Memory Snippet of the Week #161

Jah shared this link (local) about a Python-based MUD creation system called Evennia here. I wanted to save this to the blog in particular because a MUD world is something I’ve wanted to make since young. Maybe one day I’ll do something with this. There are a handful of memory snippets linked to this that I wanted to document and share though, in the vein of building projects that I have helped with in various worlds before, so here we are.

Snippet 1

The first memory snippet is that I’ve wanted to create a MUD version of a city, with interconnected rooms representing streets and shops and houses, for a long time now. Why, I’m not exactly sure, but this one is a dream stretching back something like 20-30 years. I’ve always liked the text-based, world-building aspect of a MUD and the ability to conceal descriptions and interactions in the room for people to find if they try to look at or interact with things via text comments in the room (look books, sit chair, and so on).

There was a good chunk of time in my life, somewhere around the early 00’s, where I wanted to make a MUD version of Waterdeep (local), a major city in the Forgotten Realms. Or at least a specific shopping street on the southern part of the city. This would have been very heavily influenced by a MUD called Forgotten Kingdoms (local) that I was playing at the time, and which was mostly set in Waterdeep. I’ve briefly mentioned this MUD before a long time ago in this writeup, and it’s also on my master “massively multiplayer” game list here. You can see from that list that that was a 2001-2003 sort of game, so around that point forward was when I first got interested in that. Because I didn’t know much programming though, I never got anywhere into it besides setting up a MUD codebase that I then did nothing with.

These days, if I were to do something like that, I wonder what I would do instead? Now that I’ve visited Japan and seen their shoutengai, or Japanese shopping streets, maybe something like that with a mystical bent? Or would I try to design an entire town or city instead? Something modern? Cyberpunk? Or back to my magical fantasy roots? It would still ultimately be text though, and not really anything that could be turned into an actual game, but it’s all about flexing and exercising the writing and world-building chops.

Snippet 2

Another memory snippet that I remember is that at one point, I actually fell into friendship with a few people from a MUD who were trying to make their own MUD. I believe I met them when I was playing Forgotten Kingdoms, which from that linked list above and the dates on the files I have saved from that project would date it to around the latter half of 2002. I don’t even remember who exactly the people I was with were anymore, besides Lady Jinx who was very much there as well, but I do remember that the name of the MUD that we were going to make was called Broken Barriers, and that it never really got anywhere.

I have bits and pieces of what people typed up at the time saved in various text fields on the storage drive, and maybe I’ll put together and publish a page of snippets someday, but there was so little of interest here, and I suspect a lot of the things that I do have regardless were references and notes copied out from other books instead of original content, so this was very much in such an early state of development that I feel like I never actually created anything of significance here. Still, my god character there was called Sehanine (local), a minor elven goddess of the Forgotten Realms, and a name that I haven’t heard in a looooong time. Though as god characters, we were builders and not roleplay characters, I did create a room for myself:

This peaceful-looking room would be described by mere mortals as simply breathtaking. The room itself seems to be surreal, the walls, floor and ceiling looking to be made of an insubstantial yellow glow, and seeming to be constantly shifting. In fact, the whole room is constructed from glowing moonrays, constantly flowing in intertwined rivers about the circular room’s contours, and feeling like flowing water when touched, as well as providing all the light this room will ever need. A touch is enough to bend the moonrays, and thus they can be gently kneaded into whatever shape necessary, giving no resistance, and only reforming when the gentle pressure is removed. Piles of lined and graph papers flank the room, showing diagrams of everything from drow cities to underground areas that no mortal has ever set foot on. A closet is cleverly set into the side of the room so much so it almost looks invisible, but is actually chock-full of all sorts of dresses and finery.

Snippet 3

Another snippet is that when I played Medievia, which I have written about here in the past, I also applied for and got a God character there, not to build out a zone but to write Autoquests, which were ingame quests from scrolls that monsters would sometimes randomly drop. These god characters were supposedly heavily monitored, since they had access to tools that could look up items and monsters and data like that that could be abused by actual players trying to get an advanrage, and the quests themselves were done using a custom program that they developed in-house called AQB (AutoQuest Builder, I suppose).

I got tired of the rigidity and layers of security and approvals needed to do anything though so I never stuck around long, but according to my logs, I did end up creating four Autoquests for the game. Their names were: Apples for the Horses, Free the Alicorn, The Ace of Life, and Upgrade the White Knight’s Pike. There were two more either in development or stuck in various stages of submission too: Memories of a Childhood Dream, and Repair the Hives. The program that they provided me to edit them still works, oddly, though the UI isn’t the greatest and it’s hard to read the text that I wrote up for each step in the quests. I should do something with these snippets someday too, but today is not that day.

