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ArmageddonMUD's Journal  LOG IN TO DIE! LOG IN TO LOOT CORPSES! LOG IN! WOOOOOOOOO! THIS IS WORLD CHANGING. BE ONE TO EXPERIENCE IT, AND NOT JUST BE BORED AND SIT IN A TAVERN. DON'T BE AFRAID TO LOSE A CHARACTER! DON'T BE CHEAP AND NOT LOG IN! ACCEPT THE LAG, ACCEPT THE DELAYS. ACCEPT DEATH. THIS IS ZALANTHAS. THIS IS ARMAGEDDON. We had another one of these, and I've put up a log of the events at http://www.armageddon.org/rp/seminars/s I can't help but think we're missing some logs, here and there. We must have had more than 7 meetings altogether. We made the switch over to the new machine today, thanks to Saikun and Nessalin. Ness said the new machine boots blindingly fast. Hurrah! We were reaching the limits of our hard disk space in the old machine and periodically having to go through and clear stuff out. So hooray, hooray for the new ginka! The old one will become a web server or firewall. Thanks to Ness, Tenebrius, Brixius, Mekeda and Vendyra for all chipping in for the new machine, and many many thanks to Saikun for being our unflagging source of all things good and techie. I thought I'd write an entry about what's happened over the past year, and what I look forward to seeing in the next year. I think most importantly for everyone, 2002 saw the freeing of the Northlands. On April 7, Halaster ran the final part of this questline, assisted by Krrx (northern naki militia), Naephet (eastern army), Tlaloc (tsouthern army), Narlac (Kul and his army), Karianna (peasant army), Arkon (Luir's/Kurac), Bhagharva (southern army), Nechomachus (random northern NPCs), Sanvean (random NPCs and zone echoes), Nessalin and Morgenes (making sure the game rebooted when it crashed), and Laeris (building). The following months saw enormous amounts of building effort, in order to reflect the fluctuating nature of the Northlands as they recovered from years of war. New guilds went into the game: Lirathan and Jihaen templars, and became available as roles to players. The first version of the new Tuluk was switched into the game in July; a constant player complaint over the next few months would be the size of the map, which scaled to match the final, much more elaborate incarnation of the city. In November, the first PC Nenyuk appeared in the north, bringing with her the advent of player housing. A few weeks later, work began on updating Poets' Circle to reflect the ongoing virtual labor, and the Bards of Poets' Circle clan was added. Another focus of staff discussion and effort over the course of 2002 was noble roleplay. Towards this end, the Allanak Senate was built. In February, Halaster ran an RPT that was the first roleplayed formal Senate meeting. The main agenda item was the fate of Ysania Morlaine. Documentation was also revised heavily, and versions for the northern nobility added as well as they appeared. Many players enjoyed a hot August APM in Atlanta. The folks who sat at the fan table indefatigably passing out Armageddon MUD flyers deserve a round of applause for their efforts. There are links to some of the pictures here: http://www.armageddon.org/~sanvean/pict Most notable of the Byn plotlines was the great silt horror fishing expedition, which a number of staff collaborated on, including Vendyra, Laeris, Naephet, and Brixius, all led by the organizer, Tlaloc. Mid-September, the new discussion boards were unveiled by Brixius and I, at the newly-acquired domain, zalanthas.org. While not everyone approved of the change, many liked them better, and advantages, such as being able to set up discussion boards easily for clans and groups, were apparent. Cool code that went in over the course of the year included: Morgenes' lit/unlit light code, which led to nifty roleplay opportunities like being able to make campfires. Clan bank accounts were a feature Morgenes added in March. Tenebrius added javascript capability, which gave the entire staff access to being able to code effects for npcs/objects/rooms. One of the first scripts to go in was Brixius's morning devotions templar in Allanak. Nessalin implemented something people had been requesting since the first advent of the listen skill: the ability to toggle listen off. The year saw the usual coming and going of staff. A number of staff members left or moved to Legend status for the usual assortment of reasons: Arkon, Daigon, Haldol, Karianna, Krrx, Narlac, Nysrache, Vacas. Other new faces appeared on the team: Bakha(1/02), Nechomacus(1/02), Atshen (6/02), Myrixt (6/02), Vendyra(6/02), Cerebus (7/02), Myrdryn (10/02), Kurano (10/02)and Mekeda (12/02). Dyrinis reappeared after a long absence and immediately jumped into javascripting demons. Halaster and Bhagharva moved from Highlord to