Wizhelpers

[Rhaegar]

More hate mail! Back to business though:

Wizhelpers is a club for players wishing to lend their hand in creating and improving content in Genesis. They can apply and be accepted into the club by wizards and gain 2 things:
1. A board, where they can post their ideas on improving/changing current content (note: this would be for cosmetic changes only, like proposing a better description for Yagluk, changing some room or item to better reflect its purpose and such, not "make my special better plox").
2. A magic stone, which they could use to concentrate and get the list of current topics wizards need help with.

Example:

Code: Select all

> grasp stone
As you grasp the magical stone a vision appears before your eyes.
This are the things immortals could use your aid with:

1. Gorboth - I need help with special attack descriptions for an uber
             orc boss I've coded in Sparkle.

2. Petros - Looking for ideas on room and item descriptions in an
            underwater cave in Calia.

You may <release stone> to end the trance or <focus #> to get more
detail on the chosen topic.
> focus 1
By Gorboth:
I have some nasty big orc boss prepared for the new area to be opened
but I could use some help in creating truly epic descriptions for when he
attacks.
He would be using his bare hands (and fangs! Don't forget the fangs!) in
combat to attack his enemies.
> release stone
As you release the magical stone your vision fades and you shake off the
trance.

Most things that are getting coded take so long because writing descriptions can take ages. This way the Wizards would get some aid in their efforts, without revealing too much, and could focus on the code rather than long and epic texts. All interested wizhelpers could just send their ideas on the matter to the wizards, who would choose the best one and implement it. Or change the existing descriptions as necessary.

What do you think about it?

[Cherek]

You have tons of ideas is what I think. This one I think is one of the best!

[Alorrana]

Agreed with Cherek.

This could make players feel somewhat included in whats going on, and make them feel like they are contributing. But to make it work Wizards will have to actually use what people bring to the table, And just not discard it and make their own version..
Perhaps when implimented, make a note on common board about area and wizards thanks to those and those players who assisted.

Good idea. Will make players who are perhaps stuck spend some time coding small stuff and perhaps find back the old joy of genesis.

[Rhaegar]

This idea is based on 2 basic assumptions:
1) There are people good with words and bad at coding
2) There are people good at coding and bad with words

This is something to seal the gap between them. Also, it could allow people to get involved without wizzing, but to a very limited extent.

[Greneth]

I dunno how the wiz process works here but I play around with a Dead Souls lib which I just run from a local host. They have a bunch of nifty little items that send you to your own little creators room where you can play around. The nice feature is the staff which instead of writing the code out you can type.

"Create room south"

Instead of having to type out the inherit or any of the bracket codes for setting long decriptions, short ect.

And it will create a carbon copy of the room your in to the south. From there you can "add npc Orc" 'modify name Orc" ect. It's all very easy to use and gets alot of the repetitiveness out of the way. Could be a fun way to allow players to get a bit creative with things and take a load off some of the wizards who are looking for a multi layered huge dungeon and want to do the fun stuff.

[Arcon]

I might be wrong but wasn't Earth working on something so mortals could help make items? Or something similar?

[Ilrahil]

There used to be this function back in the day. I think though it led to abuse of the system. If you want to help wizards ask one in a domain you are interested in helping with. I know many mortals are assisting wizards in collection data or occasionally helping with a description.

[Rhaegar]

There used to be this function back in the day. I think though it led to abuse of the system. If you want to help wizards ask one in a domain you are interested in helping with. I know many mortals are assisting wizards in collection data or occasionally helping with a description.

The questions still remain:

What if you're interested with more than one domain?
What if the wizard of the domain you're interested in is not interested in you or your ideas?

@Greneth:

Nono, this solution is heavily flawed as you can't create anything non-standard this way, which is severely limiting.
Let me pose an example from another MUD to illustrate the subject (something that is present in Gen but in different form):
item: a hooded cloak
options: wear cloak with or without hood
challenge: if cloak is worn it changes your description to blahblah xxx-cloaked (preferably cloaking non-face/head features)
You could then draw your hood which turned your description to hooded xxx-cloaked but took away 50% of your awareness skill.
(which I think was not just fluffy but fair tradeout for your anonimity)
Compare this to gen:
rangers, valars, mm, pot = hide your identity thanks to guild item but reval your affiliation (in case of rangers and perhaps mm - haven't examined them in a while - it goes far further)
bda/rda = reveal your affiliation and identity at all times but hide some of your armours in exchange

Which system is better? Which one should we use? Which one is the most fair?

Now please do tell me, how do you code such thing using a wizard (no pun intended, I'm talking about the next->next->next->ok type windows installer wizard here)?

@arcon:
Earth wanted to give players the coding power (turning input into code). My idea is for players to provide descriptions that could be possibly used by wizards. There's a major difference between the two.

[Earth]

I might be wrong but wasn't Earth working on something so mortals could help make items? Or something similar?

I started work on this, but due to RL stuff, I haven't worked on it in a few months. Perhaps I'll get back to it sometime soon...

[Greneth]

@Rhaegar

If thats what your looking to code then you should probably just become a wizard. I dont think any player should be able to code any such item or anything even remotely close as its going to do nothing but lead to abuse. I was thinking more along the lines of saving the repetitiveness of the job and allowing characters to use their imagination.