State of the MUD - June/July

[Chalgyr]

Hello Everyone,

This is an idea that was passed along to me, and I thought I would pick up the ball and run with it.  Basically it was suggested that it might be interesting for our players to have a sort of 'State of the MUD' address that I put out there for everyone to read.  It will be a stickied and locked thread, but feel free to post about it in the general area.  If someone really wants to make a post about this and finds anything I talk about in here interesting enough, feel free.  I tend to be long-winded and this format is a bit easier to read long posts than say, on a MUD news post.

So, as an initial post, I don't have a great deal to share at this point.  I'll try to do this at least once a month to let people know what we are doing on the whole, maybe dangle a few carrots here and there and to perhaps announce some of our newest changes (whether it be staff, code, area or other).

On a personal level, a great deal has changed for Gilly and me in the last three months.  As most of you who know me are aware, I had worked at a college as some combination of student or staff for over a decade, and during that time I had played and worked on RCD and then come to open up KotL with Gilly.  I have since taken a new job that offers me computer time here and there, but not as much as my old job allowed years ago - but still more than it had in recent history.  More importantly, it has given me a new place to work where I am not constantly stressed out or angry over work-related stuff, and having it perhaps affect not only my judgement on the MUD, but my desire to work on it.  So hang with us while we get adjusted - we just moved to a new city two weekends ago as well - and I have never moved out of that prior area in my entire life, so again more change.

Also keep in mind that we have a somewhat small but great staff.  We all have our little niche areas and we do our best to improve KotL and bring you all more and reliable content.  More often than not it works well, sometimes it doesn't.  I've been asked if we will expand the staff, and my basic answer is: not right now.  When/if we have more players, I will be more inclined to increase the volume of our staff, but at this point I don't believe it is necessary.

I have not written an all-new zone in about a year.  Part of that was due to real-life issues: kids, hating my old job, moving, learning a new job.  A lot of it was working on background stuff: editing each and every room in the MUD to have XYZ coordinates, setting the light and clarity and temperature conditions, in the casese of Bzaal Forest, Klevnone and Mesilena - adding a ton of room descrptions and more area detail.  Mesilena is still a work in progress.  I suspect I'll spend another month or two on it here and there, but it is well over 70% complete now.  When this is completed, I will look at the areas I have mapped out (so far about 6) and perhaps pose a poll to people on here as to which one you would like to see put in first.

The website has not been updated in some time, and a lot of Gilly's reasons are related to the ones I shared.  However, she is looking at it now and if you have suggestions - drop her a line on here through a PM or something (also, her email has changed to herberkids3@yahoo.com - her old gilly_bean_baby@yahoo.com account is gone now).

New code is constantly being worked on and Thalia in particular has been incredibly proactive in looking up bug reports, trying to balance things that were put in years before her arrival, fixing stuff I probably coded three years ago and all the while is brainstorming with me in particular on ideas and overall game content.  She is a very busy lady and she has now added the administration of this board to her list of duties, so I want to say - Thank you Thalia - and ask that players be patient with their requests, bugs and ideas.  We do read them, we do give everything consideration - but I have long said that real life is more important than a MUD-life, and I stress that for staff and players alike.  We enjoy making this game, we enjoy playing it with you - and I have no intention of closing it any time in the forseeable future.  We'll continue to 'get there'.

Thank you for reading this and for playing Kingdoms of the Lost.

Take care,

- Chalgyr