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You know how right now, you would see:

*Jadael walks in from the west*

But thoeraticly, you might not know my character's name.

So I suggest code, so that instead, you might see:

*A small male walks in from the west*

or

*A tall female walks in from the east*

etc.

And then some command or something, maybe *reveal my name to <person>*, which would pose you telling someone your name (probably whispering it, to avoid confusion). Then from then on, that person would see your name in 'look' and such.

This would also bring up use of the disguise skill, you could render yourself nameless again, to everyone.

Edit: Clarification of one point, and typos

(Edited by Jadael at 8:03 pm on Dec. 28, 2001)

By Jadael at Dec 28, 2001, 8:00 PM | 0
Its been discussed many times in the past. But frankly, I personally don't like that. It leaves too many gaps and such. Its much more simple to RP the fact that you don't know someone's name. Besides, what if you pick something up? 'A tall female picks up a jar of paint.' What if there are two in the room?

Confusing if you ask me…

By Wren at Dec 28, 2001, 8:03 PM | 0
You wouldn't believe how many times we've discussed that concept, but it's actually alot harder to implement than you might think. Firstly, player names can be called in a variety of manners which all output the same result but can't all necessarily be modified to do what you suggest. That -could- be resolved, but the bigger problem is object/player matching. There's several ways within the MOO that the code will take your name (or alias) typed in a command and figure out which object # you are from the name and -all- of these ways would need to be modified to allow your 'short description' to be used in order to match against 'you'.

Eg: kill bill, kill short male

The primary problem is basically inconsistencies in the way the above two systems have been implemented by different admin over the years. It's one of those things that -may- happen when/if someone gets time to sit down and make a -big- effort to bring the whole MOO into line with the system. However, we are in a self-enforced state of 'code freeze' at the moment, by which no-one is -supposed- to be starting work on any totally new code, but instead should be concentrating on completing existing systems/projects and fixing known bugs.

But yeah, it's something we'd -love- to see.

I've actually only ever seen it done on one MUD, a Dragonlance MUD who's name I don't recall.

By Rastus at Dec 28, 2001, 8:10 PM | 0
The technical details of implimenting something like that are staggering once you realize that we don't tell each person their own version of a message detrived from your moving. We would have to overhaul the entire system (perhaps doubling the code overall) to deliver individual messages. No thanks.
By Johnny at Dec 28, 2001, 8:11 PM | 0
I have seen it implimented in one MOO as well. However, their idea of 'complete' was incredibly lacking. You had to type the WHOLE string in to do something to that person (no thanks). And it was a simple matter of looking at them or examining them or even 'help <string.' and it'd return the name.

Johnny is right, the ammount of code to cover all angles is incredible, and not worth it for such a simple thing. Besides, when someone walks in and you don't know their name, they still walk in. If we were in a visual environment, i'd see the same thing regardless of wether I knew your name or not. Its ICness that counts, and that is something players daily have to contend with anyways.

(Yes, we all know things are discussed OOCly, regardless of wether or not we should be.)

Still, players keep what they hear OOC seperate. Look at our death system for instance. If you die, your expected to RP from the time after your last update… and frankly, I have yet to see a major problem with someone -not- doing it.

I dunno, again, it just seems worthless to code something like the name switch in...

By Wren at Dec 28, 2001, 8:21 PM | 0
Firstly, I think it'd be an incredibly powerful RP tool and feature. The concepts are endless. No more "emote describes Bill.", instead, a "describe <person>" verb. Not to mention "sketch <person>", "describe <person> to <person>", "ambush <person>" (if you know their name or suitable description), "recall <person>" (attempt to recall the players description from your memory of meeting them, etc. If this massively powerful RP tool is useless because players can "just RP it" then how many other coded features can we go without?

Secondly, yes, it would take a fair bit of fairly complex code to implement. But it would be far less code and be vastly less complex than combat, vehicles, the matrix, NPC's, faction, char-gen and at least a dozen other systems already coded, part coded or planned.

Thirdly, and something I hadn't thought of but Jadael pointed out, it would present the most wonderful opportunity to implement disguises and use of the disguise skill.

And finally, nth wouldn't be a problem. During chargen each character would be prompted to enter their "short description", 3-5 words.

short fat and ugly man, stumpy looking bearded man, tall pale slender woman, sexy large breasted woman, etc, etc, etc. The man/woman part could be appended to the short description automagically and it would be a simple check to prevent two people from having the same short description in the same way two people can't have the same name.

