Talk:Online creation/Archive 1

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Contents 1 Complement 2 Basic Structure of OLC 3 Locke's Clarifications to Dating 4 Proposed Merge 5 Online Creation is not Online Building 6 Merc

Complement

Someone complemented the article this morning. To a subset of the online virtual community, this is a significant portion of this software's history, and is not considered a "plug" or "vanity page" —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 151.201.234.97 (talk • contribs).

Basic Structure of OLC

NiMUD/TheIsles, written 1992-1993/1994: Commands: redit oedit medit aedit

Enters a 'special mode' which responds to user input; this is the editor mode, and is an extension of the communications routines.

STR(b,c); <- added to NiMUD source code to fix a distinction problem related to referencing strings in both the "index" of the entry and the "incidence" of the entry (the copy created for the world), this may be the easiest way to trace DIRECT CODE INSERTION into new code, because it is an indicator of NiMUD's original code design change to the standard Merc/Diku string routines; this is often 'hacked out' in copies that were ported to other softwares. For those who just 'studied NiMUD and then modified and/or created new code to match its features', this macro may be omitted.

(A nice macro that certainly may have made the SMAUG code cleaner. I really don't see the point of anyone hacking it out to purposely make their code more cumbersome. --Thoric 14:52, 12 July 2005 (UTC))

It is an indicator of what Merc-derived sources use TheIsles-based OLC. -Locke

SMAUG (as distributed) does not contain this STR(b,c) macro. --Thoric 17:44, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Another note is that NiMUD's feature set is this:

Security for Building Special 'mode' Bit Keywords- Keywords at the command line to toggle bits "Dig" or "dig-like" command, borrowed from MUSH New database file format made similar to Merc's playerfile format Prompt manipulation

I believe that Thoric, based on a statement he made to me over email similar to "I wanted to start with NiMUD", read through and understood OLC before writing a similar OLC, to say it was developed independently is not correct because he obviously read and understood the core features and functionality of the original Isles OLC, possibly his inspiration.

(The statement was, "I wish I had started with NiMUD". Not only was NiMUD unreleased at the time (June 1994), my only inspiration came from using Mozart MUD's online building. --Thoric 14:52, 12 July 2005 (UTC))

You also made a statement to me that you started mudding in 1995. -Locke

No, I told you I opened ftp.game.org in 1995. Realms of Despair opened in 1994, I mudded on Mozart in 1993, and mudded on VieMUD in 1992. --Thoric 17:44, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Zebesta's OLC, for instance, is not a direct correlation in its features or functionality to NiMUD/TheIsles OLC, as it uses these commands:

oset zset mset rset

Has security, has limited (no user control) prompt manipulation.

Has a special mode only for entering strings.

SMAUG does contain functionality similar to "worldgen.c" from NiMUD's earlier releases.

(It was I who pointed that out to you. --Thoric 14:52, 12 July 2005 (UTC))

Is it credited? -Locke

No, that will have to be fixed. -Thoric

Thanks, please do so. Surreal had left the project at that point, worldgen.c was an afterthought I added to inspire future mudders. I noticed that several mud engines now use code similar to this for generating areas; they also borrowed the terrain and ascii mapping features for some of the more 'ascii graphical' muds -- I think that's great, when properly cited; it was an idea borrowed from Rogue and Rogue-like games, which generate a lot of their content using random number generators with predetermined seeds. - Locke

Locke's Clarifications to Dating

1,2,3 removed for relevance

4) The word 'beforehand' does not exist in the human language; it was a side-effect of my efforts as a youth to create 'a new language' - thus the convention of 'Darkwood' and its appearance in Wildgames' FATE. It's before hand or before-hand (arguably). This appears in earlier NiMUDs but was corrected. Another "fantasy like word" I contributed was "Underdark", though I might have borrowed that one from AD&D.

5) The original message posted about his death is still visible at [Surreal's Shrine]

6) I do not believe Thoric did not use NiMUD's OLC as a model for his own. I also think the influence of his builders on features is part of the way that the influence was transmitted. I think he should use OLC, and hereby grant him permission to do so, with his SMAUG releases. No author of a server has ever been given that permission before. The stipulations of that permission is that we are properly credited and cited and that he includes a link to The Isles webpage and email address in his documentation.

This has to do with other software (ROMolc, Ivan's OLC) using my software without permission granted from me directly; AND they fail to cite us at all- this is the problem, they don't cite us and now people are believing that Alander (or whoever wrote ROMolc) and Ivan came up with the stuff. It's bogus and very unfair to us. Obviously sabotage for the appeasement of their respective egos. I only gave permission to 1 person to port it (Jason Dinkel) -- while I have heard "theft is the sincerest form of flattery". I also would have liked to have been notified as the license requests.

