Bay 12 Games Forum

The main problem with apartment burglary was it was too easy. The ONLY way you could actually play after a certain point in wealth was to log on, do a WHO, make sure all your enemies weren't on, then you could maybe go exploring and farming so long as you did a cautionary who every so often and had a quick means to return home in-case a bunch of douchebags came online.

You could invest in all the diamond locks you want. You could invest in all the security you want. Somebody could still break into your apartment and rip you off - by themselves - AND get away - in the time it would take for you to get home.

Then combine this with the fact there were very few good apartment places, that you had a boat map to let people find any adrift vessels to loot (and that boats had no policing besides shit drones, not that cops could do anything to prevent quick burglaries)... It juts made stealing too easy. And then you had shitty mechanics you could abuse, like who telling your corpmates where you're at exactly (allowing for the worst sort of backstabbery cheese), or apartment plaques telling people where people lived...

I loved apartment burglary, I participated a lot and was robbed a lot. It was fun. It also got old fast. There needed to be more security options, more interplay between robber and rob-ee, more options to hide your stuff or secure it...

And more mechanics to prevent people from picking on new players. Seriously, too many new players were griefed into leaving. Some people were never going to handle the robbery mechanic well, but they didn't need to be subject to additional misery on top of it.

Carebears should be allowed to play too, you can't have a MOO survive if you populate it with just assholes.

Ideally, it's a great mechanic that because of its existence forces people to band together and the game then becomes about that balance of power between corporations. Too often it got to be toxic; the burglars were honestly too successful - low risk, high reward. Even if you killed a burglar in your apartment, you'd get their shit - but so what? They'd just try again soon enough, not like lockpicks were that hard to make. All they'd lose is whatever crap they had on them and in many cases they'd just try to rob you half-naked. Only way you could even try to retaliate was to break into their apartment - which you couldn't do if you didn't have the right friends or weren't brainy yourself, which you still couldn't do if you hadn't exactly pinpointed where they kept their stuff, which you might not if you yourself weren't an asshole too... The worst thing a burglar would lose on a failed attempt was a little playtime and a lockpick. You could lose a lot more time if they took some rare, hard-earned thing from you. It was really disproportionate. Lockpicking ought to have been more challenging.

Not saying where HellMOO went was eventually better for the game, but where it was certainly wasn't ideal, either.

As far as I know, HellMoo is built off LambdaMoo, which was basically the first of its kind. It has a built-in syntax parser for a unique game-definition language that's C-like but runs more like Javascript (interpreted). Considering this was written sometime in 1990, this stuff was way, way ahead of its time. You're looking at a neat relic when you look at the source.

The challenges of running and maintaining the game lie in its Database. Hellmoo writes to a flatfile - stuff is stored at addresses in the file in a manner I am not experienced enough in to understand. Basically, a game object is broken apart into pieces and stored all over the place. Hellmoo would be geatly improved by having its database shit rewritten from scratch I think, but good luck with that one! A lot of the problems for maintaining the game lie in managing that giant save file (IO is very expensive, even with a SSD on your server). Everything from game-object code to player passwords are stored in that file.

InfernoMoo was kinda dead even before I quit anyway, I don't think it's coming back. At its peak we had what, 10 concurrent players? Some bad decisions killed it hard after there had been just a bit of growth.

I really wish we could bring the game into something more approaching the mainstream, it's got a lot of broad appeal with lots of ways to play.

I never really noticed any active attempts to disrupt roleplay, but it could be the case. I do find it odd 1 out of 3 players is an admin, however.

I guess my ideal MUD would be a game that has an intuitive semi safe haven where you learn the rules of the game and come back to for shopping and player interaction. I also like the mutation system in HellMOO over something like classes and racial bonuses. Mostly, because I don't really know anything about the world until I've tried playing the game. Secondly, because it's far less restrictive about character advancement. You don't need to kill ten thousand rats, you just need to find the mutations in the world in between doing jobs. It makes a lot of sense to me that exploration is rewarded better than simple grinding. Of course, I think there should be more options for players who don't want to mutate, but I'm wondering how the concept of mutation could be applied to other RPGs, I've never seen another game do such a thing.

I imagine HellMOO is one of a kind, then? I've tried playing some more roleplay-heavy MUDs and MUD-likes, but the problem with a game like that is, if no one is available to RP with you, you're just kind of stuck sitting around idling. The appeal of a MUD with basic combat mechanics is you can do other things to flesh out your character and his/her wealth, while you wait for opportunities to roleplay. It also keeps players retained as a result.

So, I guess I'm looking for a MUD which balances the grind and the roleplay. It's a shame, because HellMOO has a lot of features that would probably make it ideal under different circumstances.

I think I'm sort of finding out HellMOO isn't for me - it has a lot of things that I like though. It's one of the few text-based MMOs that really pulled me in. Most of the MUDs I've tried to play suffer from a really, really slow start (you're stuck in some training hall, have no context to roleplay your character, and the game tends to play like World of Warcraft, with an over-emphasis on doing themeparky fetch-quests and grinding).

A little bit off topic, but I'm interested in exploring more games like HellMOO. Anyone got any suggestions for me?

Recently started playing this. It's one of the better MUD games I've found, surprised me a lot. It might seem silly at first, I admit the orphan stuff (and subsequent crack houses and elderly retirement homes you must slaughter) is pretty off-putting, but there are a lot of nice secrets and ways to build your character. I don't know if they're still updating this game, but they should find some people to keep adding content to it. Though, it is pretty huge at the moment.

