Friday, September 13, 2002
Magic: The System I’ve been struggling with a reasonable magic system for my IRC-based MUD. I want a system that is intricate, but easy to use. Last night, I came up with a system that I’m pleased with. Here’s how it goes, though note that the details are open to change: Through the ages, wizards have searched for sources of mystical power. Over time, they have discovered five sources […]
Thursday, September 12, 2002
I don’t know quite how to describe it, so I’ll just write it: I went to see Jan Karon, author of the Mitford series of books, Tuesday night. I really enjoyed it. She talked about her books, answering some of the more frequently-asked questions, then opened up the floor. She spoke candidly and humorously about her life, and what brought her to write Mitford. It’s amazing; she spent over […]
Wednesday, September 11, 2002
Weaponry
September 10, 2002
And I’m thrilled to notice thought-provoking new entries on both Saalon Muyo! and p1k3, after long droughts on both sites. Excellent. 12:41 a.m. Non-Player Characters, Part 3 Okay, I can write all about this system that will generate NPCs, but how exactly will that be done? I plan to use what I call computer-aided human creativity. A human will lay out all of the interesting bits, such […]
Thursday, September 5, 2002
Non-Player Characters, Part 1 (I never much liked the term “Non-Player Character” (NPC); it seems too technical and abstract. Well, no matter.) The players are not the only people in this environment; there are also NPCs, which are characters created by and controlled by the system. NPCs can be antagonistic, such as monsters, or friendly, like most merchants (and I just set up a system to define different levels of “friendliness” for NPCs). […]
September 4, 2002
Objects There’s going to be stuff scattered around the world of my IRC-based MUD, and I need a way to represent that stuff. Here’s the system I use: The game has a set of base objects, which the system understands by default. This includes objects like doors, weapons, and containers (chests and bags). These objects each have a few basic attributes, like a description (“It’s a door.”). In addition to the base objects, I have a file that defines a bunch […]
Monday, September 2, 2002
Weather and Time In pursuit of Goal 1 for my IRC-based MUD, “A good toy,” I’ve implemented time, date, and weather systems for the world. The time and date systems are fairly straightforward. The GM simply calculates the time based on the number of seconds since a set time, which is the compressed into game time. Game time is one-sixth real world time, so that two hours in the real world equals a full day in the game […]
September 1, 2002
iTeamwork.com continues to be my current favorite toy. It actually lets me be organized, without pushing a lot of pre-defined structure on me. I can add in a lot of work, and it stays nicely divided out, but I can also see that work from a variety of perspectives. My latest programming project: an IRC-based MUD. I want to make, well, three things: A good toy. It’ll hopefully be interesting and entertaining, but at the end […]
Thursday, August 29, 2002
Want to manage the work that you have to do, using a convenient web-based interface? For free? Try iTeamwork, which lets you set up projects and tasks and manage them easily, including assignment of work to various co-workers. Very cool.
August 27, 2002
Finally watched X-Files: Fight The Future today, which I found quite enjoyable. It was about equivalent to an above-average episode of the series, which is all I really needed it to be. It answered a few questions, and managed to be a good flick. Galaxy Fraulein Yuna is perhaps the most spastic comedy I’ve ever seen, Kodomo no Omache included.