Interview with Ambushbug - the author of the MUG, Trash.

@~First of all, where does your name, Ambushbug, come from?

Ambush Bug is a little-used DC comics character who used to leap
around shouting "Whoop! Whoop! Whoop!" and generally taking the
mickey out of the comics he appeared in. He appealed to my sense of
humour so I adopted the name.

@~How did you first get interested in multi-user games?

Being a keen single-user adventure player on my ZX81 and then
the Speccy I used to read the old Micro Adventurer magazine
regularly and one month it started up a series of articles on MUD
at Essex University. I decided there and then that this sounded a
fascinating game to play and when my father got a PC and a modem
as part of his work I borrowed them every night and started hunting
round bulletin boards for ways to get onto MUD and eventually
managed it.

@~Which ones did you play?

Well, MUD to start with as it was the only one around at the time.
This is back near the end of 1985. I also heard of a new game, Gods,
which was just starting up and gave that a try as it was a lot easier
to get into than MUD (which didn't open till 2am!). But in January
1986 someone gave me the number of another new game in East
Grinstead, I logged on and there was this strange bloke called
Hazeii who I started chatting with. Shades seemed by far the most
friendly and fun of the three and the rest is history.

@~What made you decide to write your own?

Which game player hasn't wanted to write their own, whether it be
arcade or adventure! Not being much of a programmer (BASIC was all I
knew) I reckoned that adventure games would be much easier to write
than arcade, especially when I got a copy of the Quill adventure
designer on the Speccy. I used this to write Star Wreck (based on a
story I wrote for an English exam once) which has nothing at all to
do with the adventure of the same name which appeared recently.

When I started playing Shades I designed a few areas for that and
sent them to Hazeii, and when I started working for him I created
a few more such as the Chaos Emporium. Eventually Hazeii started work
on his own multi-user game design language, Mugick, and I started work
on Trash. Mugick handles all the complicated multi-user bits and
leaves me to concentrate on the game itself. It allows us to write
games much quicker, easier and better than we (or anyone else) could
without it.

@~How did the idea of Trash come to you?

It started just as a test of an early version of Mugick. I took the
first 60 rooms out of Shades and stuck them into Mugick, changing
them slightly in the process, to see how everything worked. From
this I decided to write a game that was somewhat different to any
others about at the time and with my slightly warped sense of humour
that was easy! The concept that totally worthless items are more
valuable than useful ones popped into my head and the idea of being a
Trash collector spontaneously formed. The rest followed on from there
with many of the areas in the game being stolen from my past and
twisted ever so slightly. The town of my birth, Huddersfield, became
Herddfielsud but anyone who's ever been there should recognise it!
I even included the Starship Wontarise from my old Speccy game Star
Wreck!

@~Can you tell us a bit about the scenario, rules etc?

Basically you are a Pan-Dimensional Refuse Collector and it is your
task to travel through the various dimensions of the multiverse
clearing up the trash and fighting against the insidious approach
of entropy. To put it another way you collect items such as empty
burger cartons, old milk bottles and other rubbish and chuck them
inside an atomic furnace to be destroyed. You earn credits for this
which you can spend on various things, such as a nice drink at the bar.

Starting at the level of Slave/Skivvy (male/female) you need to gain
Promotional Prospects in order to rise through the various levels
such as Dogsbody, Cleaner, Manager until you eventually reach the
top level of Lord/Lady at which point you gain Immortal status, join
the Trashistocracy and gain new powers such as instant teleportation,
the ability to spy on everything another player is doing, and many
more. Promotional Prospects are gained by solving various puzzles
which lie around waiting for you. This makes Trash far more like a
traditional adventure game than Shades which is more hack and slay.
You actually have to explore and experiment with everything if you
are to succeed in Trash and puzzle-solving ability is invaluable!

To make life slightly easier each player has a range of Psionic
Abilities, Telepathy, Clairvoyance, Telekinesis, Teleportation,
Pyrokinesis and Faith Healing, all of which can be increased as
promotion is granted. 

To make life slightly harder strange creatures roam the various
dimensions of the multiverse. These are anything from the Wetherkon
Troll who has a strange effect on the weather (making it rain
upwards, hail bread rolls, etc) to a deaf leopard, a menacing alien
garlek and many many more. The vampire clanger is particularly to
be avoided as much as possible! Obviously this all seems somewhat
complicated but with a little practise you should soon get the hang
of it. There is a large amount of HELP on the game and if you get
really stuck just ask another player, which is one of the best parts
about MUGS, there's nearly always somebody else to talk to!

@~Every MUG has its own share of really interesting characters
@~playing it - who are some of the best ones in Trash?

So far everyone has been concentrating on reaching the higher
levels and exploring the game too much to get involved in the
social aspect of Trash but there are a few who have made it to Lord
and we even have one Lady! Lord Scrounger was the first but he
didn't make himself very popular along the way due to his habit of
picking up some of the nastier creatures and leaving them in
different places to surprise other players! Naturally on promotion
to Lord he has promised to cease this sort of anti-social behaviour.

Mention must be made of Lady Janet too, who despite death at the
hands (or whatever it uses) of the sinister garlek bravely
struggled on to become one of the highest of the high. I don't think
anyone in the game could have a bad word to say about her.

@~Why do you think MUGS appeal more to men than women in general
@~whereas adventures seem to appeal to women as much as men (if
@~fanzine readership is anything to go by)?

I wasn't aware that MUGS did appeal to men more than women, there
certainly seems to be a roughly equal amount of both on the Micronet
games at least, I can't speak for any others. There are certainly
just as many women as men attending the regular Shades meets in
London too and I met my current and previous girlfriend through
these!

Possibly adventures appeal more to women than men because arcade
games are aimed more at the teenage boy population who enjoy
nothing more than a good mindless alien massacre (I certainly do
at times) and don't have the patience to use anything more than
their reflexes? It's not something I've ever thought about to be
honest. Ideally I try to design games to appeal to everyone, male
and female.

@~What are your future plans?

Firstly Trash still needs some more updates, extra areas and puzzles
to make sure that players have plenty of new things to do but in the
more distant future I've got a few ideas for new games. I'd really
like to do something in the D&D style of roleplaying game, I've
always enjoyed them in single-user versions and imagine how much
more fun it would be with lots of real people trying to slice various
parts of your body off! The idea of a horror style MUG appeals to me
too but I'm not sure how that sort of thing could work yet.

@~And finally, Angelina said I MUST ask you what colour socks you
@~wear!

Well, at present I'm wearing a white pair with Sylvester (the cat)
on the sides but a quick rummage through my sock drawer reveals
anything from boring grey to interesting red and green (not to
mention a similar pair of green and red).

@~I'm glad I asked! Thanks a lot for taking the time to talk to us.