Muratus del Mur

i was hoping that factions will be sort of a teaching school for new players to get integrated intoa world of roleplay, i guess we will find out when they will be on. I can't teach you how to RP, i am not a "professional roleplayer", there isnt such a thing. In fact i program more games than i play. Look at those that you learned how to respect and admire in MD, how did they do it, did they spam the chat or crushed everybody? You want to move masses to make yourself heared, you can do that by screaming (not good) or by making the others remember you and connect your name with something. If that thing its a bad thing it wont last long (bad advertising is not good advertising in md), if its a good thing it will bring you further. For example the market... i hope i wont offend anybody when i will say that i hardly knew of "Kriskah Arcanu" untill this event, yet there are "ancient" players that didnt acomplished so much in over a year of playing. There isnt a predefined way of advancing and getting better at RP. You could get better only within your group of people and slowly be remarked outside that group, thats a good place to start. I started a side role as a character that none of you know who it is. I am trying to see how dificult is to be noted for a regular player. Its quite dificult, people are rude, ignore you, you could turn the world upside down and they would still treat you as if you are nothing. The experiment is progressing well, i got some good things done allready, without abusing anything in any way, but its very hard. Most of you that write here are allready popular and have some reputation, not extraordinary but there is, and the reputation is what counts,...the number of people that know you...so i think you are doing quite well. maybe the pwr/rpc promotions are not a good thing, they make people feel as if there is something more out there that they cant yet do... but how else should i do ....

by RP i dont mean spamming the chat with blue text or presenting all your intended actions as if you are watching a movie. I don't mean to increase the ridiculous and tottaly delusional actions some imagine they are doing..i am against that. Quality RP, at least how i see it, is when a character actualy plays his role, not just pretends to do it with fency colored text. Burns, you say you train yourself as a warrior, cool, now you have a worrior character, afterall "what else to do", right? .. like that think a lot and the quality RP slowly disapears and the BS RP comes in from character that gave up long ago to fight against the "warriors" that don't realise they slowly become grinders. I played a warrior you all know, KC was not grinding, it didn't had such a powerful army or stats as many of you do and still was a warrior but not a grinder.

I initialy had the foolish ideea that if i give all of you lots of tools to play with and build your role you will use then creatively and for improving , changing, adapting a role. However, some of you, i wont say just dst and the celebrity grinders, showed me that this is impossible. A lot of you will abuse thse tools without even realising its an abuse, and maybe its not an abuse. from 110% speed in bringing new fancy things i droped to less than 10%, because i have a fear of such people that can destroy things realy easy and be happy about it. Character classes ? u must be joking ... so what i said so... yes its a very very cool idea, and could turn md into a much more fun place allowing peope to actualy do their role.... so what? ..what if just one of you realises that he can use this supposed new feature to cumulate spells, or to do other things i never intended to be done? It takes ONE person to abuse things and then even the hardcore roleplayers will follow and do major damage. Look at what happens in MD now, take for example alliances, the loyalty frenzy. NO no more fun stuff you (some) of you are happy to find ways to avoid rules, and never realised MD is not about such rules, then rules you will have, all of you. I wont say more for now because i don't know what the solution will be and what steps i will take, but i hope you get my point so far. and a little more.... go play WOW, thats a game tottaly dedicated to grinders, such games make money, cause addiction, keep you active a lot more. The difference is like between a work of art and a crap that just keeps you entertained.

while reading your posts i had an ideea ...what if we call alpha stages AGES... so we could call it that we are now in age 8. that will turn it from alpha to something else and will never end. what do you think? its just a thought.

I want to hear your objective and subjective opinions about how you see the evolution of MD, both technological and social evolution/involution. Please take a look at first Alpha 8 entry in the newslog and see what steps have been made during A8. I want you impression about declaring it as Alpha 9 and consider Alpha 8 a finished chapter of MD history. As you all know i am very strict about jumping development stages names, chaning the name is more important than it seems, it means major functionality or social evolution changes took place and they are considered final and with the new stage, new features will be developed that will shake things even more. Its not good to stay at one stage forever and its not good be hasty and declare endless version changes. So , is the game the same without changes done in A8, can they be considered final? even if unfinished? And speaking of names, means A10 = 1.0 Beta ? will there be a FINAL version ever? i don't think so, but i want to hear what you think about it. Declaring a new stage is like a new coat, it might protect from wind the same as the old coat, but it gives you a good fresh feeling and improved moral, are we ready for that, or do we need to adjust the current coat a bit more before accepting a new one.