Would anyone be willing to give me some hints about the enlightenment quest, by the way?

I can't really see DF as educational.  Its interesting, but there really isn't much practical there to learn. 

Sure you can learn the names of a few minerals, but you can do that in a much shorter time with just a textbook.

Except not everyone is a rote learner. Especially when some problematic students are problematic because all they want to do is play video games. Video games can be a gateway to broader interests, so as a tool, they are more flexible than textbooks, especially in non-traditional schools. Rote learning has a very steep price in my opinion: you sap interest in the student. It's hard to make a student rote learn for an entire semester, even if you break up such learning with small activities. Students just don't want to study, motivating them to do so is half the battle. Depending on what you want to do, dwarf fortress can be relatively resource-light, so it can be easily given as a supplemental homework assignment (in a beautiful theoretical world where Toady has redesigned its GUI) . Dwarf Fortress can be run on even old computers with poor graphics cards, provided the dwarf count remains relatively low.

I can assure you, it's much easier to keep track of 50 different kinds of minerals when you can say to yourself: "I've used that before." Perhaps in a simplistic and virtual manner, but I get excited when I strike Galena underground -- and it's easier for me to recognize and remember what Galena is because I have associated various feelings, events and games with it. I can't wait until Toady can afford to add material interaction into DF, and we can have lead poisoning from galena-made goblets

I mean, once computing gets sufficiently powerful, and if Toady sticks to dwarf fortress long enough to get complexity on that scale - you could tie in the fall of a dwarven fortress to the fall of the roman empire (one of the causes of Rome's downfall is likely the high amount of lead poisoning in its leaders [which causes seemingly random mental instability, so yes, that is a 'real world phenomenon' and societal factor]) - at least, one hypothetical path a student could explore.

While rote memorization might be more practical from a statistical stand point, it doesn't attempt to integrate knowledge with actual understanding, which is often facilitated through an action such as playing out a game (especially a game that attempts to simulate real-world cause-effect chains).

Maybe DF isn't comprehensive or efficient enough to build a class around, but still, I think, if Toady were to make DF's geology more complex in the future, and to add more economic uses for stone and to restrict how some stone can be used (based on its hardness factor and such), it could be used in such a learning environment to some beneficial effect, I think.

Games like Spore have been toted to have some kind of educational appeal. Spore was rubbish and as far as I'm concerned, failed in almost every simulation aspect it set out to create, so if that can be hailed as some great thing... then what about Dwarf Fortress?

Dwarf Fortress is the ultimate socio-economic simulator. Okay, well it's not perfect. There's the 'fantastical' element of dwarves and other creatures, but I think DF excels at representing the birth of 'civilization'. Every patch, Toady adds more complexity to the game, by adding in more real-world systems that effect dynamic economies.

I think it would be an excellent base to build some kind of Junior or High School related course. Of course, Dwarf Fortress doesn't teach itself, you'd need someone to help break down the material and get students to examine aspects of the world unfolding in front of them, but DF covers a wide variety of topics.

Firstly, there's the whole 'anthropological' notion of Dwarf Fortress. You're founding a city. One that shapes its own culture dynamically. Dwarves write in hieroglyphs, depicting their own history. You can see how they live by the materials they harvest, by the tools they harness, by the architecture of their city... and when a city is wiped out, you can examine the ruins, to discover how a certain dwarf expedition went. You can dissect the social structure by how the dwarves slept, ate and worked. You can piece together their history by examining engravings and artifacts. It's very hard to do this currently in-game, as well... I tend to never find my fortresses in adventure mode (I usually die), but I'm sure some day this should be easily possible. Such a class could have a predefined abandoned city for students to explore.

Secondly, there's a big geological aspect to Dwarf Fortress. Now, I've only taken introductory geology courses, but from the way minerals and such are located in DF, it seems rather true-to-life, though I'm sure this can be improved in time. Barring the whole [secret] beyond 150 Z levels, students could get an understanding for what kind of rocks are found underground, how groundwater systems work, how certain minerals are used in industry, and why some minerals are more valuable over others. You could a lot just on the whole economy of production. How is soap made? What's one method of producing coal? While DF doesn't 100% accurately represent these industries, it gives an important glimpse into them. How their use is integral to sustaining life and economy in a desolate, unforgiving wilderness.

While this isn't in the game yet so much, I think a socio-political aspect can also be explored. How trade and relationships with foreign governments effect the culture and history of a dwarven city. How dwarves interact with non-dwarves, how dwarves ostracize their own kind. How the actions of that one crazy recluse dwarf can cause calamity for fifty.

I don't think DF is ready to be considered as an educational tool yet - the interface needs to be overhauled for that (so it can be more easily picked up). Tools like Stonesense probably need to be a little more integrated as well, though the imagination aspect of dwarf fortress is also very powerful, so that's not quite as necessary. More systems need to be added to DF as well (actually, what does DF need to be stronger as an educational-resource? I'm not sure), but in 10 years, I could see DF being that potential undiscovered game, innovative educators are after.

Anyone agree? Or does DF not really belong in a classroom? Obviously, there are fantasy elements to it, but I don't think they detract from its educational potential. It helps to create a setting far and away from the 'real world'.

Thanks for the advice everyone. I'll take everything into consideration. Though, I do have one more question... would a SSD speed up Dwarf Fortress? I'm tempted to take a 64 GB one over a standard HD.