I like the seaport, but there's a couple things that I think that would improve it.

The first is possibly a bug. Sometimes boats will dock at the same port and overwrite each other. This just seems wrong. If it's not a bug, can we discuss why it is this way?

The second is about getting kicked off the boats. I think it's very frustrating, and also very silly. It also makes it so much of the gear that could be available in the midranks isn't really because there are a lot of cases where you could kill the mob, but you can't kill it before the boat sails away. It's also very laughable that say, the lich lord of the chasm can simple be escorted off the boat.

I suggest one or more of the following tweaks (they're not all compatible) for what happens when a boat is supposed to leave while you're on it:

1a. If you're actively fighting the captain, the boat doesn't leave for 10 ticks.

1b. If you're actively fighting the captain, you stay on the boat. After 10 ticks, you're dumped into the sea (where exactly could depend on the boat).

In either case, if you kill the mob you have one additional tick to loot before you're escorted off. If you spend 2 pulses not in combat with the captain you are jetissoned into the sea or escorted back to the docks as usual.

2. If you're fighting any mob on the boat when, both you and the mob get moved back onto the docks. If you spend 2 pulses not in combat with the mob when the boat isn't there, then it goes back to the boat (a sped up version of the summmoned-mob-going-away mechanic).

3. If you're on a boat when it wants to leave, a pile of mobs come up and tell you to leave. If you don't leave within a few pulses, they attack you. At 50% health you are automatically escorted off. If you kill them, you get to stay on the boat as long as you want.

4. You're never escorted off boats. You just sit on them as long as you want with no way out except magical transport. You get a warning and a few pulses to leave before the boat actually goes.

If I am fighting the captain and his crew is all dead how are they throwing me off the boat?

worst case let the boat leave, me able to leave only when Captain is dead and I get off the boat random location in the sea

That would be way ass more complicated than the status quo.

If there's a PC on board in combat, the boat doesn't leave? Seems like it would solve everyone's problem (and be somewhat easier to code.. hopefully?), and I'm not sure how it could be abused or otherwise break the area.

Am I missing something?

>If there's a PC on board in combat, the boat doesn't leave?
>Seems like it would solve everyone's problem (and be somewhat
>easier to code.. hopefully?), and I'm not sure how it could be
>abused or otherwise break the area.
>
>Am I missing something?

Yeah. Then I need to keep track of which boats should want to leave, what other boats they might be blocking, and how to fix their exits correctly when that happens at whatever later time it is.

It's doable. It's just a lot more complicated and a lot more code than the solution I implemented.

Considering I've been trying for a month and a half to find time to work on a piece of code for a hero area that's about 0.0001% the complexity of that, again, the chance of me ever doing that is basically zero.

>Considering I've been trying for a month and a half to find
>time to work on a piece of code for a hero area that's about
>0.0001% the complexity of that, again, the chance of me ever
>doing that is basically zero.

I hear you on that, man. I'm not sure how old your child is now, but I've got a ten-month old and an iPhone project which is not getting the attention it deserves (the iPhone project, that is).

It's so tough to get those multiple-hour long blocks which are essential for anything coding-wise.

While I'm poking around running this area:

I've been looking around about an hour, hour and a half since the Day of the Great Gods.

Delving Shark and Carli's Shrimp Boat can overwrite one another on or before the Day of Deception.

Crimson Fire gets overwritten by Outlaying Outcast on the Day of Deception.

Grey Monk has no arrival message sometimes, or sometimes fails to arrive at all.

Coeur Rogue is terribly infrequent and rarely stays long enough to observe let alone buy anything. However, if there are limited dam redux and haste preps sold on this boat, that is understandable.

Virgin Maid comes extremely often, but since it's Seantryn, it may be expected. Carli's shrimp boat also comes too often. Both of these arrive twice as often as Vampire's Bane.

Horizon's Seeker is pretty infrequent. (infrequent means seems like once an in-game week and may be by design)

Call to Arms and Courage, Serve, Protect have no outstanding issues but the Sultan's War Barge seems to arrive fairly infrequently.

Some ships have varying and inconsistent amounts of keywords, and it's entirely unrelated to the size of the ship. Laughing Lord is guilty of this. You can tell roughly in what order the ships were written because of this, understandably. After all, there is quite a bit of redundant description on several of the boats (not that the keywords are the same but that they may be unnecessary relative to other keywords and npc's on rarer or more detailed boats).

