July 1999
- ScryMUD release v1.9.10. Ben Greear
- In-game tailors, re-stringers, etc. Eli Stevens {KiZurich/GreySylk}
- In-game tailors, re-stringers, etc. Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- An apology J C Lawrence
- GM Touring Company Ling
- GM Touring Company Matthew Mihaly
- GM Touring Company Ling
- GM Touring Company Matthew Mihaly
- GM Touring Company Christopher Allen - GM Fangs
- GM Touring Company Marian Griffith
- GM Touring Company Alex Oren
- GM Touring Company Christopher Allen
- list of MUD platforms? Timothy O'Neill Dang
- list of MUD platforms? Ilya, SCC, Game Commando
- list of MUD platforms? Ilya, SCC, Game Commando
- list of MUD platforms? Ross Nicoll
- list of MUD platforms? Ilya, SCC, Game Commando
- list of MUD platforms? Christopher Allen
- list of MUD platforms? Ben Greear
- list of MUD platforms? Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- list of MUD platforms? Jon A. Lambert
- list of MUD platforms? Ross Nicoll
- list of MUD platforms? Mik Clarke
- ScryMUD 1.9.11 is now on my page and in CVS. Ben Greear
- Technical programming question (circular buffers & logging) Ben Greear
- an idea..wondering if this has been done Willowreed@aol.com
- an idea..wondering if this has been done Ben Greear
- an idea..wondering if this has been done Willowreed@aol.com
- an idea..wondering if this has been done Christopher Allen - GM Fangs
- an idea..wondering if this has been done David Bennett
- an idea..wondering if this has been done Willowreed@aol.com
- an idea..wondering if this has been done Christopher Allen - GM Fangs
- an idea..wondering if this has been done Par Winzell
- an idea..wondering if this has been done Bruce Mitchener, Jr.
- an idea..wondering if this has been done Joey Hess
- an idea..wondering if this has been done bruce@puremagic.com
- an idea..wondering if this has been done Joey Hess
- Victim Characters (was: Critiquing Muds) Eli Stevens {KiZurich/GreySylk}
- pfiles yacketta@kodak.com
- pfiles Richard Woolcock
- bytecode results Chris Gray
- fwd: forum on game design/culture Brandon J. Rickman
- fwd: forum on game design/culture Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Containing automation? Timothy O'Neill Dang
- Containing automation? Katrina McClelan
- Containing automation? Timothy O'Neill Dang
- Containing automation? Andru Luvisi
- Containing automation? Ilya, SCC, Game Commando
- Containing automation? Greg Miller
- Containing automation? Katrina McClelan
- Containing automation? Marc Hernandez
- Containing automation? Matthew Mihaly
- Containing automation? Marc Hernandez
- Containing automation? Timothy O'Neill Dang
- Containing automation? Matthew Mihaly
- Containing automation? Marc Hernandez
- Containing automation? Marian Griffith
- Containing automation? Greg Miller
- Containing automation? Dan Root
- Containing automation? Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Containing automation? Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Containing automation? Ling
- Containing automation? Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Containing automation? Ling
- Containing automation? Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Containing automation? Jon A. Lambert
- Containing automation? Ilya, SCC, Game Commando
- Containing automation? Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- Containing automation? Jon A. Lambert
- Containing automation? Timothy O'Neill Dang
- Containing automation? Matthew Mihaly
- Containing automation? Matthew Mihaly
<snipped question from Timothy O'Neill Dang on preventing client-side
automation>
We have done a LOT of work to mess with automation, both those stupid
auto-walks that zmud has and your general triggers. We feel that it is not
possible to totally stop it, unless your game was utterly random. Of
course, in that case, a user without triggers would be screwed too. So the
goal has to be defeating most triggers while not making it much more
difficult for the average player to play (I don't know why you are
concerned with people macroing thing. Macros simply equalize the
differences in people's typing speed. They don't affect the
decision-making process at all, unlike triggers.)
While it's probably possible to trigger anything that can be reacted to by
a human, what you have to do is decide which client-side packages you are
concerned with defeating, and then make sure you understand their
capabilities. I, personally, think Zugg is the devil, and should be
crucified for all the annoying triggering stuff he has in Zmud. Zmud is
the major standard mud client, but of course tinyfugue, tintin, mudmaster,
rapscallion, etc all have trigger capabilities.
What we've found is that, contrary to Koster's law (which I believe is
incorrect), it IS possible to stop people from automating all functions of
your game. Someone potentially COULD automate our combat system, but it
would be an undertaking of massive artificial intelligence, and I don't
see anyone bothering to take the time to do it. (I believe Koster's law
says that players WILL automate everything, which clearly is not true.)
The techniques we use to prevent this generally involve forcing the player
to make decisions based upon information contained in previous lines. We
also take advantage of latency to screw with triggers.
Pardon the world-specific examples, but they are the easiest for me to
give.
Example: We have an affliction that will cause about 25-30% of a player's
commands to be executed as another, random command. So, say you have this
affliction (which we call 'stupidity'), and you get hit by the venom
curare, which paralyses.
Client would see: A prickly stinging overwhelms your body, fading away
into numbness.
Client would then try to trigger "eat bloodroot".
If that command got screwed up by stupidity, then potentailly any feedback
from the server is possible. Because of latency, I see no way of the
client knowing if the command went through properly or not. It could wait,
say, a couple seconds to see if the text it expects in response to eat
bloodroot (something about "Your muscles unlock and you can move again"),
but that means that the trigger doesn't even know whether to try again for
a full 2 seconds, which is a very long time. If it weren't for latency,
then the client could simply check the next piece of output it receives
after eating the bloodroot, but because of latency, there is no way for it
to know if the next output it gets relates to the eating bloodroot or not.
