World of Naruto Forums

Thanks to Ilian for setting this up in support of the MUD. I must say that I am a little surprised that this was set up, given how few people use the MUD and how far we are from having the MUD looking like I want it to look like. Just the same, thanks for doing this.

I first thought of making the Naruto MUD for 3 reasons: 1) because, ever since I first used a MUD in 1994 and ever since I ran my talker from 1996-1999 I thought of making a MUD 2) I just got so into Naruto after I first saw it in 2005 that I felt that it was just crying out for a MUD to be based on it 3) My experiences with Gatz's Naruto MUD were so disappointing that I felt that we could surely do better and that I was sure that there were a lot of other people out there who would appreciate there being an alternative.

I thought that a Naruto MUD should be what the show is like. I was disappointed in seeing that Gatz's MUD did not have a single character that was actually from the show. I thought that that was what people would want to see when they logged on. How great that you can log in and hey presto you are greeted by Iruka, trained by Kakashi and later on you can even fight characters out of the show, with whole zones based on episodes of the show? That was what I thought that people wanted to see. Perhaps Gatz was concerned about copyright concerns, but seriously I think that the people involved in the Naruto show would love to have a not-for-profit game based on them. There is certainly a history in mudding of this kind of thing. Indeed, there are already hundreds of web-based Naruto games out there.

I thought that what we should aim to do is to have everything from the show in the game. Every skill shown on Naruto should be in the game. Every character, location, weapon, tool, jutsu and idea should be in there. We can then make up our own things consistent with that to add to that. But we need to include everything from the show.

Another thing that I thought was important was balance. This is why I am doing things in order, and ultimately this is why it stalled. It shouldn't matter which village you choose or which clan you choose or which specialty you pick - they all should be equal, yet different. This was why, when I was making the skills, I was making them 1 in each of the 4 specialties at the same time.

The problem is that at one point one of our players, Kazume, wrote to me a huge amount of ideas for Taijutsu skills. This was good because Taijutsu didn't have a lot of jutsus shown in the show. I decided, probably incorrectly, to add them all in at once. In doing this, it made Taijutsu more powerful than the other specialties.

Then I researched to find my own set of Genjutsu skills, which, like Taijutsu, weren't shown explicitly in the show. I then added all of them in at once. This then made Taijutsu and Genjutsu more powerful than the other 2 specialties.

I then had a whole group of Ninja Arts skills to add, which would make Ninja Arts equal to Genjutsu and Taijutsu. Ninjutsu actually is already roughly equal, but all I need to do is to change the names (etc) to make it more Naruto-real.

The problem happened when Exploding Notes didn't work. I wanted them to be able to be placed on the ground and then detonated later. I didn't have any code to base it on, so it was all my own invention, cos this was a new idea. I got it to work great too. It took me ages and ages and ages, maybe 100 hours or more. Then suddenly it caused a crash. I couldn't understand why. So I disabled that. Then something else caused a crash. Ultimately, I had to stop the whole thing.

Recently, I worked out a dumbed-down version of Exploding Notes that is currently available, which seems to work so far. If that can work, then I should be able to add in all of the Ninja Arts skills that I had planned.

For the record, these are the skills (roughly) that I had wanted to have for Ninja Arts:

[*]Exploding Notes - able to throw and explode notes (can disable if disabled immediately, and before they detonate, KAI-style) for small damage, either to an individual opponent or to the whole room (current thoughts are PLACE to be individual, EXPLODE for whole room).
[*]Smoke Bombs - same kind of thing but this will potentially blind (only for a duration of 1, which is a fairly small time, removable with KAI), either to an individual or to an opponent.
[*]Web traps - can web someone (can't flee) - either to whole room or individual - can be disabled but tough to do - fairly short duration
[*]Poison Gas - throws a canister which can be disabled, but if not then it poisons for a reasonable duration - either room or individual
[*]Clay explosives - maybe have different levels of these for increasingly powerful damage.
[*]Armour/Weapons creation - make your own weapons! Would be slightly worse than the best weapons/armour for the level - but handy if you are on the run or if there are no good armour/weapons for that level (as is currently the case).
[*]Tool creation - can make your own Ninja Arts tools (Exploding Notes, Smoke Bombs, etc)
[*]Puppetry - I am not currently sure if I could do this the way that I want it to work, so I have 2 options, depending on how tough this is to code.

