Question for the coders

Erin · Post by **Erin** » Wed Dec 10, 2003 5:29 am

Implementing the standard Barren Realms coding method. Without any frills or special abilities i.e. limbs, track, astral, teleport, blah blah blah. How long would it take one coder to code a new race? I don’t mean for remort just a new race. From conception to actual finished job. I posted on another thread about how adding new races (not remort but for more advanced mudders) I was informed that creating a race was a huge job and very time consuming even on a basic scale.

kiri · Post by **kiri** » Wed Dec 10, 2003 12:27 pm

I don't get what you are asking?

Erin · Post by **Erin** » Wed Dec 10, 2003 1:14 pm

I am sorry if I did not make myself very clear. Let me try it this way.

Say it was decided to add a new race to br, not a remort, but not as smiple as standard races ie Elf druid blah blah.

The race would have no real special advantage such as teleport, astral, track and would be aimed for the more advanced mudder, as a challenge.

so when a new player logged on to create a char the list would be something like.

Basic race
Elf
Druid
Avian
Illithid
Kender
Dwarf

More advanced
(just examples)
Orc
Giant

What I am asking is how long would it take for something like that to be coded? Someone has said it would take aleast a cpl of years working fulltime on it. I dont know about code but i didn't think it would be that problematic as the demon race was, because of no real special abilities.

I hope I have explained myself a little better. If not just slay me at will

kiri · Post by **kiri** » Wed Dec 10, 2003 1:36 pm

It would probably take a year (and that doesn't count planning). This is due to real life, other code issues, emergency code problems, playtesting, etc.

Erin · Post by **Erin** » Wed Dec 10, 2003 1:50 pm

Thank you for such a quick reply. During a conversation regarding a different posting I was told it would be more inline with 2+years per race. All I can say is it is worth considering?

kiri · Post by **kiri** » Wed Dec 10, 2003 2:11 pm

We're certainly working on race stuff, it's just not something we can speed up by choice....

Everybody · Post by **Everybody** » Wed Dec 10, 2003 5:04 pm

Some background... demons were somewhere on the order of 3 years from conception to completion (if I'm right... might have been more like 3 1/2). Over a year of that was planning the race out - what abilities they have, how they would work, etc. etc. Now, demons are complex, and they interact with the more "regular" races in complex ways, not to mention the act of even becoming one was complex in itself. All of this created fairly major problems for Slart as he was coding them, because he wound up having to put in a lot of unforeseen infrastructure into the mud to support them. However, he built that infrastructure with the idea that it would let him make further expansions much easier.

For a "simpler" race - i.e. works like the basic 7 races already do, with skills and spells, standard combat, no special rules about how they can interact with other morts, etc. - all the infrastructure's already in place, so how long it would take to get in is a matter of how long it takes to code in any new skills or spells they have. The more overlap they have with existing code, and the less radical the sorts of skills they get, the faster it would happen. Given a good outline (the planning part), a race that falls into this area would likely take 6-9 mos. (presuming no major hitches were hit, no code emergencies, etc.) to code, and another 2-3 mos. to playtest effectively. Note: this is a best speed time. I know that I've essentially said what Kiri did (around a year), but I'm trying to show what all goes into these projects.