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[Tahin]

Apologies about the server going down today. I just turned on my monitor to be greeted with a login screen... That shouldn't be happening.

Anyhow, I should hopefully find a host soon enough, and more importantly get back to work on my door system, and then perhaps heights.

Here's an issue with the z-level, though:

You are in room 0,0,0. It is aboveground.
Imagine that to the north is a hill. The top of this hill (represented by a single room, as it is a rather small hill) is one z level above you and one tile to the north. To walk up the hill, you would type "nu" or "northup."
Now, imagine that you type "dig n" and wait a short while for your character to finish digging a hole into the side of said hill. Now, typing "n" would place you inside an underground hill in the room. You could still type "nu" to climb up to the top of the hill, though.
You are now in 0,1,0, which is underground.
Now, getting theoretically theoretical, if you were to dig up from this room you'd have a nice staircase up to the top of the hill, but we won't imagine that we do this.
The description of the room you just dug reads something like, "This is a small, cramped tunnel underground. The walls are hardened soil and tree and plant roots penetrate the room at random intervals. Light shines in brightly from a hole in the south wall."
Let's say you then type "dig eu," which would dig an exit to 1,1,1 (1 up and 1 to the east). This is a sky room, thus if you attempted to use this exit, you'd end up in the air above the room to the east and fall one z level, probably bruising something. This doesn't make much sense.

How, then, should I handle this scenario? Should I not allow the digging of exits which lead to sky rooms? Why not? Digging a hole in the side of a cliff make sense, but somehow digging up and to the side out of a hill, resulting in a magical portal to 10 feet above the ground, doesn't sit well with me.
If anyone needs it, I can supply a drawing to help illustrate, though perhaps a 3d model or something might do a better job.

[qwertyuiopas]

You coud have it complain about materials when digging upwards would result in a sky room, but if the player has the materials, and uses a dig-construct command they would build stairs, although anyone entering would still fall once they are there.

[Tahin]

Well, I'd have to make allowances for buildings when they eventually go in, but it still just seems weird to me that it would be possible to dig through the "edge" of a hill and somehow end up in the sky, rather than just on the slope. Perhaps I can just not allow digging in directions that would do that, but that strikes me as a rather unpleasant restriction... The concept of an upward slope doesn't really work well from underneath a hill, which is the main issue. I guess I can just test if it would end you up in a "sky" room and whether or not the exit is up/down... Still just seems inefficient.

Then again, if I was going for interface efficiency, I'd be doing away with the whole MUD concept and using a 3d graphical engine. Then again, digging in 3d might be a little weird. The answer of course would be to stick to a purely first person view.

Wait, you know what? A 3d First-Person Tunneler would be awesome.

[Poltifar]

Wait, you know what? A 3d First-Person Tunneler would be awesome.

Well...  All I could think of is Infiniminer:
http://www.zachtronicsindustries.com/pivot/entry.php?id=75
http://www.zachtronicsindustries.com/pivot/entry.php?id=76
Its not finished yet, and the graphics aren't all that good, but atleast they are 3D, giving a nice feel to it.
Or, I guess it should be possible to mod the Cube 2 engine into a nice tunneler/mason game, but that would require some C programming wizs.

Anyways, a question about the mud: Are the rooms all going to be 'active' at all times, that is, are still undug underground rooms and unreached sky rooms loaded in memory all the time? Because if yes, a large map would need a hell lot of memory. But I guess you probably made it more a 'generate when needed' system.

[Deon]

I can't #connect dfmud.no-ip.org 1050 .

[Tahin]

Uh... That's interesting. It's down again. I'm going to need to figure this out. Unfortunately I'm at school at the moment, so there's not much I can to access my "server."

[Gor123]

This is greatly relevant to my interests. I just learned how to code in C++ and i love networking and i really really want to work on a mud this project is perfect cause i love dwarfs mining coding and muds. sadly I  dont know were to start and or how to help but i am more then willing to learn and help. 

[Tahin]

Well, I've already got quite a few people helping out, though I'm not sure Katsuun is going to end up working out (sorry Katsuun)... Hm.