Snippet 4

This next one is one that I’ve mentioned these in passing inside of another snippet before. I played a MUD called The Gathering… at some point, and wrote them a zone named the Dragondale Sewers, credited to my goddess character named Melyene, where two factions of ratmen, the Severed Ear and the Wounded Paw, were fighting each other. This was a low to middle level zone even though it was situated just below the starting/main town, Dragondale, with a lower level quest to collect rat tails and a higher level option to go in and murder the leaders of both factions.

There was a bunch of simple code in there, written using the ingame scripting system, that created and governed interaction between the various ecologies and factions in the sewers, and I remember being particularly proud of a treasure/junk heap in a corner of the sewers where players could go to and try to dig up a bunch of interesting trinkets from a loot table (but which could also spawn an indignant slime enemy.) That was definitely the MUD zone that I was most proud in building, partly because that was the *only* MUD zone that I had ever built (and have ever built, up till this point anyway).

Snippet 5

Looking back at that MMO/MUD list that I played again, there was one entry near the top called Noble MUD, which I played in Jan-Feb 2002. This one is almost certainly long gone, but as I recall it, the premise was that the players were part of a noble family living in a manor called the Thtakryt Estate, and there was supposed to be some nobility RP within a magical fantasy setting. I liked the idea, but it never took off and I never found anyone there to roleplay with, so I left after a week or two.

However, while I was there, I did design my character, and got to write up her bedroom as well, and I remember this MUD not only because of that, which was rare in the various MUD worlds that I visited, but also specifically because I got complimented for the room and descriptions that I made for my room, though it might also just have been the staff member doing so being nice because there were so few players and they badly needed more new blood. That being said, I saved most of the snippets from this place, so why not toss them in here too? This is me, circa Feb 2002, about five months before I found out that I was transgendered (or rather, found out what it meant):

This was the door entrance to the room:

This smooth silver door is crafted from fine lacquered and well-polished wood, and an intricately designed square-shaped maze is engraved and embossed onto the centre of the wooden frame, the entrances to the maze on top and below, providing idle fingers with something to do. The doorknob is made of a warm golden brass, and turning and pushing it causes the door to swing inward silently.

This was the actual room description:

Shiara‘s bedroom is moderately big, and fully carpeted, with a window directly opposite the door which is on the west wall, and another in the middle of the wall on the south. Both windows have light green curtains with images of flowers embroidered on them, and which are usually drawn shut. In the southeast corner of the room lies a large bed, with a niche cut into the wall and set partway up in the south corner by the bed, and a softly glowing lamp is strategically placed in the niche.

At the foot of the bed and in front of the window is a round table made of smooth, aged wood that has been carefully varnished. Flanking the table on either side are single-seat sofas, and a double-seat sofa rests on the opposite side of the table from the window. In the southwestern corner, immediately to your right when you first walk in, is a rectangular walk-in closet which is bulging with dresses, tunics, pantaloons and the such. Beside that is a chest of drawers, 4 of them in total, all of which are closed right now.

To your left when you come in, next to a lamp placed on a small elegant brass table, is her dresser. A mirror has been placed on the wall, at just the right height for a person sitting in the accompanying velvet-padded stool to view his or her face in. Next to the dresser at the base of the western wall is a closed longchest, twice as long as it is wide, or tall. Next to the dresser on the northern wall is a fireplace, with a rug spread out beside it, and beside that is a large bookcase, filled with books she apparantly peruses once in a while. Lastly, in the northeastern corner is a series of desks lined up against each other, with a smaller lamp again placed right in the corner. The desks and tables in total have well over ten drawers, and are also scattered with papers of all sorts. The ceiling is covered with a thin layer of glassy material, and you realise with a start that you can see through to the sky above, although the room is nowhere near the top of the estate….

{+views available, type ‘+view here’, then ‘+view here/<item>}

These were some of the items that could be +viewed in the room:

Dresser: Besides the mirror mounted on the wall just above the dresser, the dresser also has 3 drawers on its right side which can be pulled open. The first drawer contains hairbrushes and combs of different types, a nail trimmer, a metal file, a small pair of scissors, a small dagger, a small flask of oil… The second drawer contains mainly bottles of perfume and the such, which she doesn’t use very often but figures would be good to have around. The third drawer contains various accessories, several hairpins, hair ties, and several types of rings, bracelets, ringlets and more. Although none of them look like they’re very expensive, all of them look reasonably valuable.