The market was indeed a good initiative on a allready prepared background. The items and the chaotic trading needed such a thing, and i must admit the slave auction was indeed briliant. From a briliant ideea to fraud is a small way especialy when large funds are involved, i can only hope you will never need my intervention and you will be transparent and i wont hear complains about cheating people and such. I will contribute to the market fund as soon as i see a well organzied system in place that needs support. This is probably the first spark of an economy system we have in our small (in)sane society, and i am the central bank that can boost economy BUT only if there is a solid base to do that, otherwise pumping funds into an uncertain system will cause inflation, will discouradge the actual flow of the economy and will only give power to a limited number of people, eventualy causing something similar to a recession, probably manifested by a lack of trust to the market, illicit transactions, complains and massive paranoia. You just need to look at our RL to see the future. ...so bottom line is that i have to see when an "investment" will help groth and when it will just increase inflation Once again, congratulations, i consider this an important step in the evolution of the realm. I wonder what will be next...

true . mp2 influences are new to the contest, uncalculated, probably will be prevented for next contest. but hey...thats why the contest is unfair... things can happen anytime, so don't get so worried, consider it a unexpected diversion. ..like i said..unplaned

just to clarify this dst.. taking something from someone (something that does not belong to you) and replacing it with something else, its still stealing. If i enter your home and i take what i like then leave something else back, don't you call that stealing? ..and i never said you were the one to take all the creatures away, i have no clue who took "the last" creature, if that matters for you so much. Btw all the taken creatures (the penalty) are on the demo acc.

just a short note, why don't you make it also a archives doc? most of the info here is valid as a permanent resource.

honor was ment to be something to grow if winning against players than win more than you do and drop if beating up players that are allready losing. That is honorable. What is not honorable anymore and turned into something else, is how fights are used to manipulate honor. The name honor is kept currently for "tradition" mostly, to avoid confusion renaming it everywhere. At some point won and lost fights got renamed too , since lost fights are not as bad as it sounds. I am still hoping that the "honor" system can be adjusted to work better, i defenetly don't want to remove it, but i admit is not as i wished it to be. its mainly a thing about mood..my mood unfortunatly ..when i feel like fighting and competing i do things like head contest and torch competition, when i feel otherwise i do things like items, honor adjustments and so on. Right now i am in a fighting mood so i will be working on such things .. at some point i will calm down and try to improve the honor system, the battle log, loyalty system, and take it easyer on the fancy experimental features *cough*tokens*cough*

is it a specific orb you click? anyone else experienced this? In the combat log after this happens, what is the heat value? maybe its just not displayed properly

Silver coins are not ment to be the base of a stable and functional economy. They are a "tool" but also a "reason" for trading. Their value is determined by their rarity and its constantly dropping because if inflation. More and more coins get in play from mdshop so "prices" defined by coins will grow because more players will have more coins. Some items can't be traded directly because that player has no use of the offered item, but they can be traded for coins as a general currency and those coins traded for the desired items, like a buffer of value. Coins, silver and GOLD (yeah, upcomming) are controlled by money and they unballance the game in favor of thoes paying. The counterballance for the coins are the items that are distributed to players regardless of their paying status. A market is a good initiative even if its hard to function as one now, in time it will be more easy and the market could act as an intermediary for item purchases and since the market itself has no interes in specific items, the coins will be ideal for that. From time to time items will be given out to random players found online to increase coin value and lower inflation and support trading. Something more, the items can be configured to have influence on the owner, very powerful influences much more than weapons but that wont happen too soon until the trading stabilizez and there will be enough items on the market to avoid encouraging players to hold on to them and not trade even more than its now. Now with the tokens, goods have a new variatey, the enhanced creatures. One big risk is that trading will be limited to paying member with little chance for regular ones to get anything, thats actualy happening to some level, but thats why distribution of items will be better controlled and most powerfull items will be given for wishpoints. I think best way to trade items or creatures is auction, annoucned in time and well organised.

i think the age cost of transfering creatures is high enough to prevent that. And if they still do it,i think it wont be so confortable as it might look. Of course this must be tested and i agree there will be "inventive" ways to abuse or efficiently use the tokens. Note the thin line between "abuse" and "efficient". Also think how would one go about upgrading only some creatures when you have to exhaust the first bunch of tokens so you get to the others and you cant stack same token on same creature and you cantdiscard them either....as i said, its possible but not too easy. ... and even is it will be done (i am sure it will) i dont think it will cause such a major "damage", maybe it will be just a cool thing to do, i have no clue at this point how lots of stacked tokens will affect gameplay...we will notice the damage on the way i guess