Anyway, if you're interested in helping, try downloading the latest alpha release from dead-souls.net and seeing if you can get it run. If you can figure it out, I might be able to use you.

Remember, though, that the semester is kind of coming to a close and myself and many others are scrambling to not fail all their classes, so I think this project going to have to be put semi on hold until things slow down a bit, at least for me.

[Katsuun]

Yeah, I kind of gave up. You can take me off the crew roster. Sorry.

[Tahin]

That's fine.

If you want to come back as more of a general staff member at some point, that's fine.

[Vattic]

Tahin about your hill problem I have a few questions. When you go to climb a hill what stages/rooms do you pass through, is it like:

Field around hill. Base of hill. Top of hill.

OR

Field around hill. Base of Hill. Slope/side of hill. Top of hill

What I mean to ask is are the slopes either side of the hill separate rooms similar to how they are separate tiles in DF?

Although it might seem kind of strange on such a small hill it seems to fit well with larger hills/mountains. It allows for openings further up the hill but not at the top or even huts half way up for example.

I only ask because it makes some difference when it comes to the problem you've found.

With slopes as rooms however digging is little more complicated, if you dug North into the slope from the base then you'd have to dig North twice to get to the centre of a small hill, so you'd have an entrance room and a main room. If you dug Upward and South from the main room it would lead onto the slope above the entrance room but you'd have to stop people digging Upward and South while in the entrance room. If that's confusing to read then this might clear things up:

"You are in an open meadow. To the North there is the base of a hill."
N
"You are at the base of a small hill. A passage leads North into the hill. The land slopes Upwards to the North."
UN
"You are on the side of a hill. The land slopes Downward to the South and Upward to the North. A Downward passage leads North into the hill."
UN
"You stand atop a small hill. The land slopes Downward in All directions."

"You are at the base of a small hill. A passage leads North into the hill. The land slopes Upwards to the North."
N
"You are in a small, cramped tunnel underground. Light shines in brightly from a hole in the South wall. The passage continues deeper to the North."
N
"You are in a small, misshapen room underground. A faint pinprick of light shines from a hole in the south wall. Bright light shines in from an Upward ramp to the South."

I must admit I haven't solved the problem really .

[eerr]

well, it really depends on where the spot you dig to is located

is it halfway between hieghts?

then you'd end up digging precisely to the spot were another exit is located(upward sloped tunnel into a downward sloped hill!

so either the tunnel has to let out into the hill or let out into the nearby land, but it certainly can't intersect with a sloped hill!

it's either  flat (sucks),
exits sloped into the slope thats already an exit(you could make a threeway exit somehow, but why?),
give that either digging diagonally just fails into sky (which doesn't make sense),
gives the exact same result as digging up


so either force it to be a direction that it's not(flat or straight up,)
disallow it completely(digging into sky just fails)
or fuss around with exits

[Tahin]

I think it would be easier to keep slopes as exits, rather than rooms to themselves, though it should be able to tell that a room has slope to it (if it's outdoors and one exit is up and the opposite direction is down, it should be able to tell that the room counts as a "slope." This would of course reference the heightmap, as simply looking at the exits could end up being inaccurate.

so either force it to be a direction that it's not(flat or straight up,)
disallow it completely(digging into sky just fails)
or fuss around with exits

1)No, because that would either mean changing the direction in which someone actually digs (which is confusing) or making an exit lead somewhere misleading, which is confusing.
2)This seems like the proper method to go by, but it still seems a bit clunky.
3)I don't think completely changing the system I have figured out is a good idea, unless someone can suggest something better. This one seems closest to the spirit of DF, despite a little general clunkiness.

I think I'll go with option #2 for now. Now just to get back to work on it...

Also, can anyone connect? I think the downtime earlier was just my internet going down, but it's hard to tell.

[Deon]

I was not able to pick "Deon Hammerbooze" or "Deon Hammerale" name.
Screenie:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Tahin]

You're entering the last name in the "Display" bit, which only allows you to add spaces and -s and such. It's completely unnecessary as its function is accomplished perfectly when it asks you for your name the first time. Anyhow, when I get around to overhauling the login stuff, I'll clean that up a bit.