- Giovanni Ruffini was a JediMUD implementor from 1995-2000 a is responsible for more than a half a dozen unique areas written for the JediMUD CircleMUD variant during that time. Steppin also went by the avatar Steppin Razor.
Code Contributions:
Assemble/ Make
- Steppin, as CIMP, implemented some of the most consequential code modifications for JediMUD, porting Daniel Burke's (AddictMUD) assemble .c code in order to make/assemble/craft powerful items from a collection of ingredients. This implementation gave rise to equipment like the Ephod, Singing Sword, Staff of Many Parts, etc. It also allowed the crafting of spells using the spellbook item Alhandril, a device that is itself assembled.
Load on Death Proc
- Steppin implemented a load on death object/ mob procedure (Prince --> Emperor's Avenging Ghost / Scipio Dreaming). Load on death is widely used today to prevent locate camping.
Fomorian
- Steppin coded a spec proc for a mob that pursued in-game players. The Fomorian, a mob from the Elven Ruins, was eventually commented from the code due to lack of player pursuit control.
Mob Assembly
- Steppin added the ability to assemble a mob. (St. Valentine / Scipio Dreaming)
Speech Procedures
- To provide clues to the new assembly.c quests, Steppin implemented speech.c in 1997, adding speech routines to the Tinker, the Librarians (Midgaard Temple / High Tower of Sorcery), various Shopkeepers and other NPCs around JediMUD. Assembly quests are now central to in-game questing at JediMUD.
Tiered Loads / Zone Controls
- In order to test his stochastic assembly quest loading system, Steppin pushed the db.c .zon loading schema into new territory as he utilized presence/absence of objects in a zone (Scipio Dreaming) to create area states and quest assembly mob loads (The Ark of the Covenant).
Weather
- Steppin ported the CopperII weather.c for the JediMUD code base providing granular weather patterns per zone. "Call Weather" proved unstable, and was eventually commented from the live game after unsuccessful attempts to implement it.
Area Contributions:
- His Scipio Dreaming area, along with it's special assembly procs and zone event hierarchical logic code is still the most ambitious game experiences implementations in CircleMUD history.
- His Imperial Ravenna , a study in the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire, is a post-doctoral thesis presented in glorious prose. His troupe of NPCs bring the era to life, as players battle tests of strategy to win their way through the invading hordes of Alaric's gothic mercenaries to the heavily defended imperial Augustan throne.
- Smaller, more nuanced areas, like Floodlands, Abandoned Ship and Deep Forest , Elven Village Ruins , Metro Platform, Weeden Underground and the Straight Path , exemplify his ability to blend history and legend to provide unlimited playability and enjoyment.
Interview:
- Interview for MUD Connection, 1995, of Giovanni Ruffini (Steppin)
- I play here because it was the first MUD I ever played, and I fell in love with it conceptually within minutes. I've tried dozens of MUDs but have always come back to this one because it is the only one that I log onto and feel comfortable, almost right away. This is because I know its history, I know its code, and I know its geography inside and out. I can be any place in the game and know exactly where I am in relation to everything else; this is a wonderful feeling, one I wish could be found in real life more often, and one that would take months of work to recapture on a different MUD.
Videos:
In 2008, Nino posted a video to YouTube. In it, he is observed writing a farewell letter to the community that he had served for so many years, documenting some of his more popular areas via screen scrolls, his assemble.c code mods for JediMUD, and interspersing these with personal photos of family ancestry and snaps of historic places that he had visited in the Middle East.
You can still watch it here: