Slashdot Mirror

At the Tale in The Desert most of the comments in the article doesn't apply. Most ot the guilds is formed around student-teacher or friendly relationships. And since there is no enemies to kill or areas to conquer the guilds are dying slowly. When you fialed very slowly. A guild is dead when your old friends are leaving the game and that create a quit wave sometimes. But the curve are very slow and since you can be in may guilds you can survive.

• The WoW disease killed. WoW has an "easy resurrection" system, so it didn't cost players more than a few minutes of inconvenience.
• The cause was immediately known, and the cure (death) while inconvenient, was also immediately known
• Detecting a carrier was easy.
• Being cured of the disease (dying) took little play time.

• The disease debilitated, eventually forcing a disconnect for a period of time (a coma, as it were).
• The cause had to be discovered by the player community. And even after theories were proven, there were still some cases that could not easily be explained.
• Much like real life, carriers often didn't know they had it until signs manifested... too late for those around them
• Discovering a cure was a separate (community) event, requiring much player time and involvement. Actually getting cured took a non-trivial amount of time and resources on the part of the "sick" player. ... and the character could get reinfected a short period after taking the cure. (A permanent cure was eventually discovered, which took MORE resources...)

I can't let this post go by without mentioning the hilarious April Fool's day prank in A Tale in the Desert. Have a look at: http://wiki.atitd.net/tale2/April_Fools

Of course you would enjoy them better if you knew the game.

Screwed up that last link. It should say:

Note: A related problem is Judging Systems, where players rate in-game works of art. We've tried a number of algorithms there, and just recently have come up with one that seems to work.

Yeah, I known, "preview button", blah.

The article talks about the ranking system that I invented and implemented in A Tale in the Desert for use in the Discipline of Conflict. Great to see the coverage, but unfortunately the algorithm didn't work well in practice, and we've since abandoned it.

The problem was that it took too long to converge. Of course all the parameters can be adjusted for faster convergence, but then it became too easy to metagame! I concluded that any continuous system that collapses the result to a small amount of data (like a rank (ELO), or a rank+confidence (TrueSkill) or a bitvector (eGenesis)) after a match would suffer from this problem.

"A Tale in the Desert II" replaced the eGenesis Ranking System with an asynchronous king-of-the-hill method. You start at rank 1, and must play someone at rank 1. It's asynchronous because you don't hold anyone up by not playing - the system never assigns a match. Instead, you just walk up to another rank 1 player and challenge them. They must agree to the match. The winner becomes rank 2, and the loser is "out". If you're out, you can reset back to rank 1, but only once/week. You can metagame your way through a few levels, but it takes an exponential number of co-conspirators to attain a given level. (I've simplified the system a bit. The full system is documented here.)

Unfortunately, the Conflict Discipline was only popular with a very small number of players, and it's being replaced in ATITD 3.

Note: A related problem is Judging Systems, where players rate in-game works of art. We've tried a number of algorithms there, and just recently have come up with one that

DOH! so much for getting the URLs correct:
http://wiki.atitd.net/tale2/Home

Link I put in original post goes to current census.

Most ATITD players do not pursue Leadership (one of the seven Disciplines). For those that do the jury rounds of Demi-Pharaoh voting are very tense. I've never made it out of first round. Too big a mouth and what good works I do under the radar. The jury rounds move forward until the final candidates go to voting from all of Egypt. It's an important vote: the Demi-Pharaoh can kick paying players. Yup, you read that correctly. Covered Cartouche, also in Leadership, is Survivor: Egypt. Not one of my favorite tests.

ATITD is breathtakingly innovative. While not for everyone it is watched by all MMOG insiders. A short list of its most surprising features:

1) It ends. Each Telling has a concrete and player driven finish. Those who have mastered the tests of a given Discipline design a test in that Discipline for the next Telling.

2) The players are in control. If someone is running around building giant swastikas the devs won't step in. Players must organize and pass laws to ban the player or (as happened once Tale 1) change their name and shame them into quitting. Player written and passed laws can change anything short making flying camels. The devs rewrite the code on the fly to implement them.

3) Addictive drugs with both up- and downsides. As disruptive as it sounds. Drugs can cause death (account deletion) so combine that with #7 below.

4) It's full of adults. Most kids or dorks quit out when they realize there are no rats to kill. Game skews both female and older. Nice side effect of the no combat bit. The game is still very, very, very competitive. It's a GAME, not a There or Sims Online chatline.

5) Ridiculously generous trial on PC, Mac, Linux in English, German, and French. All on the same server. There are French cities. Heck, I've tripped over the guildhall for the Belgian Linux Users Group. Game is lousy with penguins. ;)

6) With few exceptions there is no leveling or skill building. Every major and most minor tasks are mini-games. The implications are enormous. One new player discovered he had a knack for gem cutting, a knack few shared. Within a week he was selling that ability--to cut others' raw materials--throughout Egypt. No leveling of his Gem Cutting Skill before he could tackle the tough ones. (Selling it mostly for trade but also to player run banks and for player maintained currencies.)

7) The Test of Marriage (in Worship) allows the spouse to log in as you *without knowing your password*. There is no divorce. Tale 1's leading artist was murdered by his spouse.

8) eGenesis has three full time employees. They are running a commercially viable and industry shaping game where the likes of Microsoft's Mythica crap out before launch after years of development and millions invested.