Bed: The bed consists of a large, thick but soft mattress and a thinner spare one below it, lying on top of a square bed frame. The frame does not have any headboards, but has 4 ornate carved bedposts with round knobs on the very top. It is piled with quite a few plush light blue, pink, green and purple and various other light-coloured cushions, as well as three large comforters. All the cushions, comforters, and even the bed itself are stuffed with soft feathers of all types, from long stiff ones to fluffy ones. There is nothing at all under the bed, although there is enough space under there to house a person lying down. The niche where the oil lamp is is cut into the wall itself, and is just a small cubical area big enough to hold the lamp. On a closer inspection, you see a dagger lying at the base of the lamp, perhaps within reach of whoever is lying down on the bed.

Bookcase: This smooth varnished wooden bookcase is quite huge, stretching across half of the room. Its four shelves hold quite a multitude of books, standing upright or piled on top of each other, although certain sections of the bookcase are still empty, perhaps for future use. The books look well-dusted, and are of many different topics, astronomy, various forms of magic, history, and many other varied selections, mostly reference books. (+views are visible here, by typing +view bookcase, also type ‘GET BOOK’ to generate a random book title)

Table: This round table is made of fine varnished wood, and painted a soft marble colour. It currently lies below the windowsill, with a width that spans the entire window, so that the two single sofas are placed over to either side of the window as opposed to in front of the window itself. This allows any people seated there to have a good view out of the window without anyone noticing them. Just below the main surface of the table is another smooth surface, spanning the width of the three table legs too, where items can be placed, although there is nothing there right now. On the table proper is a bowl of juicy fruit.

Ornaments: There are many ornaments of art and interesting items lying about the room, and you can examine a random one by typing “Art”. Try it!

Closet: This is a walk-in closet, with two parallel poles running along the length of the closet at head height and parallel to the floor, to hang clothes on. Both poles are chock-full of hangers, some occupied and some still empty, with all manners of dresses, thick and thin, blouses, skirts, gowns and other types of outerwear. Several piles of neatly folded shirts and trousers line the floor, hidden under the draping lengths of some of the dresses. At the back of the closet, in the far corner and hidden in the shadows, is another pile of items, bags and ornaments, some wrapped, some unwrapped. To look at a random one, type “Art2”. Try it!

Chest: This is a jewelled coffer of chased silver, depicting wooded scenes with birds in branches on back and sides. The top of the coffer is graced by an engraving of a maiden combing hair while looking into a pool at her reflection.

Here are some book examples.

Book 1: This red book is entitled “Heraldry over the Ages” on its spine. It looks like a relatively new book, with slightly bent pages, and a quick flip through the book shows the portrait and history of several major family crests, as well as the symbolism of everything from the phoenix to the cinquefoil to the splendour to the gouttes that may be found on different crests.

Book 2: This book is bound in old yellow leather, secured with a buckle in front, with faded and crinkled pages of differing sizes making up the substance of the book. Carefully opening the cover will allow you to find a range of spell formulaes and magical symbols, notes on magic in general and how to create spells. None of the spell formulaes actually work, unfortunately, but parts of them may be invaluable references in actual spells, and some of the notes could easily strike off a philosophical debate, although the book in general is obviously written by what would be considered a lunatic, due to the ridiculousness of some of the ‘created’ spells here, but hey…

Book 3: A thick tome of dull grey, with an equally thick spine, you open it to find an equally dull topic to most people…it’s a dictionary! With listings of all words from ‘A’ to ‘Zyzzyva’, it’s a handy addition to any booklover’s collection…a quick and easy way of finding the definition of a convoluted word in say, a lunatic’s spellbook…

Book 4: You slide this large-sized but relatively thin (an inch) black and gold book out from underneath a pile of books, and open it. Inside, you find general maps of the Empire and parts of most of the other charted lands…as well as detailed maps on each particular important area within the empire, for example the provinces and major cities. Some of the pages are well-used, and a faint circle can be seen around Shusblem and a nearby small city, and an arrow along the major road connecting them heading in the direction of Shusblem.

Book 5: You lift this musty old cardboard box out from it’s niche on a shelf. Opening it, you find it piled high aged yellow, as well as several newer-looking, hand-drawn maps of old castles, towns, and various other locales and types. Most of them are folded and creased across the map, and a couple of them look as though they’re about to fall into several pieces.

And then there were a bunch more shorter one or two line descriptions for those ornaments and art objects. My notes were full of well-defined clutter! What was I doing back when I was 18? But anyway, something like this is what I want to do but on a larger scale. For no reason other than to drive and satisfy my imagination.