The tokens are powerful as they are. Allowing them to be slectable or to be able to target specific creatures would make things too unbalanced and too much less fun. Of course you don't like them to be like that THATS THE POINT. Some tokens use only certain principles combinations, most use several, but some just work under a few circumstances...what if you dont have them? ...or what if you get a lot of tokens on a unused creature? and so on.... the answer to all these questions is TRADING. The tokens are so made that they encouradge collection and trading in favor of grinding and aquireing impossible powerfull creatures. Getting a creature with more tokens is hard enough as it is but its almost impossible for players that have lots of extra creature slots, and it is those players that afford to buy such things, not the ones that just a few creatures. In a way is a ballance, in an other is a way to make them special and not just some powerups, to make combinations of them rare and highly regarded. The colors of the tokens change between premium and normal creatures, to suit the creature so to speak. Getting a token on any creature increases its trade and collection value. I initialy wanted to make tokens just decorations, but then they wouldnt be in the shop. There are 120 tokens in shop (per shop reset) and 21 different tokens. To stak them all on one creature is very very dificult but not impossible. Even the weakest aramor will have a much higher value if staked with tokens, if not for its power but for beauty. There is an other aspect of this randomness, a financial one. If you could buy just the most powerfull tokens and assign them to your most powerfull creatures, the shop will sell just a fraction of them and its sad enough for me that paying members have a small right to unbalance the game (remind me to adjust the rusty btw). This is the same reaction as with the depth of the shop, people are annoyed that they cant buy directly the things they want ..OF COURSE THEY ARE!! live with it. at this point i am thinking to increase the rarity of some of the tokens and not even present them so that people wont complain they never got them but will be happy when they do...maybe also limit the number of tokens in the shop. On the other hand i might make tokens much more spread by making them available without pay, i think such powerfull creature variations are a good thing to happen on a larger scale,..then those that bought will be upset... i cant realy say if now its the time to get them before some get even more rare, or to wait maybe they will get easyer to get by other means.... its a new powerfull change and i am not sure how it will go, probably nothing will be chnged for a long while anyway. Right now more important are bug fixes with the tokens and also to determine what happens in situations where the ability given by the token is allready supported natively by the creature, will it remain as a decoration token only or will it amplify the ability... but it will require time to let tokens spread and see how things move and ig they should be made more rare or more available. one thing is certain, in mdshop there wont be items with different price than 1$, lower of higher.

True, thats theft.... in a fun way afterall ... i mean, i never thought of it even if it was god damn obvious ... but its still theft. I could use the logs to track who did it...but i wont do it just to punish that person in a cold and un annoucned way. Its not like he/she broke the rules, this is a theft by all meanings of the word, ..i could categorise it as vandalism and that would end up in a ip ban without warning ... but for the sake of fun, lets see who that was and make it a public trial, with jury, judges, andgry mod with stones, and like that ,,, i cant wait for the smell of nicely fried human flesh muhhahaha

awiiya you have some very good ideeas there. Liberty, fully correct

you allready have many answers in your questions ..right there. i will give you just one of it more obviously so you udnerstand what i mean by answers in a question... you say the traveler might be more ballanced because it turned to that sphere .. you are missing that both entities as missing, what if you are right, put that theory together with the shade that is missing and recalculate

Possible subtitle: "My personal selfish view of MD" I had to make it as a separate topic so that it wont be assoiated to anything else on the forum because it refers to many things. I only want to say that unlike a book that has a start and an end, MD is so much different, MD is alive and moving and hiding things in a book might be done in a way but in such a world as MD, hiding secrets could be done also not only in its pages but also in its time. For the most important secrets of the realm you will never have all clues in one place, you will get pieces of it and probably some clues you will be missing....or....maybe they were allready hidden/given to some other characters .... I tell things to some, that are crucial clues to others and i use clues that were once public info... I evolved with MD, from hiding secrets in one place i understood the mechanics of a living world and that things can be hidden in plain sight as long as you take the scope of the big picture, ...but thats not all ... there are some things that even said plainly will still puzzle your mind and force you to THINK. Why hide? good question, i always asked myself that. The reason to hide some things is that only those that shoudl understand them or find them to have access to them. Lets say for example the principles ... some of you understand them, probably for some they were a main reason to make then realise this is not just a game... but think that for others they are weird mumbojumbo texts of pure fantasy...you see what i mean...they are "hidden" from their eyes so to speak. I want my secrets to be discovered, you dont hide something in public that you dont want to be out in the first place ..but i want you to fight for it, hard, so once you will find them, you will deserve them. Why you might ask.... well the answer for you is "because its fun", the answer for me is an other one but its personal. Starting to see MD as a living community , a sinlge identity, like sort of a creapy person reading a book and forgetting parts of it as it reads, changes the variables of the equation, ..its like 3 dimensional solution to a bidimensional puzzle. I have issues keeping secrets myself, because like i said these are not secrets to be hidden but secrets to be understood and i've been pushing you clues and solutions all the time, indireclty or directly, but folks, if you want to keep up...you are doing it badly...these things are like 4 years old now,...you are not even close to ready to whats next ..afterall you figured that much that you cant think of MD as a static thing with a beginning and an end did you....more mysteries to come, old ones to be forgotten or revealed, times change, i change. Some of you managed to get realy deep with these secrets and understand them, i am proud there are some of you that acomplished that, i wont give names because my "puzzles" have no reward, not even the reputation part of me telling you did good. Once you get into them or finish them you will understand what their real reward is. I can say that about 8 people got there, and each one made me hope that the innermagic part of the game is ready to be out, but its to few .... innermagic left out in the open on the current MD world situation will end up in a frenetic fantasy bullshit with fabulations from all sides and stories that dont find their place and ideas that seem good but are on the wrong path. Not sure what to do, imagine yourself having something important to say but sitting somewere in the middle of a crowd that is allready deviating from your initial subject, what would you do, shutup or try to shout it louder? If i shutup md will start to become more 'cold' for me, that will never happen, if i shout , my hope for what i wanted this project to be will get lost, that is also never to happen. Dont get me wrong, i am ultra happy with the way md evolved, i am just bringing up the discussion about a point that you and me both ..."lost in time"