The barrier preventing us from doing this? The fact that it's an extensive hack to numerous core verbs within the MOO. The "more complex" systems I mentioned above are largely seperate from the existing core of the MOO, this system would require a deep and thorough hack through the very bowels of Sindomes code, restructuring and recoding the verbage that handles all the output you see from the MOO and everything you type and send to the MOO…

Would it be a valuable addition to the MOO? I say yes. Can it be done? I say yes. Do we have the manpower resources to do it? At the moment, I guess not. No-one else seems to want to step up to the plate and while I'd -love- to do it, I really need to concentrate on my already overwhelming project workload.

By Rastus at Dec 28, 2001, 9:26 PM | 0
Yay, at least one person sees my side.

I think you just need to really advertise the fact that you need coders… and builders maybe.

Do you code geeks have any on-line hangouts? If so, I say start spamming some ads like there's no tomorrow...

:)

Edit: What lanquage does SD use? I'm gonna start reading some online tutorials :)

(Edited by Jadael at 9:36 pm on Dec. 28, 2001)

By Jadael at Dec 28, 2001, 9:32 PM | 0
*beats his head against a wall*

You think like management would…

You can't complete a code project by throwing more programmers at it and no one 'volunteers' to manage a group of people, there's no fun in that.

This is the basic problem with some managers, they think they can solve time problems by putting more people on a job, and it often ends up taking longer than it would have with less on the job.

By Johnny at Dec 28, 2001, 9:37 PM | 0
Well, if you had one person on each job… and they were competent enough to know what was already done.
By Jadael at Dec 28, 2001, 9:40 PM | 0
There-in lies a much bigger and deeper problem, which could be put simply as "Too many cooks spoil the broth.". Collaberative coding is at best a tough situation, especially when all those collaborators are of varying skill, varying understandings of what has gone before and documentation of the existing work is almost non-existant. Sindome has, in the past, suffered what can only be described as significant setbacks from the best intentions of too many contributors…

Then there's always the various political and security related issues with taking on new staff. Johnny and the other admin will no doubt tell you, as they're always telling me, that I'm -far- too paranoid about this stuff... But the basic fact remains that the 'failure rate' amongst new admin is high. Either they can't hack the "chain of command", they don't have the time to commit, they're commited elsewhere (of which I'm always -very- wary), their interests come first (there's been more than one case of admin abusing their new 'powers' to blatantly benefit their player alt) or they simply have what I call the "loose cannon" attitude, coding like crazy on a million ideas but generally creating more work and 'clean-up' requirements for other admin to deal with.

Still, I'm not the right person to ask about this, I dunno, call me what you will, I'm sure there's a proper term for it and I won't deny it, I'm -very- defensive when it comes to 'new staff'. When the right person (to me) comes along I get a gut feeling, but it's a VERY rare gut feeling.

Generally I prefer to see admin serve their time as GM's and progress up the ranks through dedication, giving them time to understand the deeper currents that run through the admin side of the MOO. Most 'experienced' coders don't want to spend -any- time as a piddling GM or creator (there's not a great demand for builders on SD at the moment anyhow).

Anyhow, I ramble, as usual...

By Rastus at Dec 28, 2001, 9:54 PM | 0
And while I was typing all that Johnny said pretty much the same thing in a couple of sentences, as usual.
By Rastus at Dec 28, 2001, 9:58 PM | 0
Quote: from Jadael on 12:40 am on Dec. 29, 2001[br]Well, if you had one person on each job… and they were competent enough to know what was already done.

Thems two -BIG- "if's". VERY BIG.

By Rastus at Dec 28, 2001, 10:01 PM | 0
I personally would love to see the ambush, describe, scetch, etc…

Now that you add disguise in there, yes, the short description does make sense. I say go for it... but not now, get other things finished (like Ras said). Then we can add the fun stuff.

By Wren at Dec 28, 2001, 10:10 PM | 0
Well, if you had one person on each job… and they were competent enough to know what was already done.

Additionally, programming is very connected. Each 'one' part is often integrated with several others. We've run in problems before where someone coded something in a sand box and then it screwed everything up when they tried to integrate it.

By Johnny at Dec 28, 2001, 10:12 PM | 0
Thems two -BIG- "if's". VERY BIG.

hell, they ain't big, they're LEVIATHAN… But it'd work :)

Edit: But then in light of Johnny's post. Your good at co-posting...

(Edited by Jadael at 10:14 pm on Dec. 28, 2001)

By Jadael at Dec 28, 2001, 10:12 PM | 0
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