Ideal: Puppetry would let you have a puppet of your level who could fight in a room next to you, that you control with chakra strings (i.e. chakra drain while using it), and hence you can't be hit by the enemy. You wouldn't be able to heal or buff your puppet though, and they would just fight until destroyed. After being destroyed, you could then repair them, which would take time and stamina, or you could just buy a new one. There would be certain special commands that you could use, such as getting them to poison your opponent, to try to lock them inside and so forth. Different puppets would be available at different levels.

Worst case: Puppetry would give you a pet who would fight next to you just like a regular pet/blood summon, with a chakra drain, and you would be in the same room as you. The puppet would be guaranteed to be in front of you, such that you could not be hit by an enemy while they are there. You wouldn't be able to heal or buff your puppet and they would just fight until destroyed, then repaired etc, with special moves.

The difference, basically, is whether or not I can get them to fight from a room away. Given the difficulties with Exploding Notes, I would say that that is probably unlikely, but you never know.

With all of this in place, I think that Ninja Artist could be as powerful as the other 3 specialties, if used by the right person. The whole idea of them is that they should be resourceful, and I think that that would achieve those aims.

After that, as I said, I would work on Ninjutsu to make the jutsus look more like Naruto. I would be removing some and adding others. Ninjutsu wouldn't be any more powerful than it is now, but it would work differently. For one thing, jutsus would eventually all work just by typing in their name (e.g. Chakra for Chakra Ball, rather than Perform Chakra).

There are 1000s of jutsus in Naruto that count as Ninjutsu. My aim for that specialty is to include EVERY SINGLE ONE. In other words, Ninjutsu specialists would have access to 2 or 3 times as many jutsus as other specialties. Of course, the Ninjutsu specialist wouldn't be able to learn all of them. It'd simply be impossible to learn them all. Some of them would be either/or kind of things. There wouldn't be much point in learning both. Ninjutsu specialists therefore would kind of sub-specialise, per what they think works best.

After all of that is done (and at some point I will finish doing the blood summons), then we can look at other things, like village-specific and clan-specific jutsus. I hope that it is fairly obvious why I have delayed doing that.

It has, I must say, been very tempting to just put in sharingan and be done with it. I know how to code it and really it isn't overly difficult to code. The problem is that the minute that I do that, then everyone is going to be Uchiha, then the Uchiha people will want more things and more powerful things and hate anyone else, and anyone who doesn't want to be Uchiha may as well not play. I will say this - Uchiha is not going to be any more powerful than any other clan. They are just going to be different. I will tweak skills until they are as close as possible to equal with each other, while being true to the Naruto theme.

Another reason why I put things off so much was the Chuunin exams. Quite simply they didn't work. People who went in them didn't show up, it took too long to organise and was way too much work, and then people wanted them down automatically. I tried to work out how to do them automatically, but it also meant way too much work.

What we are doing now seems to be a better way to go. I am letting immortals promote people to Chuunin level after they have individually done a Chuunin-like quest, of their own discretion. I think that this is the right way to go.

After we have some people at Tokubetsu Jounin level, the Tokubetsus can then promote people to Chuunin. I think that I will get them to require 3 x SUPPORT votes to get from Genin to Chuunin, and if they get any REJECT votes then they go back to scratch and have to get 3 more. People will be encouraged to only vote SUPPORT after they have passed a test.

Similarly, Jounins will be able to promote people to Tokubetsu Jounin. I think that I will leave it to imms to promote people to Jounin though.

It is a long journey, and I have spent 6 months or so not doing very much. Yet still people are turning up. Dresq has worked out how to write mob programs, which is great (or was it Jaga?). Auxol has been very excitable about how to do things.

And now, importantly, both of the things that were causing the procrastination - the Exploding Notes and the Chuunin Exams - seem to have been resolved.

I have also finished the course that I was doing and have also finished my 2nd job (which was tutoring a high school student) so I should have more time to do this.

Thanks again for setting up this forum. Hopefully we can use this to get things going a bit more.