Kelle'tha pyramids build an octaeder, a reminiscence pointing to the cube because of its duality to that shape. There is a cube inside it and one outside it, the pyramids of the mountain are like the skelleton of that cube, since the cube was activated and not just lieng there. They form a cube together in that sense, they are whats left of the cube. The cube is not a box afterall, its part of a special series of shapes, dont expect to find the others in geometrical representation necessarly. The principles put together form an other shape, but then in turn if that would be all i wouldnt just give you the answers directly would i .... the cube connection to the octaedra processed through your mind, without thinking of its mathematical reason, triggers your intuition, putting two pyramids together forms a cube for most, and why, because its tehnicaly incorrect..so... i am giving you to many clues and i am sorry, it makes you lazy and me disapointed that i have to tell you secrets, it cuts off the satisfaction of finding them. So here you are, 5 shapes in this world ..only that they are not shapes anymore ..they are allready USED if i tell you more i get angry

my point was, stormrunner, that it doesnt matter you were tehnicaly close to an answer, because the answer was not of that TYPE.

stormrunner is ..somehow ..right.. you could do geometry tricks and build it with two 4 sided pyramids that are empty so you could use their sides (not quite like he describes) .. but its not the geometry that is building the cube. Its kind of dificult to explain it here ... normaly i wouldnt do this, but since its too confusing to be solved and it was never a competition to get to pyramids to build a cube, here it is... you get the two golemus pyramids, rotate them just a bit, you will get a rhomboidal shape ... now think... its not quite geometry that is needed ... what is the relation of that shape with a cube? ..it has a cube IN it and OUTSIDE it .. its more of a cube symbol than the cube itself. And the golemus cube got used so you cant expect and actual cube to lie there , consider it a cube "corpse" in a symbolic but also geometric meaning. think about it some things that you need to solve dont have all their clues and solutions on the same plane of understanding. Sometimes when you receive a pen and a paper and are told they build together a sphere, maybe it means the spear _drawing_ is the one missing from the paper, not that they geometricaly build a sphere if put together. its an intuitive solution that contradicts with logic if looked from the wrong angle, but in human nature intuition is sometimes even more than logic, so the answer that the rhomboidal shape "feel" like a cube because its corners and middle of each side touch a cube shape, is ..surprisingly valid...especialy when the kelletha pyramids are what is left from a cube, but not geometrical parts of it. Now, i told you a lot but there is still a lot to figure out, is this cube the one lost by knaty, did the shades use it did they even got it, if the kelletha cube remains are there presented in such an official position , is that a clue about the land? how would look a cube after beeing used for something else? what is the cube, what was the cube, what was it made of, what is the other one made of, how many cubes there are actualy ....many questions...and some of them hold the answer in the question itself... Book of Principles story was never actualy solved by anyone, maybe it was never supposed to be solved, or maybe you never looked at it in the right way ... but clues are out there, constantly kept fresh by feeding the mystery to people that keep it, that each searches for its own mission and hopes to find its little secret, but in fact they all hold the answers in their own hands. ever wondered why the sphere in the latest AL, or why the cube on the floor, or who or what the traveler is? ... am i surprising you if i tell you all things connect and that none of it are separate stories actualy? ... i am playing my game too you know...

updates on the bot. It seems that the survey revealed some unexpected data. Also my research into this field showed me that i opened something like pandoras box, not sure what will come out. I had some amazing results but also terrible failure. At this point i think there is defenetly something there, but the problem is that i am not sure it will be a general recipe for any personality. The bot clearly has trouble 'sensing' some of you, i can;t say for now if its because the random answers you game out of boredom or because of the random talking that made no sense (in chat), but some results are shouting out loud there is something there. I need to work on this more far away from keyboard and analyze it before testing anything else. Somehow my enthusiasm for building it as a functional thing turned very fast into some sort of curiosity about the things i found out. I feel like taking a vacation just to be able to understand the things i discovered so far, wich are indeed amazing. Like i said it wont work on anybody, or at least i believe so right now, but afterall each one is so different and even our intuition does not work in all situations so i do not know if its how it is supposed to be or i am missing something. In so many years of programming i fear my mind got used to logical things and that something can or can't work, but not in between. 1 is 1 and 0 is 0, in a logical sense, but this thing not logic. i fear this goes more into psychology research than a fancy MD feature, but, would't be the first one I hope i didnt create a mass histeria when i called it ANGIEN, it was just an example showing i could implement it and name it and make it part of md in a way. I received some panicked pms about this so, sorry, it was not some secret clue, just an example. what else ... oh yes... i have to stop writing before i do it again...endless posting ...bahh i hate them to read, love them to write ..so selfish

what u say its done in socket flash chats not in chats like the one here. trust me i am no noob in this, i made the fastest way i could think of, but where is a large amount of notifications required you need to de a large ammount of server interogations., its logic.

