Dark, The way that the Alter Aeon game server is set up, we currently have to use the same timebase for everyone. When we have people grouping and interacting with each other, it doesn't make sense to have one person fighting at half the speed of the other. I understand your point that as a solo player, you'd like to play at your own pace, but the server currently doesn't have any way to do that. With the current server design, if the server tries to wait on any one person, the game will hang for everyone until that person is done.
Because of that, I have to pick one, single timebase, a timebase that hopefully works for everyone. Naturally, this means that pretty much noone likes it, but that the complaints are roughly equal in direction. This idea of forced timing is probably the major difference between muds and interactive fiction. With IF, you can just wait and think about what you want to do. On a mud, the game world pulls you along, and you go along with it whether you want to or not. In a lot of ways this is a shame, because as you mentioned, Alter Aeon really does have a lot of beautifully described things in it. Aggressive monsters in particular are very hard to look at - even if the fight lasts a long time, you still have to pay more attention to the combat than the description. Now that I think about it, aggressive monsters are probably the worst case for this, and adding your preview command would go a long way to taking the edge off of it. I'll raise its priority to get implemented. I'll also take a look at slowing the global timebase down a little bit. We added some code a while back that I think will allow us to do that without damaging the response and ping times. Thanks for your comments. -dentin Alter Aeon MUD http://www.alteraeon.com On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 9:06 PM, dark <d...@xgam.org> wrote: > Recently, I was trying the game projectbob, sinse someone on audiogames.net > recommended it as needing a db entry. > > it has lots of great systems or mechanics, but I realized i was having > distinct and real trouble getting into the game. > > I found myself asking why, why I'd not really taken the opportunity sinse > vipmud was released to go and play many muds, when there are so many good > games available, why indeed I've put down alteraeon slightly recently and > don't find myself picking it up, even though I'm such a huge fan of textual > rpgs, avidly wait for new updates of eamon deluxe, love games like > kerkerkruip and treasure of a slavers kingdom, not to mention gamebooks and > other brouser games, and get extremely excited and involved with the > descriptions, the writing and the atmosphere of where I'm exploring. > > ? > > Then it hit me. > > the problem is time! > > ? > > in a turn based game there is plenty of time to read each description. This > doesn't just go for rooms and areas, but for monsters and attacks as well. In > every mud I've played however, you just don't get time! to fully ead and > appreciate text, and in fact usually have to skip past descriptions of > enemies or their lairs. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