Proof for which? I guess we'd need statements from Mozart builders that were around in 1993 (and earlier) for that. The same probably goes for Realms of Despair. If you like I could send you a copy of build.c from August 1995 from when we first started using RCS, before switching to CVS (which you can compare to the one in the SMAUG 1.01 distribution). This would give you an idea of how advanced the code was at that time, and from looking over it, I've noticed it is pre-"mset on"/"oset on", meaning that you can't lock into an editing mode onto an object or a mobile. It wasn't added until we were preparing for the SMAUG release, and was likely added at the request of a beta tester:

revision 1.133
date: 1996/10/09 22:19:07;  author: derek;  state: Exp;  lines: +230 -27
Added lock-in modes for redit, oset and mset

Also I would like to point out that statements aren't enough: I would need to see files dated back to then, corroborating the original developers of Mozart's story, and perhaps then -- but of course all of this can be manipulated if you can convince Mozart's original developers to lie. SillyMUD does not seem to contain this code in its 1993 version. I am fairly certain that there is no proof that SillyMUD had any public code containing "building" before OLC. In examinating of early SillyMUD source code, I note that it does not contain any building code, only player editing code.. - Locke

Removed due to relevance.

:Wikipedia being accurate and all that though, especially because I would like to be able to reliably use it for researching stuff. No offense intended, but I think most of the argument stuff is pretty silly to argue about, and the bragging points that were put all over the place on here and on online building are not about anything revolutionary (wow, a multi-modal editor, almost 20 years after vi or emacs, what a great new idea! ooh, and it changes things in real-time, just other MUDs since the 1980s). --Atari2600tim 

It certainly was for MUDDING, Diku specifically, as the OLC code has been ported to 30 different softwares and is in use today as a standard feature. It's origins are clarified. Mud software predating OLC showed none of these features; MUSHes, however, were pretty much virtual putty in the hands of creators- a hands-off approach to the hard coded elements of the server technology. It's certainly better than its 'live command line' equivalent for ease of use alone. -- Locke

Removed due to relevance ("Hacking of Cthulhu")

Current build is available at [this website].

Cheers, Locke locke@mugs.net

Copyright stuff removed.

Proposed Merge

It was suggested that this article and online building be merged. The online building article was created for the purpose of differentiating between 2 softwares that are both referred to as "online creation", in hopes of making it so that one of them will no longer be called by the name "online creation". The final article after such a merge should probably have information about both of these software plus any other software for in-game editing of a MUD's world, and be limited to MUDs so that it won't become too long of an article. "Online creation" generally refers to a feature in any MUD where you can edit part of the MUD without having to use an external editor, and the phrase predates the software mentioned in the online creation article. "Online creation" is also used outside of MUD contexts though, so if you have ideas for a better title, please suggest them below. An ideal title would imply that it would include in-game editors of MUDs, but exclude editors that are not in-game and aren't for MUDs. Please post any new title ideas, and also post a response if you support or oppose such a merge. Atari2600tim 10:07, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Titles I have thought of for a merged article are "MUD editors" "Live MUD editors" "MUD editing", since those are fairly neutral and aren't in favor of Diku instead of MUSH, etc. When I read "online creation" it's mostly in reference to the Diku ones, though I don't know the terminology for the others because I don't use any of them and haven't read about them. --Atari2600tim 10:16, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

One with 'Live' or 'in-game' would probably be good, but I ended up keeping it with the current name since there were no suggestions and nobody voiced any opposition to the merge. Atari2600tim 19:39, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

I think those are weak, since I cannot find a single reference to Online Creation that doesn't involve, primarily, MUDs. OLC, Online Creation - these are essentially "BUILDING", or creation of the mud world, but it is not the same as "MUD editing", which is done with a command line editor. User:151.201.7.119

Yeah, I couldn't think of a good article name since then, so I just kept it with this name and did the merge. Atari2600tim 19:39, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Online Creation is not Online Building

I truly believe online building is not the same as online creation, was developed seperately, even though Online Creation's modal features were later included in implementions of SMAUG. Online building is an obvious bad hack. -Locke

Alrighty then. We only really need one "online building/creation" article with a generic term to cover all angles (OLC, OLB, MUSHs, etc), of which OLC would be a subsection. --Thoric 22:35, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

online building

Comments removed.

Merc

Many files do not follow the license, namely, Merc and derived. How does Merc do this? Also, many of the Merc areas contain copyrighted lyrics to popular rock songs, snippets from popular written media, etc.. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 141.158.97.121 (talk • contribs).