Designing weather/seasons/time and world objects?

I've been working on the world details for Tohm, and I hope you all can share some ideas of your own or tell me what you think of what's built so far. All constructive criticism is VERY much appreciated!

Here's a demo video:



Here's a summary:

1. Weather patterns are region-specific, so weather messages can be more detailed and mention region-specific details like roads, buildings and townspeople in cities, animals and trails in forests, dunes in deserts, etc.

2. Room descriptions can change with season, weather, and time of day, to keep them fresh.

3. In addition to using LOOK to examine world objects (statues, tables, lamps, etc) in more detail, players may also smell and touch objects to get more information.

So, what do you think? How can it be better? Have you had any very positive experiences with world simulation in other games that you would like to share?

I really like the variety of messages and don't have a lot to add to make the weather better per se. One thing I would note is that active messages like that can be quite spammy, so our game tends to downplay 'change of weather state' messages and simply put the information passively in a sort of "status" section in the room desc:

Church Square
[Freezing, cloudy, heavy breeze from the west, before dawn]
The grand facade of the Cathedral of St. Aelwyn dominates this square
in all its gothic opulence, set opposite the less imposing but equally
large edifice of the Town Hall. Laid in an artful pattern, the red and
white bricks between them converge in alternating bands towards a central
fixture, a splendid fountain. Around it, a small grassy area has been left
open, hosting the small roofed shelter of the town announcement board.
Several benches wrought from intricate ironwork edge this small lawn,
offering seating to the weary.

May I ask what niche your game intends to target and what is the main focus/purpose of play in your world? (Eg, the game caters primarily to people who spend more of their time engaging in RP, exploration, group mobbing, PK, etc?) I ask because the feedback may differ a bit if I knew what you were aiming for.

My game is role-play focused, so very player-control-of-surroundings oriented. We have the ability for players to temporarily overwrite/update room descs to reflect what is actually happening in the room, for example, so eschew dynamic room descs. We considered dynamic room descs, but we decided not to do it because of our game play focus/methods.

I really love the background of your client and the font. Is that a MUD Portal plugin?

About the look/smell commands: I think that it's nice to make your virtual world more immersive. It's very immersive if you can look at absolutely everything, however you have to watch out for the syntax guessing issue. That issue will not exist if the description is based on the objects rather than the other way around. To enter the realm of crazy, it would be perfect if the MUD areas were built with a 3D graphical engine and then translated everything into text.

I took a tabletop approach in ForgottenMUD: if there's something interesting to spot, I make a Spot skill roll, and if it's successful I display the text automatically. Thus, it will only show extra descriptions if they bring useful information. And it's not that I adhere to the Chekhov's gun's principle, only that I am designing a hack-and-slash MUD so I care more about functionality than fluff.

@Kinaed

Thanks for your compliment on variety. About spam, I'd argue that our approach is less spammy because weather messages only appear when weather changes (about once per real life hour on average), rather than every time a room description is displayed.

Our focus is definitely on gaming elements - combat is the next focus area, then hero advancement, quests, dungeons, and professions. Eventually, I'd also like to add lots of very good support for roleplayers as well (gaming elements are not required, roleplayers should be able to just roleplay if they like), so I'm always glad to take any notes you have in that area! As for PK, that is a lower priority and will probably be opt-in somehow.

@ForgottenMUD

Very glad to hear from you, welcome to the site! About syntax guessing, that's probably the biggest focus of our project actually - please do read about our command processor (or watch the video) and tell me if you have any ideas in that area. Regarding your idea about building an area in 3d and then reducing it to text - you're blowing my mind, man!

I can see where your automatic spotting mechanic is a good fit when you don't expect players will take the time to explicitly explore the environment for cosmetic details. I'm not sure our players will, either - but I was determined to add this feature because I personally think it makes text worlds feel more "real" and "deep" to me.

{Edited out some text, it looks like I didn't express myself clearly.}

I offer a new idea: do you know how Google gives suggestions as you type? I think that it would be a neat feature for user input. You type "op" and it gives "open the door". Similar to your suggestions, but different. Also, I wonder if there's some algorithm for an AI floating around that could help.

P.S.: You didn't say if it was a MUD Portal plugin.

I read a different page on your wiki. You say that buttons intimidate players... Is that a fact or do you just think it does? There's nothing easier than clicking a button and I see many popular games and programs with buttons, such as the one below:

@ForgottenMUD

I get from your response that you didn't bother to read about the command processing - the whole feature set is about mitigating the guessing problem you're describing. It also mentions that we're already logging command line failures as you suggested there.

Sorry I forgot to answer your question - no, it's a custom web client (Javascript).

On clicking, we're definitely planning to allow for clicking various parts of the UI, for example hyperlinks which open a new window for in depth help or which execute command lines for you. Also a clickable compass for navigation. I don't think all buttons are bad, but it is a fact that showing 10's of icons/buttons/tabs/menus at new users is intimidating. Some interfaces do it anyway, but they either assume the user has had some training (office productivity software) or gradually add items to the interface over time (plants vs zombies). The trend in applications overall is to streamline - less is more. You can see this in many newer, popular smart phone apps, in touch-enabled apps on other devices, and the newest websites (compare xbox music with grooveshark).

It's my opinion that giving players a menu or finite set of buttons detracts from the sense of wonder at the possibilities, by illustrating for players the very finite set of options. I prefer to make the command line flexible enough that most guesses work out, and those which don't are answered with very helpful teaching text. I know it's a very hard problem, and we're just going to try our best and see how far we can get - we may eventually decide to opt for an command line builder approach to make mistakes impossible.