Smaug area and questions

Hello everyone. I have a few questions.
Please answer them.

Is it against the license to modify the original area files? If it isn't are we allowed to remove the name of the author on the .are file or can i just put something like this on the author:

author: "name of author" (modified by Lt_noodle)

is that okay?

Another question. I am kind of new to SMAUG because this is my first time playing a smaug type mud. i am more used to playing rom and godwars. When i create a new char and practice something, here's what happens.

I used smaugfuss downloaded in this website

I created a new char, picked human mage and i went to the practice area, this is the log.

<20hp 100m 96mv> prac black
You practice black hand.
Domick tells you. 'You'll have to practice it on your own now...'

<20hp 100m 96mv> prac
----------------------------------[Spells]----------------------------------
black hand 19% detect invis 0% detect magic 0%
magic missile 0% ventriloquate 0% weaken 0%
----------------------------------Skills----------------------------------
cook 0% dig 0% evasive style 0%
standard style 0%
----------------------------------Weapons----------------------------------
bludgeons 0% flexible arms 0% long blades 0%
pugilism 0% short blades 0% talonous arms 0%
----------------------------------Tongues----------------------------------
common 100% dwarven 0% elvish 0%
gith 0% goblin 0% halfling 0%
ogre 0% orcish 0% pixie 0%
trollese 0%
You have 1 practice sessions left.

It tells me that i can't practice it anymore and i have to raise it to 100% from 19%. Is this normal? In rom you can bring it up to 75%. Just asking. Please reply thanks guys.

It may be that you need more than 1 practice for what you're trying to improve.

I don't think it's a license violation to change the area author's names, but I also think it's unethical to do so, though the way you're proposing sounds reasonable to me (leaving the original credit and adding that yuo've modified it).

Second issue, yes, that's normal unless you modify the code to allow multiple practices to be spent to raise a skill further, then you will have to use the skill from roughly 17-19% to the point where that skill adepts (caps out) which could be anything from 20% to 100% though default is 95% as a max for almost all skills and spells. On the other hand, if you learn a language that will cap out at 99% and it's all about how many practices you dump into it (roughly 10% per practice).

It's not a violation of the codebase license to change the area author credits.

However, it's a basic violation of ethics, and of copyright law to claim credit for something which isn't yours. The areas are protected by copyright on their own. Technically speaking they probably should have had a license agreement all their own, but they don't. So it's implied that you're allowed to use them since they're in the package. That's about as far as it goes though.

Of course, as pointed out, I doubt anyone is going to mind if you indicate there that you've modified the areas. So long as the original author's name is present.

Having a "modified by" field would have been nice in the area format and I've thought about adding one to our code just for this purpose. Something to consider assuming one doesn't mind altering the area format a bit.

------

RE: Skills issue. With Smaug, it's not terribly difficult to go from 19% to 100% in just a few minutes. People learn from their failures and successess at a fast enough rate to make that gap vanish very quickly.

Most people just add their name with a backslash.

As in, if you modded an area written by a guy named Brown, and your name was Starfish..

You'd change it from Brown to Brown/Starfish.


Although, unless you're actually changing quite a bit of content, such as the name of everyone in the area, or adding on a dozen rooms or so, there's no real meaning in tacking your name on for something like fixing a couple typos.

..Wow, that was a long-ass sentence :/