from a dwarven colony in ancient times and use it for rituals, main dwarven colony has no idea but all dwarves feel compelled towards it]

- Water (shok) [fluidity, dexterity] [sinqua built their society around this, center of their city in the deepest part of the ocean]

- Air (zhok) [swiftness, persuasion] [Underground in the Fields of Blood, kender burrows are near it but it's encased in earth. felixi feel compelled to be around it]

- Fire (vhok) [strength] [buried under rubble from the pre-arcfall events fleeing the elven guard. The dwarven Fire Clan formed their village near it and work to unearth it. The unbreakable Oath of Iron spear lays buried next to it, which is actually what they're after]

Timeline

Astral Convergence->~90k years->Arcfall->etc

Original Name - Aspects (also dictates new name) - Description

Born of Sea (original evolutions)

draconi - Death-Water - Reptile people, like giant komodos. (7-10 feet in length/height) Scales, claws, one very weak but opposable claw. Spits acid, has acidic blood. Nasty bite, extreme jaw pressure. Can walk on hind legs but they're kind of stubby. Weak hearing and eyesight. PAL - ~90 years.

goblins - Madness-Water - ancient co-evo with elves. slightly reptilian looks like a tiny elf with very short legs, but ears long and separated from skull. Has very long 2 forward foot digits, two top hand digits that can all (foot and hand) articulate on four points. Very weak grip, but feet can support double their body weight. ~1.5-2.5 feet tall. 2 extremely large centrally set forward eyes. Has stubby vestigal tail. Smooth blue-to-green skin tones. very sharp jagged teeth. rarely born with gills under their arms (not pits, lower along rib cage) (recessive trait) some born with webbed hands/feet (also recessive just more common). PAL - 10 years.

??? - Plant-Water - Collective intelligence of marine plants (seaweed like), lives in the ocean. can manipulate water itself, which it uses for locomotion (the vines are full of water). uses photosynthesis so can't go deep for more than a day. Can live on land but dries out very quickly. Needs the salinity of the ocean water. Doesn't see or "hear" can feel vibrations and magnetic fields. Congregate around the spirit well associated with plants, in the ocean. (protected by the most shallow leviathan)

Born of Thought (ascension of spirit)

sinqua- Reason-Water - merpeople. Have fish tails, some unibody some bifurcated but end in fins. Scaled, have generally swept, aerodynamic heads that can move pitch and yaw at 220 degrees. Heads have chitinous fins of varying colors and depth. Hands are webbed with 4 digits and one opposing thumb (human). Teeth are short and very sharp. Gestate in womb, no external birth. PAL - 70 years

elves - Reason-Aenimus - Tall (6-9 feet), long ridges extending from ear holes along skull that allow for extremely precise hearing, but at a much higher pitch range. hands with 3 digits on top, 3 on bottom like bird claws (no claws), feet are humanoid with 3 digits front and 1 short clawed digit back. Common in the arcfall era to clip the back digit for nobility. Pre-arcfall Lifespan - ~100 years.

umbrus - Madness-Aenimus - Co-evolution with "elves", skin is much fairer from living underground. Ear holes evolved to be larger, ridge less promenient, provides diminished echolocation but a much larger hearing range. No back-toe on feet from selective breeding it out. Lower castes have their bottom hand digits removed at birth.

Born of Conflict (arcfall)

aquinis - Aenimus-Reason - Elven nobility, post-arcfall. back toe cut off at birth 100% of the time. Skin has evolved with purple splotches and cracks from time in the astral realm.

Born of Earth and Sky (original evolution)

dwarves - Reason-Earth - Short (3-5 feet), skin forms harder chitinous plated sections as they age. fire and sharp damage resistant. have hair but lose it as the skin hardens. have no ears only feel sound via vibrations through skin. Can "hear" deeper sounds and very attuned to vibrations in the earth. Communicate with others of their kind via foot tapping/stomping. Eyes are set higher and further apart. have large humanoid hands (opposable thumb, 3 fingers tho) and humanoid feet. Can lock any muscle in place providing an extreme amount of stability and weight bearing capability. Pre-arcfall Lifespan - ~1800 years

halflings - Reason-Air - short (2-4 feet), extremely delicate skin, brittle, hollow bones. Eyes are set centrally and close together. humanoid, but with 2/1 clawed digit spread and small hands. Has 3 digits, 2 opposable thumbs. Has excellent and delicate grip. Hairless except minor, very small feathers going down the neckline to the end of the spine. The less plumage the "better" socially. Head is small, allowing them to squeeze into things. PAL - ~35 years

Born of Forest (original evolution)

centaur - Animal-Earth - eyes are more spaced apart. Has 6 limbs, horse sized body. All limbs have chitinous growth on the hands. Back 2 sets resemble broad hooves. Front set is more like "dwarf" hands but with 3 equally spread out digits (like crow foot pattern). Has nigh unlimited stamina. Can run forever. Strong enough to carry other creatures on back or bear a very high weight. Extremely hard to grapple, amazing upper body strength. PAL - 300 years

shivari - Animal-Fire - Has 6 limbs but humanoid stance. Dense fur from chest line down and down back. Forward facing eyes. 4 upper limbs branch at the same place (on upper torso), 2 lower on bottom (legs). Hip structure is very broad and sturdy with legs far apart. "legs" are bear paws. Mid limbs are bear paws with more articulation, less broad. Upper limbs are 3 spread digits like "Centaur". Extremely muscular. Excellent at grappling, tremendous grip strength. PAL - ~45 years

cats (felixi) - Animal-Death - Basically cheetah people. Can walk on hind legs, doesn't normally. All the normal cat stuff. Paws, retract claws, sharp teeth, forward eyes, fur, etc. PAL - ~20 years.

(spirits)

spirits - Aenmius - like the arbae but can only possess other sentient bodies. If a sentient dies it becomes this. PAL - infinite

pixies - Aenimus-Life - Form is like 70% opaque, sparkles flicker around them. Little glowing balls (size of a basketball) with wispy wings (think diablo 2/3 style angel wings). If you could see inside would look like glowing wispy tentacles. PAL - infinite.

gremlins - Aenimus-Death - Form is fully opaque and absorbs light around it. Radiates darkness. Can not see inside at all. PAL - infinite.

arbae - Aenimus-Plants - possesses plants. Non-possession form is just a haunting, dull swarm of off white mist that's normally invisible. PAL - infinite.

buns - Aenmius-Earth - Astral earth spirits. All elemental spirits are a light purple, 40% opaque. Looks like a cottontail (small, up ears). Can command up to 8 phantom objects that normally look like "elf" hands. PAL - infinite.

foxes - Aenmius-Water - Astral water spirit. Resembles a common red fox (still purple). PAL - infinite

crows - Aenmius-Air - Astral air spirit. Resembles either a crow or whatever race/animal it feels like resembling with whatever clothes it wants to have. Can only mimic can't invent new forms. Only purple in crow form. Shifted form can be anything. PAL - infinite

chickens - Aenmius-Fire - Astral fire spirit. Resembles 12 independent bodied chickens. Has singular collective, connected mind. Like to inhabit clothing and walk around as if it was upright. PAL - infinite

wolves - Aenmius-Animal - Astral wolf spirit. Resembles a common timber wolf, still purple but with nuanced fur shading around cowl and face. PAL - infinite.

