Obama's Speech

This article originally appeared in the now-defunct online magazine Imaginary Realities. It talks about MUD administration, and draws on my experience working with Armageddon MUD, the world of Zalanthas. For those who don’t know what a MUD is, it’s a text-based roleplaying game. Here’s the wikipedia article on MUDs.

One of the sad truths of the mud world is that there are never enough coders. Builders aplenty, brimming with fresh idealism and plans for entire zones, appear (and sometimes disappear) at the drop of a hat. But coders are the unicorns of the mudding world, seldom glimpsed and ardently pursued. We are lucky enough to have three dedicated coders on Armageddon MUD: Morgenes, Tenebrius and Tiernan, as well as a few other staff members willing and able to wade through the bugs file and tinker with things upon occasion. How, then, does an administrator keep these rare beasts happy? The following four steps may help.

1) Communicate: When asking for new code, try to let the coders know exactly what is desired. For example, instead of ‘Let’s make archery more complicated,” a staff member might propose “Let’s put a range on archery, so the farther away the target is, the harder it is to shoot it.” A full description of the the idea, perhaps including examples, such as fake logs showing what the idea will look like when being used, helps make sure the originator of the idea and the coder are on the same track as far as things like syntax and usage are concerned.

The same holds true for bugs. Describing how it’s supposed to work as well to how it’s working right now helps clarify ideas. Coders want to know if the bug is REALLY a bug, or something being reported because it doesn’t work as the reporter feels it should.

With bugs, give the coders as much information as possible, including how to reproduce the bug. Examples by way of logs are great, and if they include some form of error message (or message that they’re getting that shows it’s an error), it often allows the coder to track down what section of the code needs to be worked on.

Make sure people aren’t bumping into each other. On Armageddon, we’ve got a coder’s board, where people post changes as they make them. This alerts fellow team members to what they’re doing and is also helpful if unexpected bugs crop up, enabling people to track exactly what got changed and when. Two people should not be working on the same idea at once unless they know it, and can divvy up the work accordingly.

2) Have a purpose: Will it get used? Is it something players are asking for? This one is a matter of ego, but we’re all human and we all do have egos. Seeing their work getting used, regularly and as envisioned, is a reward beyond any thanks or congratulations other staff members can give a coder. Track player requests, through entries in the bugs/ideas/typos files as well as emails to the account and posts on the general discussion board in order to convince a coder that the players want, and will use, something.

Generally, with new ideas figure out how they are moving towards some goal. A piece of code like a new skill is going to sound more interesting if it fits into some overall purpose, such as a master plan of non-combat related skills for the economy than it would if it is just a random idea. You are also going to end up getting more out of the idea if it is part of a greater whole.

Make it innovative. Some coders like to be trail breakers, to feel that they’re not just playing catch-up with another mud, but are creating ideas and concepts new to the mud community. Some ideas get requested to ‘balance’ things out between groups: guilds, or races, or mount speed. When a coder starts to feel like the code they’re doing that day only works to nullify a change made last week, then they’re going to start wondering what they will be asked to implement tomorrow.

3) Share the work: Do as much of the grunt work as you can for the coders, including helping thoroughly test, providing help files and documentation, and fleshing things out. In testing, give coders information about what is not working and how to recreate the result. Be precise about what needs to be changed: not ‘the plague of locusts spell needs to do more damage’, but ‘it needs to do about twice the damage it is now.’ When something requires a new help file or modification of an existing help file, do not expect the coder to do it, but supply it yourself. If it is something that requires building, provide the items. Teamwork of this kind, when it is working well, is terrific, and will often produce amazingly cool results.

4) Appreciate: Good coders can never be praised sufficiently. We try to make sure that players know who is responsible for new and interesting changes, by posting information about them in the news as well as in our weekly update, which is a mailing our players can subscribe to, which provides information about changes, staff and world news, upcoming recommended playing times, etc. When players write in with compliments or feedback on a code change, make sure that the note gets passed along to the person , as well as that the coder knows how cool or slick you think the ideas they have implemented are as well.

There is a tendency sometimes to regard coders as resources that spit out code at request. But the fact of the matter is that treating coders in that way will frustrate both sides, leading coders to become discouraged and unmotivated to implement new ideas and builders to feel that their coding needs are not being met. These four points may help avoid such frustration.

This article originally appeared in the April 2001 issue of Imaginary Realities.
© 2002 Cat Rambo. All rights reserved.

I’m prepping for next week and the official release of the book. I’ll be doing some blog posts about the interior art over the next few days as well as trying to tie up a lot of loose ends. (And I’m prepping for the next round of classes – plenty of time to sign up still if you’re interested.) And at the end of the month, I’m off to Baltimore for a few days for the Baltimore Book Festival, yay!

The party at WorldCon was so! great! And it helps to have such a nifty book to show off. So I wanted to enthuse a bit more about it and why I’m so happy with it.

1. It’s the old Ace double format. I used to love those whenever I found them in the used bookstores.
2. Vicki Saunders did an amazing job with the book design, including using elements from the interior art to create printer’s ornaments to denote section breaks. In a move I consider above and beyond, they differ between the two books.
3. I have been admiring Mark Tripp’s art for over a decade now. He’s a good friend and I can’t begin to say how much it means to me to use his art, so we’ve got a collaboration other than the game we’ve both worked on for a bajillion years, Armageddon MUD.
4. I found out I had more than enough SF for a collection. In fact, we had to cut some of it. A surprising amount.
5. A favorite editor from Microsoft, Jo Molnar, agreed to do the copy-editing. I’d worked with Jo before and knew he was meticulous and careful, and that he’d bravely face the demands of a spec fic collection, including questions like how one formats telepathic communications.
6. I got plenty of input in how the book looked, the order, the editing and so forth. It’s more than just a collection of my work, it’s an expression of my philosophy regarding books.
7. Publisher and friend Tod McCoy has become one of my favorite people to work with. He solved problem after problem, came up with clever ideas, and was always enthusiastic, knowledgeable and supportive. And fun as hell.
8. The awesome blurbs, including a somehow very Norman-ish note from Norman Spinrad and an unconventional list for an unconventional book by Karen Joy Fowler.
9. Getting to throw a book launch party at WorldCon, the biggest of the SF conventions.
10. It’s appearing in time for World Fantasy Convention, and I know Tod will make sure there’s copies there so I may actually sign more than a couple books at the con.

You can find the book for preordering at Hydra House.