Question Green Lantern Mud

Alright guys, I want to give you a small update on how I'm handling space travel. You will be able to explore a HUGE universe with a massive 30,000+ rooms.

Here are two pictures of the Space system so far.












Notice on the second picture there isn't any black dots. I'm debating if space should just have a blank space for the background or have a black dot. Can you just imagine exploring from a different space planet and coming upon Earth?

Please leave opinions on what you guys think.

(Pictures should be working now)
(Added Zip download to let you get a closer look)

I would prefer nothing to represent open space... it is space after all. I'm curious how you'll setup travel between planets. I noticed the autoexit display which makes less sense once you leave Earth.

One short rant on creating massive amounts of rooms. I prefer quality vs quantity in this regard. You can create 1,000's of rooms to make a wilderness or space zone, but the rooms would be relatively pointless in such large numbers. A more sensible approach for me is to combine long travel or distance times with one well written description than 20 "The vacuum of space is chilly and stretches in all directions." In your case since space is 99% empty you can not use a 1:1 ratio, you will have to compact portions of it.

I'll be interested to see what you come up with either way. Thanks for sharing your progress.

Rumble wrote: I would prefer nothing to represent open space... it is space after all. I'm curious how you'll setup travel between planets. I noticed the autoexit display which makes less sense once you leave Earth.

One short rant on creating massive amounts of rooms. I prefer quality vs quantity in this regard. You can create 1,000's of rooms to make a wilderness or space zone, but the rooms would be relatively pointless in such large numbers. A more sensible approach for me is to combine long travel or distance times with one well written description than 20 "The vacuum of space is chilly and stretches in all directions." In your case since space is 99% empty you can not use a 1:1 ratio, you will have to compact portions of it.

I'll be interested to see what you come up with either way. Thanks for sharing your progress.

I love the blank for space. The reason space is so big is because in the Green Lantern universe there are over 3600 sectors. Each sector has a planet and 2 Green Lantern each sector. Green Lanterns are able to breath in space due to their rings. In sense they would be able to travel on their own and explore a vast space. I'm planning on adding quite a few planets. I want them to have the effect of seeing planets, asteroid belts, and other things. If Green Lantern didn't have much space travel I would have done a much smaller scale, but since they are a intergalactic space force I was left with no choice. Now if I plan to add non-lantern classes, I would have to add space crafts or abilities that would allow lanterns to help them travel. Also, I'm planning on changing how fly works. I'm going to make it so they can type fly # north/east/south/west. # will be depending on their speed.

Would it look better without the autoexits? Or should I just leave it at giving the players the option of having them?

Dear Liko,
Toggles are user friendly unless there's hundreds. My general recommedation for a Green Lantern MUD is strongly developing the concept of negation i.e. something similar to dispel magic in D&D. Rival energy such as "Yellow" seems tougher to program than simply how to stop "Green" powers. CoffeeMUD's next phase is superpowers. I imagine it'd be boring for a normal character watching superheroes zap the MUD, or too tempting for a normal character to use a superpower instead of earning years of top equipment.
Congrats on your theme. I think you'll succeed because in the advice you've given me you proceed step by step without running off into something questionable or spurious.
I'd ultimately like to see wizards, overlords and so on "crash" as in crashing a party Green Lantern MUD in an attempt to dominate its world with magic and good ol' fashioned fear.

Dear Liko,
I'd also recommend using modified movement for flying, for example N moves in the direction of the exit the character is facing, which would be either N, E, S, W, U or D; U spins 90 degrees backwards; D spins 90 degrees forwards; E spins 90 degrees right; S 180's; W spins 90 degrees left. Sort of like one of those gyrochairs. I haven't figured out how to change direction in 3D without stopping to turn N, S, E, W, U or D. F could be programmed to mean forward, leaving N, S, E, W, U and D to mean face that direction. My intuition is, for it to be more than a perception or gimmick, someone might have to develop an improved room structure or stock text MUD movement might always make more sense. Players using stock MUD movement could potentially whoop players using special movement because they need only think like a map.