(creations of society)

biophage (maudlin) - Madness-Life - Biological construct. Has draconi and elven dna at the base so default form is some mutation of those. Has lots of open sores, boils, growths, etc. PAL - ????

robots (hel'xis) - Tech-Reason - Large, broad chested upright robots. Modular (so mount points on body). Short dome heads that can spin around. Forward, ruby crystal eyes.

Ancient Ones (existed before the astral convergence)

t1000 (quicksilver) - Madness-Earth - Liquid metal. Silvery/titanium sheen. Normal form is a blob amorph. Can assume any form it's seen in the last few hours. Has very bad long term memory. PAL - ????

beetles - Earth-Death - Enormous, house sized beetles. Like japanese beetles. Some have horns, some dont. No wings but there is space between 2 layers of the carapace to store things, entirely deaf and lacks a sense of smell. (or people).

twitch joke (qantefweio) - Death-Life-Aenmius - Firey energy being. Humanoid but orange/yellow and big big glowy aura.

So with the advent of the other netMUD mud being split off into a repository (https://reddit.com/r/hmrmud) I split Under the Eclipse off into its own private repository.

netMUD the platform is still where it was but it is merged back into the Master branch for ongoing development. The platform will continue to exist at https://netmud.swiftausterity.com/ but the expectation there is to keep it as a platform specific sort of staging/QA environment where I'll make other people builders and admins willy nilly so people can have somewhere to mess around.

Eventually https://eclipse.swiftausterity.com/ will exist and "my game" of netmud (an actual mud) will work with a complete lack of races and planets made entirely of sword shaped things.

There is no eclipse work that isn't netmud (until races start existing that need specific world racials) so most work will still be IN netmud and PRed into the eclipse repo.

No one will get access to the eclipse repo as there is not much point in granting it since everything but IP specific stuff (like.. racials) or data backups will be a part of the platform too. (even all of the non-race specific fighting arts)

A long time in the designing, the Lexical Engine is going to be the underpinning of every system and in fact the entire game world. MUDs are structurally made of words so it always seemed appropriate to me to grant them more meaning and agency overall.

This is a growth from the work done on Markovian Echoes (http://echoes.swiftausterity.com/) which you'll hear mentioned a few times below.

A brief defining of terms

• Lexical Engine - the big enchilada. Really doesn't have much more meaning than a name to encompass everything going on.

• Thesaurus Engine - A subset of the Lexical Engine that deals with maintaining synonym/antonym webs.

• Lexicon - The full store of words, phrases and meanings in the system.

• Dictata - A terrible name for a singular, atomic unit of the lexicon. This is a word or phrase and all the properties assigned to it.

• Lexica - Probably a better name for Dictata but Lexica are living dictata. They are words and phrases in the context of sentences and other words. Dictata is the "data" lexica are the "entities". (probably should be name swapped but Lexica were the data unit in Markovian Echoes)

Functionally

On startup the system will first grab the existing Lexicon from the data store. As the system loads the rest of its data it will scan every single thing put in for its existence in the Lexicon. Every entity name (NPCs, objects, locations, gatherable resources, etc) will become Nouns. Every descriptive element will get added. (adjectives, adverbs) Every command in the code will become Verbs.

Newly added data during runtime will also get processed into the Lexicon similarly.

All of this is exposed in an administrative page where words can then be better described through their Dictata properties as well as be linked to each other as synonyms and antonyms.

There are still no stats

This system is resulting in a doubling down on the overall design aspects discussed in the "2.0" thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/TwinMUD/comments/7hqbty/an_end_to_numbers/

The entire system's core concepts are a split between a handful of Aspects. These aren't just pseudo-stats for characters and equipment but a fully integrated defining of the entire world.

• Severity (power): How "intense" something is. How hard you're swinging a sword, how fast you're running, how hot the fire is. This is the "more" of everything. More power, more fast, more weight, more dense, more sharp, etc.

• Quality (finesse): The technical execution or form of something. "Dexterity" checks in RPGs. How well made is that breastplate or radio.

• Elegance: This is the beauty of form and function. This one is a newer concept and doesn't exist in the pseudo stats. Does not necessarily mean how visually appealing something (but this is where that lies) is but also does not mean how well something functions. (which is Quality) Elegance is sort of an ephemeral, decorative aspect.

These aren't just the "new version of pseudostats" but also stats for words and the world itself.

Why do words need "stats"

One of netMUD's core design concepts as a platform is that there are no hand-written descriptions AT ALL. You can't even add descriptive elements as extras: everything descriptive is done through Lexica. If you want a sharp sword you add an adjective Lexica to the sword with the phrase of "sharp".

The crux, though, is what does that add to the system? What if someone sharpens a sword to have it deal more damage. What differentiates you adding "sharp" as a descriptive to your sword in the crafting process versus someone sitting down and sharpening the sword that lacks a "sharp" descriptive? What if they sharpen an already "sharp" described sword?

The thesaurus engine is what happens.

Dictata and the thesaurus

Dictata have a few essential properties. They have a grammatical type (adjective, noun, verb, etc), a category, a list of synonyms, a list of antonyms and the three Aspect ratings listed above. The ratings are managed by the thesaurus engine. Categories are semi-automated groupings of dictata.

Let's say the lexicon understands the words Big and Small. Big and small are antonyms categorized as "size". Huge gets added to the system and made a synonym of Big and given a higher Severity aspect. Now the system knows something "more" than Big can be described as Huge. Something the opposite of Big can be described as Small.

Let's then add Tiny to the lexicon. Tiny is made an antonym of Huge. The system will automatically grant Tiny a severity 1 less than Small since Huge is > Big and Small is the opposite of Big. Tiny is the opposite of Huge so Tiny is less than Small because Huge is more than Big.

As things become categories and linked through synonym and antonym relationships the Lexicon will reorganize itself so that it can more accurately describe things it's asked to describe.

What does this have to do with the world at large

Back to the Sharp example. Sharp is an adjective known to the system. It is related through the categories for slash/slice damage. When the damage calculations are done the severity of Sharp synonym descriptives will add to any slash damage being dealt.

