Muleholic

[piete]

Does anyone else have problems at home due to excessive Mule playing? And I'm not even playing as much as I did during the holidays (or the current weekly top-tenners)...

I think we need a peer group. Mule is so dangerously addictive. Since I don't drink, smoke or use drugs, this is my worst addiction. If we could make the game shorter somehow it would already help. On C64 (CCS64) I manage to play a full tournament game in 30mins warping whenever possible, I can also pause the game or save a snapshot. Here it takes 90mins without interruptions. And on original C64 we also could have small breaks during the game.

[kipley]

Making the games shorter would help?!?!  Right now, the only thing that keeps me from playing more MULE is the fact that the games take as long as they do!  If they took less time, I'd be tempted to start games when I'm even more busy!

But despite the problems of MULE addiction, it WOULD be really nice for the games to go quicker.  There's so many places where time could be shaved off the game... just a few off the top of my head:

- Show event messages more quickly, perhaps allowing the individual user to skip ahead once he's read the message by pushing space.
- When showing the production growth bars for each individual good at the auction start, speed them up to take the same amount of time even when somebody produces 93 Crystite.
- Remove the "no spoilage" messages from the same screen.
- When nobody has any crystite, just skip the crystite screen altogether.  Even knowing what the price of crystite was is useless information, since you can't derive any strategy from knowing what it was.

... there's obviously a million more examples.  Of course "rapid-mode mule" wouldn't be great for newbies, but would be awesome for us addicts.  And by awesome I mean... problematic for our addiction!