General Comment(not real question)

Looking at the forums.. I notice the smaug category has no real "free talk" forum... so the only place I guess this would go is here.


This is more a comment than a question.. But why do people try to code smaug, and run a smaug mud... when they know NOTHING if the mud, not even basic knowledge of leveling, experience etc. that is basic knowledge gained as a mortal. Every day looking at several forums I even find mud owners who can't even build and don't know how at all, let alone even play the mud. Reading these forums alone there have been 5-7 people on the first few pages that have no idea what is in smaug, even the basics.


Basically what I am saying is... Learn a mud before you try to run a mud. Go play a smaug based mud, get avatar(max level), become a builder and learn. I played for 3-4 years as a mortal, and than learned building. I now code my mud, I build areas, and I do assorted other admin tasks.

It's my opinion that the owner of the mud, should not only be the "boss" but also a rolemodel of sorts.. be able to do all the jobs below him. I simply don't see the sense in building for someone who they themselves don't even understand the basic usage of a "mpechoat" statement.

Not that all owners need to be experts at everything, but they should understand the mud they are on before they go and try to own/run one.


Another thing I hate... owners who hire coders and don't even attempt to learn coding. >_<. It's your mud.. code it yourself.. If you hire a coder you might as well let them run it rather than give them a free mud... which you are doing.



All of this is personal opinion, and I require no input on any readers part. Although I know I will get it.. any flames/immature comments can be left out. I don't care if you have been coding for 15 years, or 2 years, building for 12, or 5. Your experiences have no weight on my own opinions and as far as i'm concered.. if you hired a coder and do no coding yourself... you have no right to say you own/run a mud.


Once.. again -.- personal opinion, if you take offense... too bad.

Not sure how mean I sound here.. as I tried being nice(hence the extremely long post.. normally it would be one paragraph). If this seems unsuitable to be here, feel free to ask me to shorten/simply it.. or remove it

We normally don't socialize here. ;)

Personally I played muds for years, then built for years, and then start to admin/code. You'll probably get more feedback on MudMagic. They have a flame section on the forums.

Ahh cool :-p Forgot about the flaming section *evil grin* I don't have to be nice there :)

For anyone else who responds.. yes BTW I do understand everyone has to start somewhere... but some need to find a new place to start at.


Oh yeah.. and... *jumps up and cheers at prior experience before coding*

Let me add my two cents worth in to this.

Immortal is an evil job. I've seen so many Imms get to the point they use their imm more then their morts, and lose touch with the classes and the players.
I have my own mud (of sorts. Its basically me learning to program before trying to find a server, ect.), and if it gets off the ground, I'm going to try and make sure the Imms play their morts more then their imms so they don't lose their sync with the rest of the world. Personnally, witht hings like ORB and Nick's Area Builder, I'm more for no building imms at all, just people with those programs and some time to make the area then send it to me, and leave the imm jobs for people like player relations and maybe a builder/maintainer for the areas, and of course coder (which will prolly end up in the same boat as builders, as outside of skill creation and implementation, they don't need an imm).

Just my two cents and way of helping to fix things

While I agree with the premise that one should not open and attempt to run a mud without knowing how to play/build/code etc, I don't agree that one must be intimately familiar with Smaug specifically to be able to work on one. If you have the general knowledge of how to change things, learning the specifics of Smaug shoudln't be that difficult.

While I'll agree the some experience is great, its not needed to have years of it per se. I was only a mortal for about a year (and a builder for even less) before I started programming. Then again, if you really want to get moving you need to have ambition and you need to be willing to figure things out for yourself (its more beneficial). Only post questions you seriously have no idea about. There are help files and such to help you with building and what not, so I suggest that people asking general questions at least consult the help files first.

Of course getting a book and what not helps too if your looking to program. Of course we've been over that one before.

I would tend to agree with Samson and Whiteknight. I personally had NO experience with smaug when i first started to code and build with it.

I had played mostly rom muds for the 3 years prior starting my own smaug. Why choose smaug and not some other codebase you may ask, because it contained most of the features i wished to have in a codebase, and also because i found it easier to understand codewise than rom.

I did dabble with a few diferent smaug derivitives, AFK and Fear to name a couple, and also tryed my hand at a few Rom's and a lot of other bases as well, but found that SmaugFUSS was a better base (for me) to acheive what i wanted too.

Sure i have prolly posted some DUMB NEWBIE(tm) questions in my time, but have tryed to post questions only when my own research could not come up with a suitable answer, or just being plain stumped.

One thing that i have always liked about these forums(thanks nick) is that the people here are more inclined to guide you in finding a solution rather than giving you the code to install, and that the forums are not filled with useless chatter.

About the only thing i do find frustrating with newer imms are the message titles, "Ohhhhh i have a problem" i dont feel is a very good title and i feel that a title should reflect the real issue at hand.

Anyways thats my rave, Peace all.

A small revision to my original post.. like to include that when I talk about people without experience.. I am referring to those who.... let's say lack the thought process to learn about the mud as they go.

In other words, the idiots who cann't understand simple commands and require the ability to see what they are doing graphically and not text based to understand the motions they are going through?