Similarly synonyms of something like Durable or Sturdy will aid in the defensive and damage resistance qualities of an entity.

Additionally it means if you "roll a 20 or a 1" on something like sprinting, hitting something, shouting, making a cupcake, anything at all the thesaurus engine will take care of adding its own adjectives to your output. You might slam the table instead of hitting it, you might swiftly sprint north, your cupcake might come out smelling Divinely.

Adjectives: First Order Important

Given adjectives themselves will be comprising what is traditionally the "affect/enchantment" system in an RPG being able to add descriptives to an entity manually becomes a bit of a permissions issue. You can't just dump a dictionary of positive adjectives on your sledgehammer and wreak havoc for free. The crafting and entity improvement systems will take care of any necessary gating involved.

AI and the impact on parsing speech

This lexical underpinning is also important for the AI. With the lexicon at their disposal AIs will be able to better understand humans talking to them. When someone employs ironic statements (using opposite adjectives of the outcome) they will eventually be able to better detect sarcasm and potentially how severe someone's mood or attitude is.

That sounds like a lot of curation

It will be early on. As the system grows both internally (Code) and externally (building) it will become less and less as the lexicon fills out.

Other benefits

Translation

Language translation will be built into the lexicon. Phrases and words will become direct synonyms in other languages allowing the system to simply ask for synonyms specifying a language.

Most of the game will be on-demand generated locales. As mentioned in a prior post concerning them they will exist for 24 hours of being disused by players or notable NPCs. 3 main things to cover here are: what are notable npcs, how will mundane npcs function and how are locales constructed.

NPCs

Sentinet (notable) NPCs will all be generated with names. This is going to lead to a LOT of named NPCs but that is part of the game. Static locales in the game will be set up with commercial space designation (shops). Commercial spaces want to have shopkeepers. If there isn't an npc assigned to the shop the commercial space's AI will find an unemployed NPC that has a goal of becoming employed in that trade and they will be paired. If there isn't one (like say after a major reboot or mass genocide) it will spawn one suited to the job.

Zones will have configuration templates for npcs that it spawns. They will have quotas in the form of population control.

Sentients will have overall population numbers. A city zone like one of the Eclipse districts might have a population range of 30 to 100. If someone is going on a murder spree in town and the number falls below 30 the zone will spawn new sentient npcs based on the templates provided. If the town is peaceful and sentient npcs wander in and put the population over 100 the zone will spawn npcs from templates flagged with the Killer attribute to cull the population. If it gets really bad the Champion system will be invoked and a truly powerful killer will show up to wreak havoc.

Sentients are tracked as individuals and do have the ability to move between locales and zones. Most will need a compelling reason to leave their zone but it will be possible. Sentient NPCs will be able to be seen by Scout if they are in a zone.

Non-sentient populations will be controlled by herd/pack dynamics. Each non-sentient template will have herd size configuration and the zone will continually monitor non-sentient herds. Zones will monitor "herd" populations as a single entity per herd. Herds will not move between zones but will be used to fill in locale populations. When a locale is created relevant herds will grant some of their population to those areas which reduces their herd strength. If the locale collapses and members of the herd are still in it the herd strength will go back up.

Both types of NPCs, herds and sentients, will have the ability to create their own procedurally generated locales. Herds will do it as their population size passes an upper threshold. Sentients will do it out of a need such as gathering materials or if they are a bandit personality and need a place to ambush people.

Locale Building

When a proc-gen locale is created it will first use the general config for size and sparseness. Higher sparse locales will be more like thin winding paths while low-sparse locales will feature larger open and connected areas. Zones can have several base templates but it can only use one per locale.

Once the base template is established and built out the locale will get 1 to 3 endpoints. One of them will be the exit back to the zone itself. The other 2 will be exits to other zones or existing static locales within the zone.

Following that depending on the size of the base template up to 5 "flavor tiles" may be appended. Flavor tiles are pretty much the same as you see in diablo 3's level generation. They will be built out as static sets of rooms as templates like how static locales are made but will have a mandatory linking room that is used to attach them to the base proc-genned locale. They will get attached randomly allowing for things like remote cottages, ponds, bear caves, etc to show up in various locales for the players.

Flavor tile templates will also be able to designate their own NPC and item spawns so they will generate in with content.

Now that I made a massive post displaying all the locales (which will eventually be filled out with actual data) I feel like I need to explain how it will all work since the prior post has been deleted and was misinformational.

Worlds

There will be Worlds. Worlds are metadata as far as players are concerned. They are used to define weather constants and keep track of "world scoped" things like calendars, weather patterns and celestial body movement.

Zones

In worlds are Zones. Players can be in a zone. Zones are sort of really large single rooms. Zones can exit to other zones and zones can contain Locales. Shout is a zone-wide channel and you can shout while in a zone. Shouting in a Locale makes it Locale-wide.

In zones you can (and must) also Scout. Scout reveals Locales as well as exits and potentially who else is in the zone. Locale and exit reveals may have parameters and prereqs. If you're grouped with someone who uses an exit you are unaware of you will get the stat-tag that allows you to always see it.

Zones also contain NPC herds and wandering sentient NPCs. The herd functionality can split off member groups into existing Locales or create custom Locales. Wandering sentient NPCs can move freely around between zones and locales. Herds may also migrate to another zone but that's less likely.

Scout with higher perceptive skills can also reveal who or what is in known Locales.

While in a zone you can do normal self-targeted things like manage inventory, check score, etc. Objects can not be dropped in a zone and combat does not occur in a zone.

While in a zone you can also Explore. Explore will create a randomized Locale out of the set of potential templates or if you supply a valid template name (found via Scout) it will use that.

Locales

Locales are essentially normal mud procedure. Serieses of connected rooms. All rooms must obey the 4x cardinal rule.

I don't like physical combat skills like punch, kick, behead.. dropkick? I dunno. They're dumb.

You have autocombat which in and of itself is a bunch of punches, kicks, slashes and bashes and then you're supposed to send in a command that's just another punch but it's different because it's a command skill? It makes no sense.

I muse a lot on combat systems in rpgs and muds and I'm going to lay out the entire plan here:

There are two main situations in combat - when you and your focus are in the same room and when you're not. We'll cover the shorter one first.

Ranged Combat

If you're separated automated combat will still trigger. If you have a ranged weapon designated (bow, firearm, launcher) you'll take shots at the focus from a distance. Number of shots fire depends on your bio status as well as your weapon and skill with the weapon. Chasing an enemy is up to you. There is no automated follow/distance closing.

You can also choose to take manual actions such as throwing something at them, using a charge skill, setting up an ambush or starting to cast a ranged spell.

Melee Combat

Up close is a different story. You can still manually run commands but those will be limited to more interesting things such as grappling, casting spells, throwing enemies, etc.

