[MUD-Dev] Re: Room descriptions

[Adam Wiggins <adam#angel,com>]

On Mon, 28 Sep 1998, Chris Gray wrote:
> [Adam Wiggins:]
>  >Again, it's just a question of whether you want to spend a lot of time
>  >building/coding many interactive, reusable pieces and then building a world
>  >out of those, or whether you want to spend your time making hand-crafted
>  >areas and objects which are highly proprietary.
> 
> I think we are currently still at the stage where the most bang for the
> buck (most user enjoyment for the developer hour) is in custom built
> stuff. Nathan's work on PhysMud, etc. seem to be a step towards having
> a full detailed world that actually works. When someone achieves it,
> the rest will be forced to follow.

Yes, that's probably true - for now.  The entire evolution of creating
on the computer has been like this; create the building blocks, and use
those to pull yourself up to a 'higher level' where you can do more with
less busywork.  This is no different, to me; it's just that the building
blocks for creating online worlds are still extremely crude.  My hope is
that that won't be the case for too much longer.

> Well, maybe not forced, since there are still lots of fans of text
> adventures, but the mainstream commercial world will have to follow
> the leaders.

'mainstream'? 'commercial'?  Bah.  Er, just don't tell my employer I
said that :)

Adam W.