My suggestion would be to cut down the amounts of keywords on some of the boats and move the obs. exp rewards to other boats with more distinctive but less rewarding keywords. Particularly the boats that show up once a week or less should have the bulk of the area's rewards such as Aarn's Holy Aler or Aquavia Montage, if that isn't already the case. Other boats are missing keywords that existed on others. Still other boats, most in fact, have the 'sail' keyword overlapping with the 'sailors' on the boat or there's a circus ring on the Aquavia Montage that will constantly overlap with the rings the PC is wearing. The lighthouse could use more keywords/xp rewarded taken from the other boats period, aside from the murder it's difficult to tell what happened or why the lighthouse is untouched by decay relative to everything below it. There's a few nice descriptions there but no real clues, imho. Kraken's Caress has virtually no keywords at all by contrast to the rest of the ships.

Some days seem to have nothing distinctive happening, such as the time from 10 AM on the Day of Thunder to 6 AM on the Day of Freedom. There are large swaths of time that one or more boats could be fit into their 3-4 tick timeframes that are going unused by the overwriting boats.

Aquavia Montage has a terribly short stay for the amount of text to read on it. Speaking subjectively, it feels like it should be double what it is now.

If this isn't already done, NPC's locked in hulls, invisible, or hidden, could use some rewards for obs. exp. Many times to get into the hulls of some of the ships you need to specifically plan for having pass door or pray you can pick the locks or happen to be playing a bard/AP/thief. Others things just get confusing for low or mid-levels with captains who are invisible. Golden Pearl has this problem, the captain is invisible but will still talk to you. There are many NPC's on the docks itself that this could be done for as well, particularly the mages. Other NPCs you may miss entirely on some boats.

'Golden Whorl' just had an arrival message but didn't arrive at all around noon on the Day of the Great Gods. Also, the quest that I believe is available on this boat has a rather paltry reward for how often this ship shows up.

The docks are referred to as the 'adventurers dock' the 'merchant's dock' and the 'southern dock' but there's no signs at any of these docks to indicate which ones are what, nor are these docks labelled in the Dockmaster's Office as far as I know. Obviously the hidden dock shouldn't have any signs at all, but the north, east and south docks need the proper labels. The hidden dock to the south should be differentiated from the southern dock somehow in some of the 'secretive' or 'evil' ship descriptions such as Muse's Throne need arrival echoes to indicate 'a hidden dock toward the south' or something.

There may have been boats that arrived with no echoes while I was poking around, I know there's more boats than all the names I just listed. I know there's at least one pleasure cruise boat that shows up that did not during the week-long period I was on the docks.

The coding for this is so much more complicated than the status quo (itself arguably the single most complicated piece of area code in the game) that even if I thought these were good ideas, I would never get to it. I mean never. Maybe after my kids are done with college.

Boats overwriting each other, on the other hand, I'm willing to fix if you can figure out for me exactly what time what boat overwrites which other boat. I've tried a couple times to start in on compiling a definitive schedule that highlights when this happens and I always find something else more interesting to do.

>Boats overwriting each other, on the other hand, I'm willing
>to fix if you can figure out for me exactly what time what
>boat overwrites which other boat.

I have a recent log where I know it happened, but after looking for 10 minutes I can't see it out. If you want I can send you the log but it's long, spammy and will tell you who I'm playing. I'll try to take a look later.

Too bad about the complexity.

But 94% of the time it seems to be the Outlying Outcast and the Virgin Maid arriving on top of another ship. Happens most often with the Maran ship and the Fire Giant ship - at least a place to start.

Seriously, best MUD coding results I've seen and easily the best area in the game because of it. It's one of the few places that really feel "alive" because there's always constantly something going on. I'd say the new Arkham comes in a close second. I would really like to see Hamsah and Galadon get revamped to follow those models, but I know that is a HUGE undertaking.

>Seriously, best MUD coding results I've seen and easily the
>best area in the game because of it. It's one of the few
>places that really feel "alive" because there's always
>constantly something going on.

Area (not code) written by...(drumroll)...RayBaer.

Everyone knows Nepenthe wrote that area for me!! (heavy sarcasm)

I'll buy that he did all the buggy coding. Zing!

I've looked through that code to try to leverage it for something else. I fear it. I fully understand why modifying it would go on the "never" list.

Credit where credit is due, that kind of area writing is great - to the point where I'm spoiled and hate areas where if I look in a direction and see "nothing special", I get annoyed because it's old busted instead of new hotness. My criticisms didn't encompass your area writing abilities (at least I don't think they did).

The coding, however, puts this area over the top. It's wholly unlike all other areas in the MUD because there's always something happening, something to see, and there are more goodies to discover in one compact area than anywhere else in the game (which is due to your attention to detail and Nep's coding combined). I've explored the newest areas to some extent and they're spectacular, but not to the degree of the seaport.