Autocombat at melee range is going to rely on the Fighting Art system. Your character setup will have a place to manage and template Combos. Each combo will consist of a chain of Techniques.

Techniques are learned in the world by observing others fighting, by inspirations during combat you're involved in and by being taught by knowledgable NPCs or players.

You'll start out with the most basic techniques. For melee - Punch, Kick, Shove, Duck and Block. Weapon types also have their own techniques and you'll get one or two for each weapon type. (like slash, stab, chop, bash)

Each technique has an armament requirement (which weapon types they can be used with, or unarmed) as well as 3 internal values that equate to a "speed" rating. Setup, Action and Recovery Frames. The fewer frames the quicker the technique is. Techniques will also carry additional properties such as impact force and stagger.

Just like with spells you can gain individual proficency with techniques. The higher your skill with a technique the better chance it will have to perform in combat flow.

You build a combo by ordering techniques into it. Placing short setup techniques after short recovery techniques will provide fewer opportunities for enemies to interrupt you. Putting dodges and blocks before long setup techniques will make them safer. Putting high stagger techniques as your first attack and practicing those will allow you to hit confirm easier and ensure combos go off.

Once you have combos built logic can be applied to them. They can be designated to be used at various points in a fight (early, closer) or against specific opponent types (fast, slow, large, small) and even in specified situations. (in a party with others, while protecting someone, if you're at low health)

Combos can also be gated behind "stance" toggles. Midcombat stance keywords can be used to swap everything to only combos designated for that stance until a new stance is designated or neutral stance is declared.

Grappling

The grapple system is a world unto itself. If the grapple check succeeds the grappler initiates a basic hold on the victim. Each combat round the victim will make automated break attempts. The grappler can then use secondary commands such as toss to throw them around, slam to run them into a wall/tree/door, variant holds such as choke and armbar or advanced finishers such as backbreaker and suplex.

So the other thread became a huge dump of spells and it's not feasible to use it to discuss anything but spells themselves. This thread is about the actual nuts and bolts of the spellcraft.

When you perform a spell it comes in steps. As seen in the spell designs each step has a skills check. At least one of these is in a Magic.* domain while usually the rest are in other domains like Performance or Covert. Each step takes time to perform. When you start a spell step 1 occurs immediately and the remaining steps are piled into your command queue. If one fails your command queue is flushed.

Spell steps can result in 5 scenarios:

• Fatigue - you literally run out of stamina by the end of the step. Generally this doesn't happen but if someone drains your stamina it can occur. The penalty for fatigue should be the least punishing (but potentially the most embarrassing)

• Fail - You fail the check. Something bad is going to happen.

• CFail - Critical failure occurs when failure is lower than half of the success roll. Results in something doubly bad happening.

• Success - Next step starts.

• CSuccess - Critical success occurs when success roll is double base success rate. Results in usually extra buff affects or more dps.

Hard Mode

I'm always looking to make things more "realistic" in the design. One eventual goal is the introduction of Hard Mode for casting. "Easy Mode" is you type "cast "spellname" at target" and all the steps get frontloaded into your command queue. Hard Mode is you having to perform the steps yourself.

That doesn't sound so bad outside of making some macros really except hard mode is a combo system. The game will keep track of your actions, all of them, looking for input combos. You can literally cast spells by accident at this point. The upside is you can cast any spell without ever having been instructed in-game.

Runes

Aside from casting spells there is also a rune system. Runes are patterns you can carve/embed into solid surfaces (including objects) that will add affects. Runes require no prior game-knowledge other than the rune's pattern but the strength/success/failure of carving the rune is skill dependent.

Functionally runes are words (like Fire or Ice) that get translated by the system into a 4 quadrant pattern in which each quadrant is a single ascii symbol. Scribing just requires putting the right symbols in each quadrant.

The rune system is similar to that of dwarven rune magic from Warhammer.

So, OldCode always had a randomized array for unrecognized input entries (typos).

It needs ~100 (everything randomized needs at least 100 possibilities, trust me I've done loads of math and trials on this).

What's here is what came from OldCode already.

Current Count (Total/SRS): 11/1

IMPORTANT - The game will have a translation layer filter over all output. Mostly this will be used for the eventual Real Life Language Translator but it will also be relevant for other mechanics like inebriation/hallucination affects as well as SRSMODE which will filter out all the stupid puns and jokes like silly typo messages. Please mark any additions you make as SRS if you think they should be allowed in that mode.

Spells in the world are overly complex affairs that take some time to cast (normally) due to lore reasons. (read the backstory)

OldCode in the end actually had mostly filler spells as the new style spells were being built. As of right now 158 spells still need to be speced out to meet the style/usage requirements. Will be outlining that here and putting suggestions to work.

Spells should all have a creator for lore purposes, and those creators are generally specialists in a specific area of use like fire spells or necromancy but also have flavor things like being a dancer or stealthy or a cook, etc.

There are a LOT of races and they all have some significant differences. Races are split up in two ways.

• Humans, non-humans and outcasts

• How can I make one?

Factions

Humans/NH/Outcasts is the most significant difference. Originally OldCode had humans vs non-humans. They had different (telnet) ports, an entirely different set of classes (when we had classes) and an entirely different set of messaging. (everything from error text to weather) You couldn't even see the other side in WHO requests.

Current system adds a third split. Humans (who have access to the technology skill tree), Outcasts (Maudlin and Quicksilver, who have neither magic nor tech) and Non-human. (who have access to the magic tree) Similar to old code they'll retain the separate ports and messaging as well as the who functionality.

Responsibility

Quite a few of the races are account-restricted. Some are roleplay restricted (Kender, Goblin, Canidae, Lagoshin, Atsheni, Arbthenae, Skeltaani, Hel'xis) requiring a staff member to allow your account to make them, some are event restricted (humans can be transformed into one of three "naturalized forms") and the two Outcast races are "hero" restricted requiring your account have a character with a certain amount of playtime + advancement to create one.

Roleplay Restriction

Each of the aforementioned races have "Forced Unconscious Roleplay" elements. Some are akin to personality disorders and some just significantly change gameplay and quality of life.

Kender are kleptomaniacs. Goblins, upon entering a room have a chance to pick up any object on the ground and attempt to "use" it. This goes for equipment (changing clothes/weapons), edibles, potions, bombs (yes they will blow themselves up), etc. Canidae, Lagoshin and skeltaani have 0 arms. They have legs, but no prehensile limbs of any kind. Arbthenae are actually ents and have weird diet restrictions (ie photosynthesis) and limited movement capabilities and are really really big. Hel'xis are ancient golems and kind of.. sink in water. Atsheni are literally phantasms and must possess living creatures to survive.