Storyteller; Storytellers Laeris and Naephet moved in the opposite direction in turn, becoming Highlords. It was a super year in a lot of ways. Player numbers have remained stable, which, while not the upsurge I'd love to see, is encouraging. A lot of new clans, and several new areas, have gone in. While everyone will have their own particular memories of the year, for me it was the year of the Script, with the introduction of Tenebrius's javascript code, which I used to code things from atmosphere-enhancing animations to clay-pits or the Zalanthan version of jenga. It also was the year for a horde of new faces, some of whom have become friends. Bright blessings to each and every one of you, and hopes that the next year may be even better, -Sanvean Tomorrow we've got an RPT -- not just an RPT, in fact, but a HIGHLY recommended playing time, which is reserved for events that change the world in some way. Speculations run rampant. OK... so Sanvean has been wanting me to post this story for a long time, and I'm getting around to it now. For those of you who don't know what I do, I administrate the server that Armageddon runs on, named Ginka. Back several years ago, before I was officially in this role, the machine was acting all strange. There were fears that we had been hacked, as had happened several times in the past. The problem, however, turned out to be almost as serious. In an attempt to safeguard the system utilities after the last time we had gotten hacked, somebody decided to keep the various important sys utils on a write-protected floppy, so that someone trying to hack the game wouldn't be able to replace them with their own evil versions. It kind of sounded like a good idea, in theory, but there were many problems with it. Not the least of which was that the floppy had began to disintegrate after years of constant use in the drive. The machine was becoming uncontrollable. Certain utilities wouldn't even work anymore because those sectors of the floppy had been eaten away. The decision was made to mail me Ginka so I could rebuild it. Now at the time, Ginka lived in the basement of Dr. Dave, User #1 from ISCA. Dave ran an ISP and through some ancient agreement, had been hosting Ginka for free in his basement for years. When Ginka finally arrived, its outside was in pretty sorry shape. The fans were clogged with dust, and I could tell the machine wasn't well cared for. When I opened it up, however, I was in for a creepy surprise. Much of the interior of the case was full of dust, obviously, but also of webbing. In this webbing, and the dust, and everywhere else, were thousands of baby spiders, all dead. It was one of the most horrible things I've ever seen, while working on computers anyway. To this day, I don't know if the spiders had died inside Ginka, or if they had been living in there, and died in transit from Iowa to Connecticut. I didn't think about it very long, and vaccuumed the little suckers up. Once Ginka was physically cleaned, I backed the data up, and rebuilt the machine from scratch (with the previous components, plus a few little things I added). When everything was working, I sent it back to Iowa, where it was eventually put back on the net. As something of an epilogue, that Ginka was replaced a couple years ago with a brand new machine that we bought, and which I now host here in Connecticut. We were never able to get in touch with Dr. Dave to recover our old machine (the inside of which contains the signatures of many of the Arm's original imms), and as far as I know, it's still running down in his basement, with nothing on it. The current Ginka does have the signatures of all the imms who attended the AIM at which I built the machine, as well as a nifty logo drawn inside by Gleden. Today, a recurrent topic reared its head on the General Discussion Board, one that comes up with regularity every few months: immortal maintenance time, the period between 7 am and 5 pm PST. Asking why this is necessary, why it's scheduled when it is, and so on and so on and so on is something different people have tried to answer at many different times. I thought I'd try to add a little more to the discussion by describing a typical immortal day. Usually I boot the mud for it in the morning. It involves getting up at 6:45 am on a Saturday, which is usually fairly unpleasant, but since I'm still fairly asleep at that point, I don't usually notice. I send out a system message that we're shutting down, asking people to log out, and then wander into the kitchen to make coffee. Folks are generally good about logging out as requested, although we do get players who keep on stubbornly playing as long as possible at times. Once I've brought the mud down, I run a script that performs