Because we all know players crying about you/nep are just bitter about other things.

Just brush the haters off.

Please, for the God sake, fix those boats so zombies will not stuck there when you are kicked out of the boats!

I've spent 2 hours making decent zombies on 33-34 level and got storm lieutenant zombies. It was a hellish work.

After that, I went to kill something on the boat for an item I wanted to identify. In the middle of the fight, I was kicked out of the boat... and my great and amazing zombies did stay in the boat for another XXX hours.

Unable to return them or to summon them from that boat, I was SOOOOOOO pissed, you cannot imagine my frustration at that time :)

Laughing Lord overrides Vampire's Bane


|100%|100%|77%|1050 TNL||2 AM| time
It is 2 o'clock AM, Day of Thunder
17th of the Month of the Dragon.
It is currently nighttime.
The moon is currently new.

|100%|100%|97%|1050 TNL||12 PM| People near you:
(PK) ME Below Deck of the 'Vampire's Bane'

|100%|100%|97%|1050 TNL||12 PM| l
Below Deck of the 'Vampire's Bane'
Inside the hull of the 'Vampire's Bane,' a few lanterns have been strung to
provide a bit of light. Peeking through portholes in the hull, you can see
the waves lapping against the vessel. Everything down here seems dry and
well cared for, if a bit cold. Oddly, bunches of garlic have been strung
along the ceiling, and a few runes of protection against evil have been
drawn on the walls. Other than that, various goods from Arkham are stored
here, being brought over to the main continent to be sold. Some crates
here have been marked 'provisions' for the crew.


A cabin boy works here, guarding the cargo and washing the floor.


|100%|100%|97%|1050 TNL||12 PM| whe
People near you:
(PK) ME Aboard the 'Vampire's Bane - Daylight Marauder'

|100%|100%|97%|1050 TNL||12 PM| w
At the Edge of the Merchant's Dock


A short merchant scopes the armors being traded by the merchant ships.
A merchant from Hamsah Mu'tazz directs trade goods for the city.

|100%|100%|95%|1050 TNL||12 PM| whe
People near you:
(PK) ME At the Edge of the Merchant's Dock

|100%|100%|95%|1050 TNL||12 PM|
The rain ceases.

|100%|100%|100%|1050 TNL||1 PM|
The textile merchant ship 'The Laughing Lord' ports to the merchant dock, her hull filled with foreign cargo. A surge of merchants move to greet her, ready to bid on her merchandise.

|100%|100%|100%|1050 TNL||1 PM|
The clouds disappear.

|100%|100%|100%|1050 TNL||2 PM|
'A Call to Arms', the coastguard dhow, ties to the dock, monitoring the seas from her port.

|100%|100%|100%|1050 TNL||2 PM| whe
People near you:
(PK) ME At the Edge of the Merchant's Dock

|100%|100%|100%|1050 TNL||2 PM| e
Aboard the 'Laughing Lord'


A storm giant sailor works here, tending to the ship.
(White Aura) Blythlynn Syriviere, captain of the 'Laughing Lord' stands at the wheel.

|100%|100%|98%|1050 TNL||2 PM| l
Aboard the 'Laughing Lord'
This large galleon is meant to move goods - and lots of them. The
majority of the ship seems to be for storage, a wide and deep hull and
a warehousing chamber taking up most of the deck. Inside the chamber,
there is a small space with hammocks strung for the crew to sleep, a
corner reserved for the Captain and his cartographer, and many crates
carrying goods. Below deck, the hull is packed with goods, mostly of the
textile variety. Water skins, cloth, wood, iron tools and kitchen utensils,
all basic necessities traded back and forth between the large cities and
continents of the realm.


A storm giant sailor works here, tending to the ship.
(White Aura) Blythlynn Syriviere, captain of the 'Laughing Lord' stands at the wheel.

|100%|100%|98%|1050 TNL||2 PM| w
At the Edge of the Merchant's Dock


A short merchant scopes the armors being traded by the merchant ships.
A merchant from Hamsah Mu'tazz directs trade goods for the city.

|100%|100%|97%|1050 TNL||2 PM| whe
People near you:
(PK) ME At the Edge of the Merchant's Dock

|100%|100%|97%|1050 TNL||2 PM|
The Arkham trade ship, 'Vampire's Bane - Daylight Marauder' pulls up her anchor and ties and sets sail for home.

gr

.

Do the Creep....
do the creep...