And so we had the shortest war in MD history. Raven, because your claim for the throne of Loreroot was not entirely foolish as i first thought, you will not suffer any consequences. I will not make public the result of the votes, but i mus say i received plenty to make a decision. A Leader must resist to people oposing him but also listen to the ones needing him. You Raven, by retreating before knowing the result, showed that you can not handle a role such as a Land leader. Such a leader needs to be brave, fearless, with good solutions to situations that might threaten his lands and most important never retreat in front of an enemy. On the other hand, you were not yet Archon when you made that decision and it stoped the war, wich is good, in a way. I am sory to name this a War lost before it started. You people forgot that a war is not only about stats and fighting, you panicked and run in all directions complaining and crying about the upcomming slaughter. In the last war many of you were much more creative than that, the actual figting as part of the war was of low importance. Some got close to activate the land weapons, important things changed and the war was actualy a war not a scarecrow threat like this one. You cut your chances for millitary advice by beeing rude to the Knator Commander and the Council even tried to demote him as a military leader! The council did not knew who its members are, your fight was internal, Golemus just made it public. Raven was not the cause of your fights, and maybe under one leadership things would have been different. But now its too late, and Raven proved he can not act as a leader during time of high pressure. I wonder what will become of Loreroot in time if things evolve like this. More info comming up on the archives.