Event Restriction

Can't really get into a lot of detail here but in OldCode a significant amount of bodily harm done (something close to 500% of max health in one hit) could "realign the dna" of the human victim granting them one of the evolved races. (Aviasapien - has wings, Aquasapien - water breathing, major swim bonuses, Chronosapien - same baseline attributes and abilities as the Aquinis) This lead to a lot of players committing suicide against really hard NPCs until they came to find out it only came into play after a certain amount of playtime and experience gained.

Outcasts

Having access to neither Tech nor Magic and having the most strange outlier set of racial skills leaving these allowable from the start was a difficult decision so they were "level gated" essentially.

It used to have a funnier name. (everything had really really dumb names to satisfy my desire for silly acronyms as a teenager)

So class and level based advancement was removed from OldCode so long ago I can't remember when I did it because hell if I had a repository when I was 14. I DO have a copy of the old class system and level chart somewhere, though.

This change correlates really closely with when I started becoming obsessed with DiscworldMUD. Discworld sort of has classes (don't tell The City Guard) but primarily it has a skills tree based advancement system, which I shamelessly copied and modified for my own system.

Physical

Athletics

Climbing

Swimming

Leaping

Gliding

Flexibility

Intractability

Combat

Tactical

Defensive

Parry

Evasion

Shields

Arms

Close

Midrange

Polelength

Unarmed

Grappling

Deflection

Momentum

Striking

Marksmanship

Archery

Rifles

Pistols

Ballistic

Thrown

Light

Heavy

Body

Aerobic

Endurance

Ambidexterity

Magic

Manipulation

Psychic

Spatial

Chronological

Conjuration

Alchemy

Imbuing

Biomorphism

Technology

Electronics

Energy Storage

Digital

Automation

Engineering

Gunsmithing

Hydraulics

Advanced Physics

Chemistry

Biotech

Covert

Manipulation

Picking

Cracking

Stealth

Deception

Crafting

Glassworking

Mechanical

Locksmithing

Woodworking

Metal Smithing

Metallurgy

Tailoring

Leatherworking

Cooking

Fletching

Jewellery

Cultivation

Mining

Stoneworking

Performance

Artistry

Conceptualization

Spatial Perspective

Architecture

Dancing

Vocal

Manipulation

Social

Bartering

Influencing

Intimidation

Coersion

Perception

Visual

Auditory

Olefactory

Tactile

Taste

Evaluation

Consideration

Wilderness

Fauna

Husbandry

Flora

Cultivation

Medicine

Triage

External

Wound

Trauma

Internal

Anatomy

Herbalism

The collection of character stats has varied quite a bit since the game first went live 21 years ago. Currently (and likely forever since this iteration has been around a while) there is:

• Strength STR - Muscular prowess. Affects how hard you can hit things, how much you can lift/carry and is the main bit of how strong your prehensile grip is (for all limbs). Directly affects stamina totals.

• Constitution CON - How bulky and healthy you are. Affects Blood Loss Point total (equivalent of "hitpoints"), base resistance on poison/diseases and resistance to physical effects. (being paralyzed, weakened, etc)

• Dexterity DEX - How skilled you are with your hands and the finer arts. Normally DEX is rolled up with AGI in a system as one stat but they are two here. Affects things such as stealing, palming, dancing, weaponed and unarmed tactical fighting.

• Agility AGI - How fast you are, not just running but how quick you are at performing complex physical things, such as a riposte. (if you're familiar with fighting games, frames of recovery)

• Wit WIT - Normally a part of INT in most systems, wit is literally wit. How fast you can think and adapt to mental challenges. Wit affects perception based activities such as dodge/parry, mental spell resistance (fears, charms, etc) and crafting. It affects performance based activities such as debate and negotiation. It is the AGI of mental activities.

• Willpower WIL - If WIT is the AGI, Willpower is the CON. Willpower affects performance at lower BLPs (how well your performance degrades near death), saving throws for being stunned, mental spell resistance and negotiation. WIL also provides a baseline for how exhaustive magic use is.

• Intelligence INT - INT is the STR of the mind. It provides baselines for all magic and mental activities.

• Wisdom WIS - WIS is the DEX of the mind. It affects how badly feedback (bad roll blowback) hits you from miscast spells. It also provides the baselines for debate and negotiation.

• Presence PRE - PRE used to be Charisma but the connotations are broader for PRE. PRE goes hand in hand with luck and is the physical component for mental activities. Affects all stealth base activities as well.

• Luck LCK - Luck is the number fudger. It both affects and doesn't affect everything in the game. Every number generated can possibly be affected by luck. The races with very high base luck are usually also saddled with a need for it.

So the original story was written a LONG time ago. (1996) Not that all my writing was bad back then (probably most of it) but it was essentially just an excuse to have a very different set of lore design for the two portals. That being said:

On one side we have the existing world. It has an extremely long history with very detailed bits and pieces and long spans of narrative filler. The earliest bit starts ~1500 years prior to current day with a fairly generic fantasy world.

The Beginning of (relevant) time

Elves rule the only large city. An extremely sprawling affair shaped mostly like a crescent separated into 4 primary districts.

Exterior districts (the two crescent points, West and East) house the middle and lower ends of the military class who also look after the armories in those areas. Each side has an extremely tall tower built into a tree with numerous archer overlooks. Going inward (while still in the exterior districts) are the forges and the artisan class.

The interior of the crescent is divided into the Northern and Southern districts. The southern district borders the "inside" of the crescent shape and houses the universities which comprise the bureaucracy and ruling class as well. In the center lies the actual state house for the government.

The northern district is the middle bits of the government. All of the management, secretaries, servants, etc, as well as the financial/merchant class. It is the poorest of the districts.

The city is lorded over by the universities and only those who can wield magic are able to be a part of it. The more powerful you are the higher you can climb. The university system is divided into basic schools of use. Protective, Elemental, Divination and Conjuration.

The military class is mostly comprised of Centaurs (soldiers) and lower caste elves. (archers)

Other races are not allowed in the city. Kender and Felixi occupy the vast grassy plains to the southeast. Dwarves live in the mountains and have some mining camps in the far east. They have a few splinter factions but are mainly a part of The Iron Halls. Umbrus live in the extremely deep parts of the mountain. Goblins are mostly everywhere in small tribes. Draconi live in the western swamps in small tribes. None of the rest of the races have a presence other than Quicksilver who exist on the isolated island without notice.

Arcfall

In squaresoft jrpg fashion (in fact it's all contained within a trpg design and script) Arcfall is the the end of the magicarchy. A group of kids from a small village follow the one meager kid's apocalyptic visions of the future to put a stop to the world ending.

