Re: TriadCity via MUD clients
Hi.
Feel free. Actually my explanation was sort of based on a long discussion we had in This thread, when someone was against the very idea of quests in computer games, and we debated the issue.
As regards a none visual world, Btw, as to your "none visual world" question.
I'm personally not a fan of doing any kind of "welcome to blind land! here every blind person lives happily with their blindity." type of area, nor yet any kind of "you lose your vision but wait! you have super hearing that is just as good and are suddenly dare devil" type of idea.
As soon as you start pushing the "blind!" thing, you push the idea that blind people are exclusively different, and that being "blind" is the most important thing about their identity, indeed it's still rather depressing that most blind characters in literature or film are either not really blind blind super heroes, who have an awesome magic piece of technology/sensory power which makes them effectively not blind at all, or helpless little tiny tim knockoffs who cannot dress themselves, either way, very different sorts of humans from regular people, (ever noticed how Jordi la forge was thee least fleshed out character in Startrek Tng? Or that his blindness almost never actually caused him problems at all because of his magic car filter?).
What might be fun however, is to change the idea from "blind", specifically, to "none visual."
So, how about creating a part of the game, be that a neighborhood of triad city, where a player's vision is useless and they're forced to use their other senses in a way that does not make them "blind", but just forces them to explore things without vision.
I'm not thinking of the classic lightless labyrinth (cliche city), My thought here, is how about an area where all of the objects, buildings, and even npcs are entirely invisible. The player can still see, however looking around visually, all they get is a description such as "you are in a field", or at most "you are in the north/south of a field."
However, going the wrong way, the player walks into an invisible wall. As the player improves at touch and hearing skills, the player will soon be able to sense the air currents that tell the player whether they are in a corridor, street or room, and hear the moving of npcs (at least when those npcs aren't being actively stealthy or standing still).. if the player "touches the area" the player will try and feel their way around the place, though of course this is likely to annoy any npcs they run into and possibly get them attacked.
If it occurs to the player to take a stick with them, this unlocks the "cane" command, which can identify some objects, however even if the cane identify's an object, the player will need to touch it to get an exact idea, EG, "Cane" "You feel a poll, "touch poll, this is a stout poll of metal about six inches thick set into the pavement, you find a wooden sign board bolted halfway up that you cannot read."
The player can of course talk to npcs, however only gets the voice identified until the npc has introduced themselves, and only gets location information if an npc has actually told them what a location is, or if they've used another command such as "smell", for example the player might identify a cafe by the smell of cooking food, although that could equally apply to the cafe's kitchin.
As per my discussion of quests, there would also be a definite point in this area, perhaps some items a player had to find, and had to find entirely by using their other senses or trying to find the correct npc to talk to, however the basic navigation of the area would put the player into a position where they would need to both practice skills to progress, and also expend a lot of time on their other senses to gain basic information about where they were.
This would also then effectively give everybody an experience of what it would be like to operate without vision, including a little of the real life neusence factor, without having to mention the word "blind" once, indeed players who like exploring and puzzles might well enjoy that sort of area for it's own sake and for the need to find out information in an alternative way.
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