[warning , long post covering current situation and MD high tech news] First of all, i kind of expected this reaction, in fact i was curious to see if such an important question will pass unoticed among all the others , it seems some of you care :D NOw, let me tell you a bit how i think about a reset. You could say i have a "no-reset" policy, the game foundation depends on that, and i am not talking about players that will go angry....i am talking about the way players become legends, by roleplay or by insane stats. A reset will acomplish nothing. A truly stable game should not depend on periodic resets. I am proud that even if in alpha stage , last reset was ages ago i think in the 10.000-30.000 id range (i might be wrong on that). It seems we have sort of an ecosystem here. There is no need of a reset, those that can unbalance the "ecosystem" to much are eliminated by time. Where is wodin? actaiser? i could mention some "still alive" names here too, that still do quite a "damage" a game with periodic resets will have no place for legends that was the good part now the bad one because the engine is constantly changing and some of you were "borned" in ages that had different rules, and because of other factors too, its now very very dificult to understand if some things in the system are well balanced or not. I am talking about creature abilities, way of fighting, etc. The roleplay part also suffers a bit in a different way. When i started this project ...what was it....not so many years ago... i had just a vague image of how to create a self supporting system of such complexity. It was more of a combination of passion curiosity and total devotement to once concept. As i saw how things actualy work in a LIVING system, i understood that this has nothing to do with pre-planned game concept. The strings that controll the game are now very very delicate and are almost completely out of the programming part. With the new knowledge i accumulated on the way, i understood how i could make things different and more dynamic...but now i have to stick with the current system and add just the things that are allowed "by the system" if you read this far, you deserve a bit of a insight to MD latest tehologies i am known of writing loooong posts, some of you have no patiance to read them but those that do understand something lets imagine for a bit i was to create MD world from scratch, what i would keep and what i would change from the current MD world as you know it. [issue: storyline vs live adventure] One of the things that i would change is the story. The adventure log is to exclusivist and is not covering all the things that could be covered. The storyline as in chapters wrote by Ady is not..i am sory to say...obsolete. Its still the driving concept of the roleplaying but the abrupt end of the missing chapter 3 makes it confusing and disapointing. I initialy wanted to expand the story undefently , many chapters and branches. I then realised that this has to be done by one man and that man could have different concepts than me at some points and also that man has a limit of work he can do. Ady started to "crash" when the ideea of chapter 4 came in. ... so that way is not an efficient way to force someone to write lets say 10 chpaters... and even so that would have a limit. [solution: factions and radical change] To solve this i have to change entirely the importance of the startup story, players can not count on it as the main story if it leaves them without an end and without any clues. So it appeared MP2, as a level BEFORE the current story. The game play has to change to put the focus on waht the players do , not on a predefined story. The predefined story should be a legend, a main guide as it is NOW, but now there is no connection between the storyline and what the players do. the quest page becomes obsolete very fast and should be replaced with rpq quests and/or a interactive story written live, some as adventure log but with branches, written by many people. This in turn brings up a lot of more issues, like inconsistency. This change is in progress with the mp2/illusions/factions. [issue: fighting, creatures overpowered] suprisingly thats not somnething to be solved the usual way by changing stats. Thats part of the "MD high tech". The changes involve a dynamic system that will shift focus from fighting to roleplay and back. I allready made some big changes without you, the players, noticing it :D The fighting interface as you know it now its currently just a front face of the octopus that is spreading behind it. You fight now for stats, cool, grinding, what can i say, i dont like it but most do ..... the new system will reveal some surprises... imagine what if you get over 3000 attack your fighting interface will change into something else , or if you get regeneration over 100 (just as low) your fighting interface will change to a healer interface. This chaqnges are allready in development but i still have to observe the current evolution of the realm to understand how such changes could be presented without a to big shock. As i stated in an article on the archives, the key is order by chaos. A fluid system that will change in an unpredictable way and that does not have to be stable, in fact its stability is based on its unstability. Its far more complicated to plan such a living world than it looks like, i am actualy not planning anything i am adjusting the velature on a very big ship that is constantly moving. Its more like navigating then planning. [issue: suspans and development] Part of the game addiction is created by the constant evolution. When you decide that you had enough and know how things are going, you will allways be curious to see whats next on the newslog. Thats not a planned thing, its something that simply happend but i now start to analyze it deeper and try to learn from it. At some point, again, unstability is the stability of the entire system. [suggestions: go wild] i want to go wilder than this. But considering the entire MD realm as my personal playground is not something i should do. The very few of you that tested some of the things i am working on know how bad things can turn, and not all of you are "experimentalists". What i will do is to move ahead at a much slower rate and do the things i want to do slowly and integrated with the current system. At some point, this will cause ruptures in the fluidity of the gameplay and also conflicts of logic. This is allready happening, but its the next best thing close to stability as long as i want a constantly evolving world. Most games should say at this point "STOP, lets move it to version 1 stable, we will reset it twice a year and thats it, its final". I on the other hand i like to think of it as a "perpetual alpha". MD is an experiment, live with it, might be the best experiment you ever experienced, might be a total disapointment. [insight on "go wild"] One of the briefly described features is the player DNA. Currently it is at a basic stage where players are grouped based on similar decision patterns. That is not put to much use but its the framework of later development. One of the most interesting uses of this data is the prediction of social relations. For that to happen i still have to learn more about the time factor, the realm is relatively new and is uncertain how time affect these soubtle interactions. One of the wildest features i have in mind right now, that i will probalby start to work right away after the "alcohol" in my system fades, oops i didnt just say that..is a very advanced sensation interaction bot. The tehnical name might not be the most suited for this, but when i will move forward with this i am sure i will be able to come up with something more friendly..maybe "ANGIENS" is a good name for it : D This system will be able to understand what you are saying, but not analyse it in a structural sense. You wont be able to communicate with it as in spoken language, the complicated logic patterns for that, are of no use for me in this experiment. There are lots of speaking bots, or at least i suppose there are, not that i know any, i have a good image how to build one. This "bot" will be able to sense feelings. I know it sounds exagerated. Interaction with it will be something like you talk to "it" and you will get replies that make no sense but they DO make sense if thought in an emotional way. Right now i have a clue how to do this on a basic level, for example you put together some ideeas and "it" will be able to tell how you are feeling or to reply with a "conclusion" or "mixture" of the expressed feelings in the form of a word. The many meanings of a single word will be part of the flavor and well thougt by