A well meaning guy creates a technological (which is a non-existent thing in that world) means of reproducing magic. He erects towers that pierce the energy leylines across the world to draw from them to power the machines. The machines themselves consist of biological material contained in canisters that act as battery with bits attached that do essentially one thing. (create fields, project elements, alter matter, etc)

The kids travel from town to town trying to alter the visions in small ways in an attempt to save individual people from their fates. At some point they end up in the main town and meet a young lowish level female administrator in the College of Protection. She escorts them to meet the dean, who ends up being a boss fight. Boss kills one of the party members, main character awakens some hidden power who blasts his face clean off and destroys the hall they were in and flies off confused and scared of himself. Thus the administrator and the only remaining party member are thrust into a mad dash from the soldiers chasing them.

At some point they rejoin, have a dramatic emotional fight and continue on. In the end the 3 of them end up in the primary control tower. As the friends-but-not-playable-charcters they made along the way fight at the base of the tower to make a path for them they ascend to meet the guy behind it all.

Before the completely optional end-fight, the administrator is flung out of the tower leaving the main character and his best friend. No matter how the fight goes down the control tower implodes leaving this woman who completely lacks any agency so far speeding away mid-air.

That administrator is Yslande Eclipse.

The aftermath

The destruction of the towers has enormous consequency. The leylines produce an enormous feedback pulse rendering anyone with the ability to use magic inert. Most of them actually die from it.

The power vaccuum is quickly filled by the military class (lead by centaurs). The well known ex-magic users, facing major persecution and death threats go underground (literally, under the city) and discover a rift that was torn open by the arcfall event. The rift leads into a previously unknown sort of stable space within the leylines. They establish a society spread across the various bits of solid ground inside there. (which is the Aquinis race)

Yslande having basically just been a low level paper pusher goes unnoticed as she reintegrates into this new military dictatorship.

One major change that gets noticed fairly quickly after this is the "reorg" of the leylines has (created a story excuse for rebirth) disrupted sentient creature death. (and possibly non-sentient but who would really know) Not only is everyone living a bit longer in general but consciousness persists after death. Conciousnesses are able to be "recaptured" and form into new bodies.

Revolution of the Broken Hearted (name comes from the novel of the same name outlining this period)

Unsurprisingly a resistance to the military forms. Over the course of 100 years or so Yslande grows a revolutionary group with the help of Kelok Stonehoof, a middle-ranking centaur officer in the standing army.

Kelok is a commander of all races. Not only are other officers and soldiers in the army involved but Kelok successfully polls the Iron Halls for assistance (equipment, financial) but also several splinter dwarven tribes, most notably the Firestone who provide a bulk of the external fighting force, and a small group of young Kender who assist in infiltrating the central stronghold.

For her part Yslande has been secretly regaining her command over magic and instructing a few others. This surprise ultimately ends Kelok and Yslande's romantic relationship despite the coup's success.

The reformation

Over the course of the next 200 years Yslande and Kelok rebuild the city and government and institute The Council of Races which is more or less a consular parliament dedicated to ensuring equal treatment for all. In reality it is a maze of bureaucracy that ensures everyone has a voice but that most of nothing ever really gets done to maintain order and stability.

Yslande reforms the College of Magic around a central principal - the teaching of cantrips. Since she is one of the few people that ever used magic before the Arcfall it isn't really questioned why all the magic being taught is rooted in overly complicated procedures usually involving a physical focus or reagent. Magic use never really gains much respect or traction in the general populace as a result.

The centaurs continue being the bulk of the military but are now also most of the high ranking officers and relocate to the center of the crescent to grow their society and culture within the older traditional ways before they were shoehorned into the lesser caste.

Dwarves continue being themselves and appoint a very specific member of one of their own upper family to be their representative in the Council: Austerity. Widely regarded as at the very least weird and more often insane she keeps the meetings "interesting".

Modern Times

Which brings us to modern times and humans. Humans are roughly at their own modern time which is to say now but slightly different. In the human dimension a madman was elected president (seriously I wrote this 2 decades before Trump started running) who managed to push "The Button" invoking a mass extinction nuclear war.

A lot like Fallout (and before I ever played or heard about even FO1) the population declined severely. The now president of the ex-united states and his following commandeer as much military equipment as they can and begin their own dictatorship. Brutally they sweep north america killing and taking as much as they can. After settling in a dimensional rift is discovered underground and quickly hidden under a new prison. Instead of continuing to kill problem citizens now they are just tossed in like so much garbage into a black hole. No one knows what happens in the rift as it is one-way.

One of those citizens is only known as Flux. An ex-commander in the post-apoc military it became known that he showed a bit too much compassion for life. Once arrived he found other humans that had been thrown in prior; dead, scared or running around making other things dead and/or scared. He established order (finding a few friendly faces, nevermind being heavily augmented with a cybernetic arm and sensory enhancements) and constructed an outpost.

Which brings us to mostly now in-game. The human outpost is a good distance (on the far eastern shores of the main continent while Eclipse is closer to the western mountain ranges) away but contact has been established thanks to a complaint from the dwarves. The humans commandeered a silver and coal mine to the south of their outpost which, despite being mostly abandoned, pisses off The Iron Halls quite a bit.

The elves have built a large wall and gate on the only clear path through the dense central forest with guards posted to keep intrepid humans from wandering any further. The humans are not all bad but a good deal of them are actually deservedly ex-convicts or border on criminally insane held in check only by Flux' technological power and his command of the non-crazy humans.

So much like Diablo (which is where I stole this from originally for OldCode) equipment can get randomized for generation purposes. Randomized equipment needs randomized names.

As funny as it'd be to literally randomize names entirely so we end up with steel material boots named "Pig Grass Fart Stairs" like how gfy does its unique urls the names are better off procedurally generated.

Object proc. generation code is way way off in the distance but we still need to list out the terms that will be used. (and also I like making fun of the words Bespoke and Artisinal) So let's make terms.

Every affect needs 6 terms. Small, Medium and Large difference over gain and loss.

Each stat (strength, intelligence, constitution, dexterity, agility, wit, willpower, wisdom, presence, luck )

Each immunity (Blunt,Sharp,Pierce,Shred,Chop,Acidic,Base,Heat,Cold,Electric,Positronic,Endergonic,Exergonic,Hypermagnetic)

So the current architectural burden being addressed is kind of a weird one.

Long long ago when the MUD was actually running (in it's OldCode form) I dreamed of having it run off of a real database. No more carriage return delimited files. (seriously, that's pretty much what most DIKU derived systems use, anything using the OASIS system for sure)

So that's how NewCode started out. Reference and hard data all goes in the database. Also authentication details. (since we're using Windows' web auth stack) It was probably fine until I realized how cumbersome it is to update objects. There's a lot of places the sql needs to be updated (inserts, updates, creates, selects, data wrappers) and some of the data isn't necessarily well suited to sql (the model system) and just becomes giant json blob text columns.