Oh, and this was my character description. It’s a lot shorter. Relatively speaking.

Before you stands a lady in her late teens, with shoulder length blonde hair which blends in with her pale white skin, and which bobs around when she nods.. She has light bluish eyes with perhaps a tinge of green in them, and is usually ready with a friendly smile. She isn’t very tall, standing at about 5’2″ in height, and with a nice, slender figure to boot. She seems charming if a little shy and quiet, especially in public, and looks like the type that hates to be the centre of attention.

(OOC note: do +views on me, I did that to shorten the overall desc.)

The +views were:

Dress: She is adorned in a light blue winter dress, made of layers of silk, and petticoats made of wool under the skirt. It has a neckline that starts just below her collarbone, and which dips slightly in the middle, revealing her neck and a little of her shoulders. The part of the dress above her waist hugs her curves closely, while below her waist the extra layers of wool cause the dress to billow out a little, ending a few inches above her ankles at most. Two pockets, one on either side, are just hidden in the folds of her dress just below her waistline. The sleeves of her dress are also made up of several layers of silk, and the fabric clings to her arms from her shoulders down to halfway between her elbows and wrists. From there, the sleeve starts to widen, ending at her wrists, where the cuffs are about twice as wide as is necessary for her.

Boots: She is wearing a soft black pair of black heeled suede boots, reaching almost halfway up her calves, with a zip running up the length of the instep of each boot, concealed by a length of snap-on buttons that cover up the teeth of the zip.

Scarf: Around her neck is a long, thick light blue scarf, the two ends of the scarf flowing down over her shoulders to end halfway down her torso, which she can clutch and pull around herself if she so wishes. The scarf is made from a couple layers of fine, seemingly expensive fur, and is wrapped one and a half times around her neck.

I lied though, the actual reason I did my clothing as +views was not because I wanted to make it shorter, although that’s also a plus, but because I wanted to write a bunch of clothing descriptions and swap them in and out depending on the day and my mood, and it was easier to do that by just changing individual +view texts rather than my overall description. Thankfully, I never got around to writing up all that. Seriously, what was I doing back when I was 18?

Snippet 6

This snippet is also one that I’ve mentioned before — there was a time when I took part in a room design contest for a newly-opened municipal library in a MUSH called Winter’s Edge, and I won that so they used my description for tthe room. That one I started writing the book and other in-game lore articles for though, so I was quite proud of my creative work there as well.

Snippet 7

When I went back to Medievia for my final stint, which would have placed this snippet around August 2005, I joined a clan called Keepers of the Black Chamber.(Clan 35). The clantown at the time apparently needed a redesign, so our clan leader, Zhouxiaoyu, who I know now as Tes, assigned me and a fellow clan member named Aydria to write it. So I helped design that zone too, although it wasn’t a solo effort and I have no idea how much of the zone I did and how much she did.

Once we had both gone inactive later that year in October though, Tes did an amazing thing — he walked around the clantown and recorded down all the room descriptions, and looked at all the mobs and wrote down all their descriptions as well, and then sent it to us to preserve the work we had done. I mentioned this when I touched base with him again a year and a half ago, and he is the sole reason that I have a copy of the zone and all the descriptions — heck, he’s the reason any of that even exists anymore at all. I appreciated him so much for that.

I haven’t actually posted this log yet — I should probably do so for posterity at some point, but if you think that Nobles MUD snippet above was long, this one would be like 20 times its size since it’s a walking log and involved back and forth travel between rooms with ASCII maps too. I’ll make a separate page for it sometime!

Snippet 8

I’ve also done a couple of non-in-character scripting projects related to MUDs before, one being the Sigma Iota Nu one mentioned here where I scripted up a roster/online status program for them, another being Medievia where I wrote up a quick app using a scripting language in the MUD client itself that we used, to be able to access and search my item database in a local Excel file to find out where an item could be located in-game, and the third in a MUD called Achaea, where I wrote up some scripts to protect myself from thievery and also to help with tournament duels or something. Both of which were not only allowed but encouraged. None of the latter two examples were ever very complex though, they’re just here as footnotes. The first one though, that school roster, was a little more complex as it pulled a bunch of data from different player objects and displayed them in a neat table. I was proud of that one too.

Anyway, game/world/room/event design, especially in the realm of writing descriptions and scripts for it, has been a part of my life in various ways for quite some time now! And that’s why the link that Jah pointed out this week sounded so interesting to me.