Another example of how to screw with triggers:
Say that someone wants to trigger the paralysis message, as above. He
decides not to worry about the stupidity affliction and count on being
able to manually heal himself with a macro if his trigger doesn't work (a
partial victory for us already). However, the bloodroot may only be eaten
with any effect once per second. So, you give people the ability to "fake"
delivering the curare venom, and THEN deliver the real one. Assuming
latency is low, the person's trigger will kick in, trying to cure the fake
message, and then when the REAL curare hits him, his trigger will try to
eat the bloodroot to cure it, but will fail, due to having just eaten
bloodroot. Anyone NOT using triggers will not be fooled, because he'll see
two messages and only respond to the second one (people can't respond as
fast as a computer can).
I'm not sure how much help this is for defeating triggers in an economic
system, but I want to emphasize that it IS possible to create a system
that players will _not_ automate. Automating our entire combat system
would be far far beyond the scope of 99.9% of our user's capabilities, and
not worth the time,effort, and expense for the .1% that might be able to
manage it (a custom, very powerful client would have to be written, with
fairly sophisticated AI, etc).
The economic system you described sounds pretty basic, and it doesn't
sound as if there is much strategy involved, or much decision-making
involved. If you want to stop people from automating it, I think you have
to force the users to make decisions based on previous output. If there is
just a standard way of doing things, ie a to b to c, then you are going to
be pretty much screwed in terms of stopping automation, I suspect.
--matt - Containing automation? Koster, Raph
- Containing automation? Matthew Mihaly
- Containing automation? Koster, Raph
- Containing automation? Ilya, SCC, Game Commando
- Containing automation? Matthew Mihaly
- Containing automation? Asmodeus
- Containing automation? Greg Miller
- Containing automation? Travis S. Casey
- Containing automation? Koster, Raph
- Containing automation? AR Schleicher
- Containing automation? Koster, Raph
- Containing automation? Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Containing automation? Timothy O'Neill Dang
- Containing automation? Matthew Mihaly
- Containing automation? Greg Miller
- Containing automation? Matthew Mihaly
- Containing automation? Greg Miller
- Containing automation? Matthew Mihaly
- Containing automation? Greg Miller
- Containing automation? Matthew Mihaly
- Containing automation? Adam Wiggins
- Containing automation? Greg Miller
- Containing automation? Martin C Sweitzer
- Containing automation? Greg Miller
- Containing automation? Laurel Fan
- Containing automation? Matthew Mihaly
- Containing automation? Greg Miller
- Containing automation? Matthew Mihaly
- Containing automation? Charles Hughes
- Containing automation? Matthew Mihaly
- Containing automation? Katrina McClelan
- Containing automation? Timothy O'Neill Dang
- Containing automation? Charles Hughes
- Containing automation? Laurel Fan
- Containing automation? Charles Hughes
- Containing automation? Koster, Raph
- Containing automation? Matthew Mihaly
- Containing automation? Marian Griffith
- Containing automation? Matthew Mihaly
- Containing automation? Koster, Raph
- Containing automation? Ola Fosheim Grøstad
- Containing automation? Marian Griffith
- Containing automation? Wayne Pearson
- Containing automation? AR Schleicher
- Containing automation? Koster, Raph
- MUD-Dev digest, Vol 1 #121 - 2 msgs Dr. Cat
- MUD-Dev digest, Vol 1 #121 - 2 msgs Koster, Raph
- UO currency Timothy O'Neill Dang
- Game design Adam Wiggins
- dispatching events Greg Miller
- dispatching events Mark Gritter
- dispatching events Greg Miller
- injury-based combat Greg Miller
- injury-based combat Ilya, SCC, Game Commando
- injury-based combat Brian Carter
- injury-based combat Matthew Mihaly
- injury-based combat Greg Miller
- mud vs. mush membership Matthew Mihaly
- mud vs. mush membership Adam Wiggins
- mud vs. mush membership Greg Miller
- mud vs. mush membership Jay Carlson
- mud vs. mush membership Marian Griffith
- mud vs. mush membership Matthew Mihaly
- mud vs. mush membership Caliban Tiresias Darklock
- mud vs. mush membership Matthew Mihaly
- mud vs. mush membership Bruce Mitchener, Jr.
- mud vs. mush membership Greg Miller
- mud vs. mush membership Adam Wiggins
- mud vs. mush membership Jay Carlson
- mud vs. mush membership Adam Wiggins
- combat/injury Greg Miller
- The Virtual Ecology Tony Wilkinson
- The Virtual Ecology Adam Wiggins
- The Virtual Ecology Jp Calderone
- The Virtual Ecology Ilya, SCC, Game Commando
- The Virtual Ecology Albert
- The Virtual Ecology Schubert, Damion
- The Virtual Ecology Greg Miller
- The Virtual Ecology Brandon J. Rickman
- The Virtual Ecology Tony Wilkinson
- The Virtual Ecology Marian Griffith
- The Virtual Ecology Chris Gray
- The Virtual Ecology Brian Carter
- The Virtual Ecology Par Winzell
- The Virtual Ecology Felix A. Croes
- The Virtual Ecology Chris Turner
- The Virtual Ecology Ling Lo
- The Virtual Ecology Brandon J. Rickman
- [ScryMUD] Splitting development, code re-organization. Ben Greear
- OT: Raph & Kristen absent for a bit Koster, Raph
- Essays on parsing text. Ling
- Essays on parsing text. Christopher Allen
- Essays on parsing text. Travis S. Casey