the weekly backup, removes unused accounts, etc. While that's running, I start wading through email to the account, performing a first pass that lets me catch some of the low hanging, easily answered fruit. Once the backup is down, the mud boots on the immortal port. It's me and the earlybirds at that time. Sometimes Savak, although it's late, late night/wee hours of the morning for him. On organized days, I've got a list of to-dos ready to go; other times I may just keep grimly wading through the account mail, trying to reduce it to manageable proportions. Throughout the day, I see various people log on and off. The clan immortals get on to make their changes, such as swapping around the Kadian shops, which Naephet faithfully does, or replacing missing npcs, adding to estates, fixing typos, etc. Nessalin gets on and we discuss code fixes and changes -- usually he has a few things he's decided to work on each weekend. Tenebrius will usually make an appearance as well, or the other coders. One of the main benefits of immortal day are the discussions. Every thing from policy changes to bugs workarounds, progress of the world, RPTs, and so on. It's hard to schedule staff meetings at a time everyone can make it -- in some ways immortal day substitutes for this, as does the lively immortal discussion board. At times, major changes go in, such as a new zone, or a revamp. This usually requires an Overlord's assistance when linking between zones. Changes in the character generation process, such as recent changes to starting skills, are another example of a major change. Another thing requiring the attention of a Highlord or Overlord are approving changes. Before things get added to the world, whether it's npcs, items, or rooms, someone doublechecks them, making sure they're typo-free and consistent with our guidelines and theme. Once this sanity-check's been performed, they can be placed into the game. Most immortals have specific areas they work with -- such as Luirs, the Northlands, or Allanak. This is the time when people skim through the bugs/typos/ideas file, looking for things they can fix. Those files are often the source of code or world changes as well. We try to keep the typos file to under a hundred -- bugs and ideas are substantially larger, partially because some stuff may be left for when someone has enough time/energy to investigate a bug, or because no one has been able to reproduce it. This is one of the reasons why it's good to be as informative as possible when bugging something -- an entry like "the tables are funky here" is frustratingly vague. Throughout the day, people coding test their changes on the testport. If necessary, we may quickly reboot the immortal mud to go live with a change for everyone to test, but generally the testport is where we try to replicate bugs, test changes, etc. There's two kinds of coding -- 1) direct changes to the main code, which requires recompiling and rebooting, and 2) dmpl programs, which can be added on the fly. Nessalin has set up a way for STs to upload dmpls and test them on the testport, which is a handy change, and keeps people from crashing the game willy nilly, heh. About 4 pm, we remind people to start finishing up and saving their work, because we want to leave a cushion in case there's a problem with booting. There's usually a final flurry of activity and item approval at this time, and we remember all the things we forgot to do, like updating rumors, changing independent shops, etc. I don't know how immortal day started -- I remember it from my playing days and being frustrated by having to spend one of my free days somewhere else. But I suspect it will continue. We are trying right now to create an alternative for people on Saturdays, but it won't be ready for a couple of weeks at least. Till then, the players will be forced to perhaps go out into the world. ;) I first started playing Arm during the summer of 1996, the last year the APM was in Iowa City, after ridiculing a friend of mine, Jason, who played Galen Oash at the time, for his addiction to the game. I lasted probably four months before my curiosity got the best of me and I let him start me with a human ranger in House Oash. The most memorable event of that character's life was when Jason was bored and had taken me out in the wagon. He wished up that he wanted something exciting to happen, and suddenly, whether coincidence or deliberate, a mekillot showed up. Galen was so buff that he was killing the thing, with a little npc help, if I remember right, with no problem. In fact, I didn't realize until RL months later exactly how nasty a mek could be. Once she died at the hands of some nasty Blackwing elves, I made a 'vicious' assassin with great plans of