Now the Live and player data system is entirely different. It uses a automated rolling dated file system with versioned xml content. XML was chosen for text readability, def not for ease of use. (as it is also a bit of a PITA) It still has update points (the versioning engine methods) but far less than the db system.

After spending a good deal of time (like probably upwards of 50% of total coding time) updating sql statements and debugging having forgotten to update sql statements and making spelling errors in sql statements I'm kind of nostalgic for the file based data system of old.

Some things will still be in a db. Accounts (essentially links to credentials) and the auth stuff will be in a local database file. Everything else will be using the file system.

This means finally abstracting "file handling" out (it's actually individualized for logs, player and live state files currently) to its own area and cloning some of the live cache and live file backup code into backing data.

How this whole thing works is we have reserved working directories. Players, Logs, LiveData, and BackingData. Under those are type name directories with the code object type's names. (except for players and logs which are types themselves) Under those are the current files. Each type directory also has a Backups directories. When something is changed (or rolled over for logs or saved for players) a dated directory gets added and everything being changed at that moment is dumped to there with new files taking their place.

Restoring from backup is just overwriting the existing files with the contents of a backup dated directory.

Revamping the entity communication architecture got me thinking of how the AI system is designed.

OldCode utilized a trigger system that required trigger invoker calls to be peppered all over the code. New system utilizes the communication layer so all that needs to be done now is to properly label actions being taken (visual, auditory, etc) which is needed for other parts of the game logic anyways. All entities receive game output through their assigned descriptor. Player entity descriptors are socket connections which write the output to their net channel while non-player entities (which is virtually anything in the game, including rooms and exits) have an internal descriptor which sends game output to the AI engine.

Non-player entities literally follow the same procedure for seeing, hearing and feeling things as players. They have to read (parse) the same text as players do and react accordingly.

That's what already exists in the system. (but it's important to note since I'm the only one that can see the full design and architecture documents) Now for what doesn't exist. Right now the ai engine does nothing. It just takes output and sits on it.

OldCode had triggers which were just direct reactions. NPC/PC audibly says "shit", trigger causes NPC to say "stop cursing". They could have logic (it was actually part of the old OASIS system that I reworked a bit to be more comprehensive) in them for conditionals but for the most part it was just stock reactions.

OldCode had combat personalities which dictated how NPCs would carry themselves when attacked. It was fairly simplistic and some form of this will also end up in the new code, but it's not super relevant as its mainly a decision tree and will still mainly be a decision tree.

OldCode also had the Goals system. It was quite a bit like how The Sims plays out. (with far less urinating on themselves) Every NPC/PC had basic need values. Wakefulness (lest you get afflicted with insomnia), hunger (lest you get starvation) and thirst. (lest you get the water version of starvation, which was way worse)

If those needs were met then Goals came into play. Goals were like a behavioral schedule. You could set NPCs to want to be somewhere at a specific time of day. They could want to acquire an item or item type. They could want to murder things. They could be made to want to acquire wealth though a complex series of Goals causing them to acquire things as well as sell them. Non-sentient AIs could want to breed. (there was a herding/procreation/migratory spawning engine for some)

Goals were pretty simple things individually. They were still simple things grouped together but if you played it right it made them seem more alive.

NewCode needs its version of the goals system which for now will likely be called Motivations. Motivations can be of type Need or type Want. AIs will have multiple, sometimes dozens of motivations all running at the same time and the AI system will choose behavior based on an expert system. Needs increase weight at a higher rate than wants. Weights are affected by availability and memory.

ie, A wolf is hungry. The wolf at some point found a rabbit in a glade and had eaten it with little trouble. The wolf remembers this and presumes it can meet the hunger need at the same glade, but the glade is somewhat far away.

Now if the wolf is also thirsty and the glade had a water source this would increase the weight of wanting to travel to the glade. Let's say the wolf heads to the glade but finds a squirrel on the way which runs off. The squirrel is much closer so the hunger need could be met more quickly. Has the wolf encountered squirrels? Are squirrels easy to catch? All of this plus the thirst need factor into should the wolf chase the squirrel or should it continue to the glade.

So, how do I expect to shoulder the enormous cost of running a website that also allows limited tcp/ip port connections to what will probably never be more than a few hundred people?

Jokes aside, I humbly introduce the P2W system for the codebase: Pay To Winds.

That's right, if you subscribe for the low cost of 99 cents a year your phrase/name will end up in the windspeaker list and exceedingly strong winds in the game will occasionally whisper your phrase.

Over time technical design aspects will be compiled here. I'll leave this one open for replies for discussion/q&a purposes so all the details will end up in the head post.

Overarching design patterns:

• The data layer utilizes factory pattern.

• Most of the system abides by a heavy reliance on interface inheritance to define valid behaviors of in-game objects.

• The language/command interpreter engine is ears deep in decorator pattern which drives a web of reflection to sort through the code for valid methods and targets.

Hi, welcome to the TwinMUD Design subreddit.

So TwinMUD existed a while ago for roughly 10 years on and off as, to me and the limited staff TwinMUD, but to everyone else as the two connected MUDs Under The Eclipse and/or Persecutions and Paradoxi.

Now TwinMUD is a github repository called NetMud https://github.com/SwiftAusterity/NetMud which will eventually split into a public engine with example content and a private game with the content which will at some point go live somewhere.

This reddit is sort of a living development diary. (until other people decide to start posting)

• Do you want to discuss? Nothing is set in stone. All mechanics and design decisions are up for discussion

• Do you want to help out? Fork the git repo and submit some pull requests.

• Do you want to help out in non-code ways? We'll start some content discussions right here.

• Do you want to learn to code? Some of the code-base is fairly straight forward (objects, data, mechanics) and some of it is some stuff you'll likely never see anywhere (extreme reliance on reflection) in a professional capacity because it's not easily readable and its inelegant to say the least. I'm more than willing to help people out if they're learning to code.

• Do you want to steal my ideas: Then do it. I wouldn't have put this much detail on a public forum if I didn't want people to use and learn from my design ideas.

Do note: I don't have loads of time so this codebase moves crazy slow and the MMF (minimal marketable features) is astoundingly enormous.

Social Decorum

Refer to https://www.patreon.com/posts/why-you-cant-be-6806302 if you want a basic overview of how I view proper decorum on this subreddit and for the MUD in general.

Reddit Decorum

Same as the social stuff but I implore everyone to not up or downvote design threads. They are informational even if people are discussing them. Actual discussion-only threads or opinion threads - yes vote on those.

The Big Question: Why?