this system. pfff... i feel like talking to much : D For the tech geeks outhere, this won't be done by using neural networks as one can expect. The inovation comes actualy here. A learning system capable of processing information and adapting to it without using neural network programming. Neural nets require lots and lots of info, and in such case that will only lead to vague answers suited for any occasion. What i need is a system that is able to create new information, not just to retrieve it. Wow, now that sounds wild i know... but i have a little tiny secret about how to do this, and since i feel like talking so much about md high tech tonight, i will tell you. Google uses a similar tehnology as far as i can tell for image searches. they might be using neural nets afterall, anyway i didnt researched it so much actualy, i like to base my judgement on obervations and not on rumors. The image search LEARNS from the visitors and because people think about images the same way, its able to use that info for pleasing a vast majority. Google can do this either way, they have the resources needed and the information to create a neural net for this, or the ingeniousity to create a different system, i am not sure if its not both actualy. There is no coincidence that gmail actualy asks you not to delete email but to archive them. I am suspecting its using user bahaviour analysys from browsing AND logical content in the emails to improve their accuracy not only in searches but also in what people feel when using there serivices. Its one step forward than normal "friendly user interface design", some could feel like brainwashed or manipulated, but i defenetly like ... at least i am thinking i am insignigficant and i have nothing to hide *cough* *cough* so if some corporation mastermind wants to learn from my web behaviour to improve the services it is offering back to me, its fine with me. wow, sory, off topic a bit back, so i was talking about a system that will react and look like thinking but its not using neural networks and also ..this is important.. will not be a data retrieving system or preprogrammed. I am a "principles freak" you all know that. I am thinking that behind all existing things there are some governing ways, like a bigger pattern that all have to fit. It has nothing to do with religion. You can see this pattern in small things or even galaxies ..what you do not see or realise are the small patterns across the way, the ones that are complex enough to avoid your lucid judgement. The magic principles of the game as much fantasy as i am a wizard wit a big hat and a staff. But they govern a slightly different aspect, more larger one, than the principles i need to acomplish this advanced bot. disclaimer: i must say this, this is not my first experiment, i have the bad habbit of starting things then leave them to float into forgotten...well they are not forgotten , just adapting into others, but still as some may perceive them i will probably be considered at some point that i am speaking bullshit and then do nothing. My ideea of this "bot" is to make it understand some principles and react according to them. That sounds like a lot of computing you might think. But again, i will not use neural nets or some super server trying bilions of combinations to fit the right one. someone stop me before i will say this ... i will use YOUR neural networks. : D : D : D i wished i could do that in a natural way based on a swift integration with the current engine, but i cant, its far to rigid for this and untill i will make it more flexible is still some time. Thats why i will accelarate this a bit. At some point i will request some of you to submit something like a ..survey.. thats not actualy a survey, but a learning system. It will not learn from individual people , but will learn from comaparing all of you. What it will learn are not the answers... again i must underline this, this is not a data retrieval system or an adapted neural net. It will learn an abstract concept. The way to store this concept and work with it i will keep for now A BIG SECRET. I found a way that i fear to things about: it might turn out to be a total nonsene and then people will think of it as absurd once the results will not come out as expected OR second, and i like to think this is it, its a very very inovative way that some other programmer or even a bigger company will invest and research into it and i will not be able to compete with my own ideea later. Also a 3rd more subjective reason is that i feel bad disclosing such things untill i put them in practice, it ruins a certain feeling i have about the whole thing. Speaking about feelings, this entire project is made out of feelings, i am just lucky to know a bit of programming to express or to "host" them. I have a very strong feeling that this experimental advanced sensation interaction bot has at least a very strong reasearch reason if not an actual use. It might turn to be useless as in a real feature that you will be facing daily in game, but this kind of "experiments" are what keep me kicking, that and your positive feedbacks, thats the perfect recepy for any developer, and those that disagree it means they picked their profession wrong. Some of you might think at this point that i am throwing some bullshit terms and pretend like doing a great thing when in fact its nothing. I completely understand that, mainly because when i get carried away by such insights on the game mechanics things start to have a slight SF feeling. They do so because they are. I do not base my programming on pure logic, althou i have a very strong logic, usualy. If i will tell you how the bot system will handle its data and take is decisions, it will throw you in a out of the world scenery completely. And i want my players to keep their sanity : D at least partialy : D I do not believe in hard work when it comes to programming. I am doing hard work for MD, for the last years, almost daily, and its persisting and improving, but thats only "maintenance" work. The beauty and results of programming required for such "unstable" systems such as MD requires a different type of programming/programmer, a bit of a crazy mind like mine i dare to say. It reuquires that connection between "out of programming world" an code, i do not consider myself mainly a programmer, programming is just a tool, i think that tells everyhting. Even if it wont be sucessful, after i will experiment with this a bit and see what "damage" it can do, i will release a part of the basic concepts for others to study and improve, but if it works, well you might not hear about this again:D but you will also not be sure if Muratus del Mur is a bot reading your mind or just a busy programmer that pays little attention to want you say. I honestl hope to find people outthere that have then required mind and will to work on this type of experiments, but unfortunatly, even if 60% of you have great ideas, less than 0.01% have what i need for this particular experiment, so its no way i could share work with someone about this. All i can do is to tell you about it and challenge you to read endless posts like this one:) yeah i am not sober right now, but i do love you all and i can think streight , partialy at least :) and if i was sober i would never tell you about my crazy experiments at all. My first experiment of this kind was a neural net that did something very similar , it could find synonyms to ideas based on what it learned from previous inputs. It was a fun thing to do, about 3 days of hard work, but little ecitement when i realised that neural nets are far more complex and i cant reach to their full use because of server limits and of course because i know no programming language that could be used for this, and neural nets for php are more like a slow monstrosity. Also it was a disapointment because i knew all the info came from previously learned patterns. I wanted something MORE. I started to imagine computing systems that use much more than on/off bits , and have more states to flavor a complex thinking, but still no use, i have no technical way to put that in practice and i have no advance knowledge in microchips either, so it was fun thinking but futile. Then i realised i was looking the wrong way. I couldn't see the forest because of the trees. Tu much complex programming to try to mimic natural algorithms is pointless, the solution is much simpler if you look from different persective. Few of you know about my obsession to learn how to draw. I gave up drawing courses and tutorials, they are simple NOT what i want. This has very much to do with the current "bot" subject. I was looking at a picture and try to replcate it over and