becoming something that everyone feared. The result? Heh. My greatest fluffball ever, Vatriala Fale. Okay, so sometimes things don't go as planned. But her kid kicked the shit out of the northlands, so nyeh! Since then, I've played a variety of roles, from a raider to a gypsy to a scrub hopper to a noble and back again, north, south, Storm, Luirs, with a house and independent. My favorite? Probably that goofy fluffball Fale-by-marriage, Vatriala, because back then, everything in the game was new and exciting, even seemingly mundane things like shopping at Thexi's and learning to ride a kank. I've been to every APM since I started and have fond memories of each one. Iowa City, where I knew no one and was sick with a cold. Baltimore where I was proposed to and the crab feast (I missed most of that due to Jay/Becklee's wheelchair dying and me having to race across town with another player to grab the parts to fix it.) The endless hikes in North Carolina. My wedding in Las Vegas to Jay/Becklee. And Chicago where I got to show off my driving skills *laugh* and going to Medeival Times, where when our knight lost, the whole party started cheering for the Black Knight and some for the Black Moon. If I had advice to give to a new player, it's simple. Take the chance and do what you want to with the game. If you have a concept, mail it in, if you have the karma, play the class, if you have an idea, do it, the game is only as big as you're willing to go. Kelly/Aristina From Jhalavar, 8/26/1992, in response to a post about SneezyMUD implementing poker: This is an interesting idea... I just made up my own Poker-type card game for Armageddon called Kruth (rhymes with tooth... hell, why not?). There are 6 different "suits"; Truth, Deceit, Life, Death, Fate, and Kings. There are also elements that can be combined with these; Sun, Water, Stone, Wind. Therefore you could have the Stone of Fate, Wind of Death, etc. Different combinations are worth different amounts of points, and it's really quite fun. ;-) Maybe I'll add some more games like it (gives 'em something to do while resting ;) ). And a couple of months later, 10/9/92: I had an interesting idea for something I'm about to add to Armageddon: different currencies. It occured to me that finding the same type of treasure everywhere is rather boring... Wouldn't it be interesting if the lich you just slayed had a chest full of adamantium coins depicting an ancient sorcerer-king of millenia past? I almost dismissed the idea as too memory-consuming (100 different currencies, a large estimate, would take up a few extra megabytes of memory), but I thought of another happy method that would probably SAVE memory in the long run: struct currency_data { byte type; int amount; struct currency_data *next; }; That structure would be put in the character data as a linked list, and would take up less memory depending on how large a variety of coins the player has. In the player file (since it's binary) I would use a similasr structure, but an array rather than a linked list. To make this even more interesting, I could also define different monetary "systems". For instance, the penny, nickel, dollar, etc, all belong to the American system. Similarily, the "bit" and the "obsidian piece" would belong to the Allanaki system. Shopkeepers would trade only in one system, and would compute the lowest combination of coins you have that is still above the price of the item. Players would be able to get change for "current" currency (from a thriving city) in any other city, although they would be at a disadvantage... A Kragharian hralor might only be worth 8 Allanaki bits in Allanak, although the hralor might really be worth 3 times that much (2 obsidian pieces). In addition to making the game much more interesting, it would also make it much easier for would-be con-men ("I'll give you SEVEN hralor for that little Suk-Krathi ceramic coin"). It might even be possible to create some spells centered around it. *shrug* (Unfortunately, this never got implemented. -San) And finally, here's another early advertisement, this time from 2/27/1994 Armageddon - studsys.mscs.mu.edu 4444 Based on Dark Sun, Armageddon has ten guilds you can choose from. Defilers: All around mages, mana is gained by draining life force from the earth and plants around you. (Don't announce you are one, since you are likely to be hunted down and killed) Elemental Clerics: Sun, Wind, Water, and Stone...The accepted type of magic in this world. Assassins: Familiar with poisons, a fighter/thief mix that can be deadly. Warriors: Standard class, added subdue skill perfect for kidnappings. Pick-pockets/Burglars: Two thieves of a different kind and expertise. Rangers: Better suited to live in the mostly desert