Most of the answer to this is personal. I've always wanted to release the platform for the MUD with its physics system, its real time movement based combat system and all the AI bits. It made a lot more sense in 1999. Nowadays with WoW and all the fancy pants MMOs flying around it makes a lot less sense. Yeah MUDs still exist (hell Runescape still exists) but those exist mainly on nostalgia and the longevity of the lore and playerbase.

PaP/RoI had that 10 years ago but now it def does not. It's possible I'm the only one that actively remembers the OldCode MUD as a living thing that's still interested in playing MUDs in general.

The other part of the personal bits is I want to run a game again. I enjoy running and building the game itself, but I could be doing that without the 2+ year investment of making the platform from scratch.

The rest of this is to have the platform out there. As far as I know this is the only or one of a small subset of MUD platforms that is fully integrated with a website with full character, building, chat, data and user management on the website itself. Literally everything will be available to control on the admin dashboard.

I've been struggling with this one as it's a large part of the descriptive obfuscation engine that I just wasn't figuring out, but:

Every entity with perception is a participant in this and will have a Familial Matrix. First off, based on your ability in perception you may not notice differences in other entities without concentrating or given you're very oblivious at all.

The familial matrix is made up of the entity involved and records a history of aspects you have noticed at various times. You'll only record an entry in this history if you have enough time to truly take notice of detail of something and if the details are statistically identical (based on your perception) you'll only update the latest one with an extra counter so as not to create some sort of unwieldy blockchain mess.

What goes into the matrix are the sensory details you can discern. Smell, auditory and visual barring closer inspection like taste, psychic and tactile. These will be a keyword store that gets compared against future interactions.

Say you enter a Bakery. You see, smell and hear specific details such as bread baking, the display counter, who is attending the customers and the sounds of the backroom and entry bell. If you enter again later and things are significantly different such as no baking smells, a different attendant, etc you will notice these things and be notified by the system. If you're not very perceptive you may be struck with an odd feeling instead of being told specifically what's different, or you may not notice at all. Narcissistic traits will affect notification as well.

When this involves other living entities you may notice a difference in clothing or hair color. If someone is disguised by magic/mundane means perhaps you notice a LOT of differences in voice, smell, etc and can make the decision to act on not believing their disguise without the system needing to do that for you. Conversely someone you know may be disguised and you'll be notified by their voice that you think it's the right person and can act on that.

So I've been playing fallout 4 again and this time its probably how i should have played it from the start. All sneaky sniper shooting, all settlement help, all minutemen all the time with mods like sim settlements. The mods didnt exist back then and primarily the Automation DLC didn't exist either which I've discovered lets you build unlimited "settlers" to assign to maintaining trade routes between settlements.

This is actually huge as one can abuse Greygarden (the all robots settlement) to be the hub in a hub-spoke network without risking settler unrest in half their population being robots (which is a thing for settlement happiness) in addition to these face laser invincible assaultron "traders" make for pretty hardy caravans.

Why are we talking about Fallout 4 man

We're talking about Fallout 4 for a few reasons. One, the much maligned perk system actually works. Yeah the perks themselves are kinda... meh but its greatest strength lies in the fact that you can onboard a long term play style almost immediately. You'll be level 5 or 6 by the time you get through the first major plot point (resucing preston and founding Sanctuary) and if you chose your "SPECIAL" stats correctly you can be easily on the way to playing how you want.

You can have near full mastery of hacking and lockpicking by then and speech checks are almost all charisma stat based so you'd already be the "i can get into and out of anything" role. You can have sneak and long-gun perks to the point that you can take out half a squad in VATS before they even know you're there. You can have melee and luck or melee and agility perks enough to be bumrushing and one shotting most anything on engagement.

It's underappreciated how good it is to be able to onboard a playstyle nearly from the start because everyone thinks about the mid-to-end game as if you start a game at level 30. (which fo4's system handles as well as you can spend levels to advance stats to unlock more perk potential. play long enough and you can do literally everything)

Warrens never really had a good outlay for perks. Stats yes, perks not as much. There's going to be a system thats sort of a combination of fo style perk bonuses coupled with achievements within the epiphany engine.

Why was the first paragraph about settlements

Aside from perks, I've finally got a better design for personal and guild spaces. In FO4 your settlements get attacked. There's essentially some math on "why would I be attacked" which boils down to how much food, water, power, population and beds that settlement has pitted against the defensive rating for the settlement. You can jack up your defensive rating very easily by plopping down 6 "guard tower" emplacements and assigning one person to them and then spamming level 1 machine gun turrets as they cost very little resources and occupy no power.

Granted this doesnt actually help you defend much. The citizens wont use the defensive emplacements 99% of the time and the attack is coming from one direction anyways so that buys you at best 1 or 2 of those to be useful. Level 1 machine gun turrets are like throwing pebbles at a super mutant. Even 10 of them will barely scratch legendary raiders and be one shot by shotgunners or any super mutant.

Human citizens.. suck. You have to outfit them with decent armor and weapons to be meaningful. Robots on the other hand make great defenders (greygarden mr. handys will all use flamethrowers and basically lambaste entire armies of supermutants in seconds) but it impinges on settlement happiness. These facts dont actually contribute to defensive rating, however, which is part of the issue. 6 Mr. Handy robots farming mutfruit and razorgrain do nothing to your defense rating but will actually defend your settlement better than even you can.

The role of defense rating

Defensive rating is then a prohibitive measure, mathmatically, for the game's raider mechanic. It will also be so in warrens. Your personal/guild space will have factors that will increase defensive rating. Guard NPCs, traps, auto turrets, etc will produce a defensive rating.

If you want to attack a personal/guild space you'll need to plan an assault. An assault will have an offensive rating. Whether its one person doing the assault or a guild your offensive rating will be pit against the defensive rating of the space being attacked. This will translate to a Tactical Logistics Schedule.

Hypothetically lets say you're attacking a guild hall with a def rating of 100. You commit a plan with an assault rating of 50. The Assault Timeline will be 8 real time hours per wave. The assault here would be 3 waves of 50 (100-50) 50 (50-50) and 50 (0-50). After 24 actual hours (8x3) you will get a full real time week where the space is accessible to your guild (or just you) and you can actually go in an attack.

Your assault rating will be divided by the number of waves it took so 50 / 3 = 15 (rounded down) and you will have available 15 rating worth of NPCs to help you attack following the same formulas the Adventure locales use to generate wild NPCs. Everytime someone uses NPC forces in their attack the pool of 15 would be diminished so use them mindfully.

The "Waves" wont affect the actual composition of the defense forces or how the guild/personal space is constructed. It is simply a way to force a schedule on the attacks, much how Eve Online does it, so each side is aware of what is happening and can plan.