9) Nothing is known at game start (and game restart in a new Telling). How does pollution effect crops? What are the patterns of mushroom spawning? What equations govern Thought puzzles solved v. Perception stat increase? Game's a giant nerdtastic set of nested puzzles. Players spreadsheet data and experiment to answer mysteries both great and small.

http://wiki.atitd.net/tale2 is the player run wiki. Info discovered, info wrong, data craved. It's huge and testament to the game's depth. (Also got the flaws of all wikis--not well organized.)

Er, A Tale in the Desert anyway. Read the captions for a good laugh.

ATITD has native Linux support. That is one of the reasons that I play it, well that and the fact that it is a very unique and fun game.

http://www.atitd.net/
http://www.atitd.info/

If you haven't tried the A Tale in the Desert Beta you really should.

It's just hard to describe.

http://www.atitd.net/ Current - Non Beta version
http://www.atitd2.com/ Beta Version
http://www.atitd.info/ Info on the game

In the game: Karsus

As others have said, there are tools such as TeakSpeak and Roger Wilco that will deal with the voice chat side of things.

But what game to play? I'd suggest A Tale In The Desert. It's nice because it has a very laid-back feel to it - there's no combat, and the emphasis is on long-term co-operation with your friends to further the development of your avatar (the web site, as well as the excellent fansites and wiki explain all this much better than I can).

It runs on Windows and Linux, and doesn't have to run full-screen, so it's great for leaving running in the background so that you can get some work done while your avatar is busy feeding the camels or waiting for papyrus to grow. The chat system is also pretty good, for those of is who don't want to inflict their irritating nasally voices on the rest of the world. :-)

You insensitive clod! Oh, wait, this isn't a poll is it? ATITD is my MMOG of choice. Check it out at atitd.com and atitd.net. Of course, I think it's only in the thousands of simultanious players right now.

Woah, someone modded me up. O.o

Here's a mini-review of the game then.

Good and bad points:
LOTS to do, it will take weeks just to get much beyond the basic tech tree open. Heavy-investment research and building projects keep the big guilds and groups occupied and allow soloers and small groups time to catch up.

The interface requires a LOT of mousework and has been causing people wrist problems. The proposal is in the works for a complete interface redesign but it's estimated that it will take a month. The developers have it up for a vote, players are able to specify what they want the devs to focus on. (I'm still in shock over this)

You can be in more than one guild, if those guilds will let you. ;)

The game is divided up into regions which are a collective of one of each of the schools and universities. Each of these regions has a seperate "research pool" and will have different levels of technologies available depending on where players focus their efforts. Travel time is enormous, going across the short end of the map will take 6 hours of constant travel. Player-player interaction (trading, cooperation, etc) is heavily encouraged this way.

There is no combat, but there is plenty of oppertunity for conflict. There is fierce competition for resources as well as tests that inherently limit the number of successful participants.

The political system allows for passing in-game laws that affect everything except the nature of the game's reality. ("Trees give more wood" or "Players can fly" will be vetoed) The OOC voting system allows players to direct the development of the game, what features they would like to see implemented or improved, etc.

Getting Started:

Check out the Beginner Guides for massive detail.

Your best bet for getting started is to find a mentor in the game to walk you through gaining citizenship. Be persistent but don't annoy people. Keep looking near the big banners.

Your mentor will have you gather resources. Some are plentiful and some take time to gather. Mud and sand can be easily gathered, check near water for mud and around sandy areas (sorry =) for sand. Slate is found near shores as well, but is harder to find. Wood comes from trees, the more the better (anything over 5 units/tree is great) Grass grows on the grassy areas, and must be gathered in small handfuls.

Gather 20 of every resource that you can. You now have enough to learn the basics of Architecture.

Learn what skills you can, browse the subjects at the School of Architecture and see what you can learn. Stone blades are forged from slate, and then you'll be able to make a wood plane to create boards from wood. Once you have boards you can learn brickmaking. To make bricks you'll need straw, which can be gained by drying grass. Drop the grass on the ground in small piles so that it can dry quickly. Follow the techs, there will be a very natural progression of skills that you can learn.

Try to learn Pottery. You will receive a jug to help you gather clay. Clay is found near the water, like slate, but only in specific parts. Look for ground that looks like clay. (It's AMAZING! =) Take enough gathered clay back to the school to learn Pottery.

If you find a public pottery wheel, write down it's location, these will be invaluable early on. You won't be able to build your own without oil, leather, and a flystone. (plus more)

You will complete citizenship at some point during this. Inform your mentor, and if they were helpful, write down their name. Build a shrine to them when you are able, and keep in mind that they'll have to meditate at it. This is a test of Leadership for them. There are many different directions you can go once you reach citizenship, check the tech tree and ask your mentor. They'll probably recommend flax from the School of Art, try and get seeds from them. Flax is easy to grow for seeds, just don't do anything to it until it's gone to seed, and then pick 1 seed at a time from the plant as it grows them. There are different varities of flax that have different growing requirements.

Learn Navigation ASAP from as many schools as you can. It allows you to set waypoints and teleport to them with "travel time" gathered while you're offline.

If you want to do "everything" in this game you will need to work with many players trading lots of goods to make your dreams come true. Large guilds or groups of guilds are the only ones who will be able to accomplish the greater tasks. You can still be a successful soloer and trade for what you need, but it will take time before some resources are commonly available.

It looks like it will be fun, if perhaps a little straining on the hand at first and very slow progress until the techs are unlocked.

ATITD had thousands of players over three beta periods, with several communities and fansites already up and running, and they're now planning to publish and release it themselves. I think this game is going to be the first test of whether independent developers can survive in a scene that's more full of multi million dollar, hollywood-scale games than ever before.