environment. Templars (need permission first): They make the rules in their cities, their power comes from the sorcerer-kings they serve, and to kill one is to be marked for death. Merchants, Shadowdancers (coming soon) In Armageddon, other players aren't recognizable by their names, you only see their descriptions. (giving out your true name right away could be a bad idea, since with that knowledge, an evil defiler must summon you and put you out of your misery!!!) There are no levels in this mud. Your health (hp) is fixed, and based on your endurance only(unless magically increased). You get better at using your skills and spells by _using_ them. Spell casters get new spells by mastering simpler ones (you need to master invis before you can get ethereal, for example). There are several factions to ally yourself with. Become a member of House Kurac, and build your fortune dealing in the addictive spices, illegal in some areas. Join House Salarr, those who deal in weapons of death. Many other alliances exist, and you have only to find them and gain their trust. Role-playing is a _must_ here, however...If you ignore this, do not be surprised if the templars seem to be checking your wagon more than usual, or charging you taxes that you've never heard before! Death is final in this mud, unless you are a new character in your first 2 hours of play. This does not mean you lose everything, though. You may inherit most of the skills of your old character, but then you are not given the 2 hour safe period... Casting spells is also much different. There aren't several different healing spells of varying power, for example. Spells are all cast with power levels as a part of them. Thus if you wish to cast a more powerful heal, merely cast 'mon un vivadu viqrol wril' and you will feel like new...You may have up to 10 aliases to make you life easier in your casting. We also currently have about 8 languages. Find someone who will teach you Mirukkim, the language of the dwarves, and increase your comprehension by listening to someone who speaks it better than you! So, if this sounds like something you might want to check out, feel free to stop by! If you don't get through at first, don't give up! The Overlords may simply be adding spell components, or something else to improve the game. Once again, the address is: studsys.mscs.mu.edu 4444 Give Armageddon a try, you won't be sorry! I had been bantering around taking up AD&D tabletop gaming and bemoaning the woes of having no multiplayer computer game to cater to -believable- roleplaying when, in February of 1994 or 1995 (Haldol, a friend of mine before and since, always seems to remember the years more clearly), I was introduced to Armageddon by a younger fraternity brother who had played in high school a year or two previous. Grimacing at the fact it was text-only and not graphical, I allowed Haldol to give it a try first while I continued with my single-player graphical PC games -- such as they were, at the time. Barely a month later Haldol convinced me to give Arm a try. Tottering around as a hefty half-giant certainly offered a new perspective on life, but there was something about having to run from a thrashing ginka vine that got the blood boiling. After some months of tromping around after a particular dwarf he had become attached to, and being enthralled by a certain paranoid elf, an unfriendly run-in with a templar who wanted to do a random backpack search led to a chase out along the North Road.. and eventually that half giant's demise. By then I was hopelessly enchanted -- by the environment, the gritty, believable realism, the intrigue, and the varied personalities & styles of the players. Since then, I continued to play for some years in a small variety of roles from glowering mul to mischievous tribals of various races. In 1998 I moved from the U.S. to Australia to continue my studies. Facing suddenly limited online times and a dearth of players during those times, I began taking more interest in doing things for the game other than just playing a character. So I spoke with Sanvean, and in late 1998 (or thereabouts) I joined staff. My role has changed significantly over the years, from a newbie adventurer and explorer of a mysterious world, to hardened long-time player, to newbie staff, and most recently to staff Highlord -- or "Dancin' Fool" as I have been labelled on the "who" list shown to other staff. (A remnant of the Thailand APM, I daresay.) I now only rarely play a mortal PC, but I'm thankful for the opportunity to do things for the game on my variably limited time and hectic schedule. But, as happened with that first half-giant, the Zalanthan sands refuse to let me go. |
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