over, but eahc time i followed the lines it ended up as something comletely different. The moment i realised that the lines are not important and i tried to keep the big picture in mind whyle drawing by "sensation" , things started to work, better , but still i am noooob. Talent after all might not be something to be learned regardless of how much you try, i still have to prove that wrong:D So, drawin, big picture , get it? In the same way programming something in ultra detail leads nowere. You start missing the point and get lost in details that eventualy even if they are near to perfect they do not mirror what you wanted from the start. Thats why i have to try this regardless of how insane it might sound. The actual brain of this machine will not be based on programming at all. it wont be some huge colective brain or a dude locked in a room and payed to do that, lol... but i cant tell you more for now ahhh....i allready told you its not about programming, to much info , i will have to kill you after :)))) well i think if you reached reading so far you must be some kind of a hero or something. maybe if i tell you now what the golemus land weapon does you wont be realising it because you would be to well integrated in the monotony of reading all this. i think i am sometimes competing to "I am bored" for his role. But, its a looong night ahead and i have nothing better to do since i am all alone in the middle of a village without much tehnology and my internet here only allows me to see sites but without images :( so, i write... yup i am not at home i run away after the festival ended and i will be back in a week or so, but psst don't tell anyone :D Ah btw, why to split this into nice organized topic, afterall the more i write the less chances are that most of all will follow so i can start telling better things :D And also i very much enjoy to be the one to disregard my own rules and requirements in general. I must admit anyone to write such a mixture of thoughs would probably just get a tag called "boring person" and only much later people would start to see if its indeed something behind the boredom or not. In my case i have that extra bit of popularity that allows me to challenge you into reading this, so don start to destroy the forum now and turn it into a personal blog like i do here :D i was saying about ..oh yes..i found here, in the middle of nowhere, some of my plans for a great puzzle i made some time ago because i was bored and without internet (not that now i have to much) I will probably put that into play. It involves some rotating discs and plans for a encryption machine that you will have to build your own in order to descipher the code. Its possible also by programming it but for most of you will be easyer just to follow the blueprints and BUILD it. Now that sounds fun i think, to build the things you need to desciper something, instead of gathering clues and activating a web interface, at least to me sounds fun, and i wish more rpcs would do things like that. Actualy the code desciphering part is not a good example, its probable the esyest way to do a puzzle and i allready see to many such things in quests. i start to believe that after the last christmas i become addictive to my absolute abuse of power, but don't you like that? hehe oh what else...hmm, i know i wanted to say something more ..hmm ah yes .. advertising is back on, for some time actualy, recession is still hitting hard things do not look well at all , but surviving,.... i like to think that you actualy care, if not no problem. I am simply forcing you to be my copilots on stearing the big MD ship...and its not a spaceship *cough*ren*cough*, actualy when it will become a spaceship you will know i lost it :))) oh yes, confessions stage, "alcohol" starting to fade maybe... i have to say i sacrificed some of my initial concepts because of some players. In a bad way i mean. I was (and maybe stil am) thinking that there should be a villan and a factor of controversy in any system in order to keep it dynamic and avoid a steady way to collaps. Normaly i planed to do this in a different way, but, some things made me to take personal decisions and mask so that they will not be publicly admited. Damn i should shut up, but this helps me organize my thoughs, so yes..i am using you as my personal psyhiatrist lol. Some of the villans around here made me put an invisible mark on them and jusdge them and all the one surrounding them. Its not because of what happend, but that triggered it. I think that these negative factors shift the md world in an unwanted direction. I could symply erase some of the ancient accounts that cause this, and count on the fact that they will simply give up. But i can not do this, its far more interesting to see what destruction looks like and understand it then to paranoicaly avoid it and shut it down. These accounts made me "cheat" so to speak, not seriously , but i did sabotaged some silently and cut some of theire connections to limit "the spreading of the evil" ...i love when i sound like a mad inquisitor. Because i had to do this , i have the feeling the game "stability by chaos" had to suffer very much, and i started a hunt that will point nowere at the end. MP7 . MP2 , factions, are all things orientated to role-play and made so that they will "clean" the grinders of their dark desires to "beat the world". MP7 is simply canceling all current achievements, and if this sounds scary it still has some nice things to counter it. I actualy like more the game to be unballenced towards roleplay than fighting, BUT i admit i should do this differently and be fair to everybody including those that destroy the things i built. Cheating loyalty points to favoritise alliance members even if they did not knew about it, or faking some head contest scores are not things i am proud of and NO they are not part of "ruling the realm". They are just my reaction to a unstable system and to a constantly changing personal life. I guess it all started when in RL i realised that i can hate a very close friend as my biggest enemy, ..i think its then when i started to take subjective decisions and not think about a bigger plan in things. It all happend at christmas/newyear. I realse its wrong, but i dont feel like stopping it. I learned not to post on newslog when i am angry because that causes a mass reaction and everybody seems to be angry for whatever reason, i also learned not to make it public anymore because that causes a wave of paranoia, like with the traps set for cheaters. ...but i am still learning. All my life i was learning ever second of it, so i can't say there is at least one single thing that i completely know all about. I sometimes appear as having a weak point of view or coward attitude regarding some situations. Some have thought at one time things like "he is the allmighty Mur, why is he simple not canging that and that", well ..thats because inside me a still have a big conflict between judgement and feelings. Sometimes i know things should be taken care of in a certain way but i also feel they should be left like they are and observe their evolution. Its not one time that i had to change the things i said just to fit the situation. I might appear like a man with a strong word to some or manipulated puppet to others, but you have no clue whatsoever how i see things behind my skull. ..or you maybe have a bit of a clue if you read this far afterall. Japanese could call this SUI , water, a principle (not only an element) that indicates adaptation to any situation, fluidity. "Mur" is a "fire" characters, mostly. Sometimes it becomes a "wind" character when its surrounded by big crowds. When it comes to decisions LOOKS like a "earth" character, imovable mostly, but behind the scenes my decisions are actualy a mixture of "water" for flexibility and "fire" for passion i put in the moment. Althoug it sounds like a random decision logic driven just by others words and by personal mood, i somehow have something that makes it all makes sense, i dont knwo what that is myself, its not my personality, becuase i have many... Some knwo Mur, some knew Muratus del Mur, some know Knator Commander, some the Shade Sentinel, some knew King M., and some know Manu day by day. I don't know who i am myself, i might be all at once or simply lost it. Ive seen beautiful minds got lost in MD so right now i am not sure if i am a victim of my creation or the creation is a victim of myself, and you know what, i dont care, live with it and have super fun while you do. should i torture your patience some more? of course! but with one bit of info that i will not give you any more clues for now, i love tormenting you don't i "the map is bigger"