Dino's BatMUD homepage

Life

Who am I?

In reality I am old geezer, born in 1973. I work in Geological survey of Finland as GIS/DBA and generic computer geek. I have university degree (MSc) in computer science and I wrote my thesis about "Distributed spatial databases". One of my greatest ambitions in life has been roleplaying games and fantasy.

I live in Vuorela, about 12 kilometers from the town of Kuopio. I live in the house with my to-be wife and our daughter who was born in december 2005. I have also a son who was born in 1997, but he lives with her mother and her new husband. They live in village of Tervo, about 70 kilometers from my place. My son visits me every other weekend. He played some batmud under my guidance during year 2001, making him probably the youngest Batmud player ever (3.5 years old).

I am an immortal (wizard) in a computer game called BatMUD. BatMUD is a fantasy, hack'n slash LPC style MUD (multi user dungeons) that I have been playing since 1993 or 1994. It is a great (and highly addictive) game and as an immortal (opposite to mortal character, which can die in the game) I am contributing to the game by creating new things for the players to explore and play (because of this feature, immortals are sometimes called as wizards.

My real homepage (www.ronkko.fi).

My blog.

My life's time line.

The WFRPG scenario I am mastering (in finnish).

The world famous Muddha's mud zen koans.

Pictures

My workroom at Geological survey of finland. (12.10.2005)

Archived:

16.11.2003

My kitchen(18.11.2003)

My hall(18.11.2003)

My computer room/Roope's room(18.11.2003)

My living room(18.11.2003)

My latest toy!(13.9.2004)

My Desktop(11.10.2005)

Archived:

13.9.2004

Misc

My My Zen homepage.

This is what I listen to:

Batmud

People

The unofficial BatMUD history/timeline.

The infamous Thematrixisms.

A profile of the spammer, Zeppel aka. Elentari.

The infamous BatMUD plan collection.

Stuff

The world-famous psykomuumi.

What would batmud lord of the rings look like.

My code

Future projects - On the drawingboard

New area - Metsä (Forest) (??)

This is a sequel and addition to the taiga area. What would be more typical to the real taiga than a evergreen needleleaf forest? Nothing. Don't hold your breath waiting this one, it will come when I got inspiration again. The outlay is ready but parts of the story are still under construction. It is a story from a sleeping dragon (*bell*) and forgotten trials of timetravel. Some inbred elves and a nasty wizards are naturally involved.

If you have FLUENT skills in descriptions, please don't hesitate to contact me with some animal/npc/habitat descriptions. Taskpoints are plenty.

Areas

Valley of the Kings (Autumn 2004)

Valley of the kings (votk) was inspired by an article in National geographic about the real valley of the kings in Egypt. The area was made in collaboration of four wizards during 2001 - 2004. It was started out by me, then Orgoh and Ceewu followed soon after. The last addition to team was a german wizard known as Femko. The story is mainly mine, but we have had some serious planning together, especially with Ceewu. Votk contains levelquest 88, which is doable over multiboots and partially soloing. The itself is quite big, almost 600 exploreable rooms (some 30% of them are non-simple) and many many monsters and npcs to meet. Thanks to Ceewu, Orgoh, Femko, Oku, Kitsune, Luminesia, Durand, Runeaxe (for the original controller), Zin, Melemkor, Hablo, Shardik and many others. It wouldn't have been possible without you.

The quest was completed first by Rocker and Shar. Since then others have completed the quest too.

I think the story behind the "main character", Asharu is quite interesting: I have a tendency to read about all kinds of interesting things from internet and dig really deeply into this things. I had 'world war 2' period going on and I had digged through all the German things and got stuck with atrocities. I read eyewitness stories about Japanese atrocities during 1930's in the China. One person described the destruction, and the view to the piles of dead as 'if Ashura - the everfighting demon - himself had been dancing his there'. I recalled the name wrong and it became Asharu. I later found out that Ashura is generic name for demons in Vedic (old Indian) literature.

Batcity Asylum (2001)

A nice, quiet little place on the northeastern block of the Batcity. This was written to be the home of the mad scientist Eddie Pellerson aka. Ep eater. Eddie has his laboratories beyond the reach on the basement where he was locked up for good. Has few patients and very capable personnel. Eiya is a bit moody but we allow that to her because she is beautiful.

Taiga (Autumn 2002)

Taiga is the first area I started but it never turned out as it was first planned. It was being undone and baaadly desced on its dir and I started other projects but was never fully forgotten. I tried to give it away to Ceewu but he kindly said no thank you, so eventually ( autumn 2002 ) I had to finish it. It was first released without a quest ~X-mas 2002 though there was a quest but it was so silly that I decided not to include it. Many people seemed to like it and did a lots of killing there but only few knew how to get into the shamanic land of dreamworld. The reward for getting into dreamworld was so lame that I decided to make a levelquest. The shaman of the valley has fucked up and lost an important totem which will push the whole valley into doom. Can you save the valley from the doom? I gave the shaman of the valley a box of crayons and a piece of paper. He draw a impressively accurate and vivid map of the place! (I would of course have done better myself but didn't bother).

Events

Ep eater (2001)

Contrary to the popular belief, this is not my invention but Gront's. Gront thought it would be nice to have balance for magic eater. Eddie comes to the cellar of the Asylum

Rainbow (2001)

A cute little event I got idea from listening too much Marusha's "Somewhere over the rainbow" and remembering the old Amiga game rainbow islands. A colourful rainbow appears on the batsky and the players try to find it. Of course, there is reward in the end.

Miniquests

Farmer and the wolf - miniquest (2001)

My first miniquest! A young farmer has come to batcity to ask for help with evicting an evil wolf that has been terrorizing their farm. Say hello to the farmer from me if you see him!

Wizard - miniquest (2001)

This was my second miniquest. Written so people would remember that the elves are not liked by everyone, nor are hobbits pretty and cuddly. Well basically an duergar wizard has lost his apprentice/assistant and he would appreciate if the snotty little bastard was brought back to him.

Wounded merchant- miniquest (2004)

I had been planning this miniquest for long time, but I didn't know how to do it. It is a sad story about a merchant who has been attacked by a group of elven bandits. He has been fatally wounded, help him!

Misc

Blog command (2004)

A very much liked command that enabled players of BatMUD to write blogs. Was finished in the beginning of 2004.

New news client (for my personal use)(200?)

I am old ANSI color fan and I wanted my own version: n2.c

BatMUD calendar (++ version) (2004)

I actually started writing this command because Mr. Durand asked for such tool to help him remember some things. I also would have appreciated this when I was writing my master's thesis year ago, as I would have liked to have a timer to control my mudding. The command enables the player to place reminders of things and lets the game to do alarming for himself. I have succesfully used it myself to remember things like "fix this bug there asap" and "remember to get the food out of oven". A very very very useful command. The base of the calendar was written by Opola. I added "parse input string to int" function, week numbering, colouring and the reminder code.

TV - favourites list (2004)

Durand wrote an excellent TV command and I added favourites list to it. Player's favourite shows are displayed with green colour. Helps remember what to watch!

Backgammon (2005)

I wrote a nice backgammon boardgame, but it seems to be mainly played by us wizards in the dataroom. The game can be bought from the general shop in the batcity.

Camera and camera Shop(2006-2007)

Yes. You can take pictures of monsters/items/rooms with this little thing. First it was just for my own amusement, but now I think I should extend it by making albums for the pictures. And perhaps gallery.