mud-dev2

Recent Messages

• [DESIGN] Clojure? Well, Clojure is designed from the ground up to support concurrent threads. Most of the heavy lifting is done by executing functions against memory that is inherently transactional, but requires no thread locks. This seems perfect for tons of players and mobs interacting with a world that needs coherent updates.
• [DESIGN] How big is enough? <snip> Read up on the C10k problem. Some of it's dated but the concepts are still there. You're going to hit technical limitations for scalability as well as your planned content base. Doesn't do much good to plan for 500 hours
• [ANNOUNCE] Virtual Collaboration Workshop Series Virtual Interactive Collaborative Environments (Virtual ICE) Workshop Series Join us at the Virtual Centre for Digital Media in Second Life, and explore the possibilities of remote collaboration. Virtual environments (VEs) are exciting computer-simulated landscapes
• Persisting a MUD state with plain binary serialization I just append my binary blobs to the end of a journal file and update hash table entries to point to the new offset. I write the entire record out to the journal so book keeping of the blobs is relatively simple. When I boot and reply the journal I immediately rewrite a compacted journal to a new file (and rename the old file to a backup).
• Players are shallow [was: The Future of Quests] That is a brilliant point. Developers have to be aware of this and not get their "feelings hurt" when players do not really care about the various NPC relationships in the game. Those NPC relationships are just going to pale in comparison to the ones players form with other players. Can you imagine someone saying to an in game friend "Sorry, I can't help
• [DESIGN] Clojure? Has anyone considered using Clojure to implement a MUD / MMO? http://clojure.org/ It seems like it has an interesting mix of technologies that might make parts of MUD development much, much easier. -Matt Cruikshank
• Persisting a MUD state with plain binary serialization Hello all! I'm building a (classical) MUD server as hobby. I would like to have a fully persistent game state and thought of using simple serialization to dump the entire object graph to disk periodically. Thing is, binary serialization has a few drawbacks, in terms of versioning
• [DESIGN] How big is enough? I've been hacking at a hobby project for some time,between playing and administrating various games. Ingoing back to work on my db schema again, I've runinto questions about how big to make the world, andthe obvious fallout in performance and storage, as wellas population density.
• Wikia MUD project After the mess over the Threshold listing being deleted from Wikipedia, the Wikipedia admin Fred Bauder, himself a mudder of LONG standing, got a new Wiki created on Wiki for preserving mud history. http://mud.wikia.com/wiki/MUD_Wiki I added a long entry for LegendMUD. I think everyone should jump in and work
• RANT: The Future of Quests Whatever MMO scenario a player is in, designers need to ask themselves, "Why do players want to do X?" After designers have asked that, they need to design the gameplay and "story" so that players REALLY want to do X. (Designers also need to provide players choices, so players can potentially decide that Y would be a better outcome than X... but I won't get into that
• The Future of Quests Hahahaha. "Poseur Quests" is good. Too bad WAR has already cornered the market on the "PQ" moniker. _______________________________________________ MUD-Dev2 mailing list http://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/mud-dev2
• [BIZ] Taxes? On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 10:01 AM, Michael Hartman States look for revenue when they have a budget shortfall. NY and CA have a major budget problems . NY's problem is only a $1b one, while California has a $15b problem. (I'm so embarrassed). I'm going to predict that CA attack the online sales and service issue much more
• [Engines] A suitable 2D engine for a virtual world. After putting a lot of work into the design of a game, it’s now time to look at implementing it. Without going into specifics, it’ll be a virtual world, with multiple large zones (cities).
• NEWS: MUD 30 years old Wow. Congratulations MUD1. But more importantly: Thank you. :) -- Michael Hartman, J.D. (http://www.frogdice.com) President & CEO, Frogdice, Inc. University of Georgia School of Law, 1995-1998
• The Future of Quests The number and quality of quests in large scale POW projects has been sreadily increasing as each new product attempts to improve over its predecessor. It's fair to say this is one of the major time sinks for such projects. Additionally, players are becoming jaded with the static quest system and an unchanging world.
• NEWS: MUD 30 years old http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/21/197238 MUDs Turn 30 Years Old Massively points out that today marks the 30th anniversary of the first Multi-User Dungeon (MUD) going live at Essex University in the UK. The game, referred to as MUD1, was created by Roy Trubshaw.
• RE : [MUD-Dev2] Bad Terminology: MMO, MMORPG vs. MUD However, in Tower Defense type games, the enemies are often referred to as creeps, because that's all they do: creep down the established path, or toward the established goal. -- Zach Collins (Siege)
• RE : [MUD-Dev2] Bad Terminology: MMO, MMORPG vs. MUD Why not just "MOG" - Multiplayer Online Game ? _______________________________________________ MUD-Dev2 mailing list http://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/mud-dev2
• [DESIGN] Interactive text system. We are looking to add an interactive text system to our virtual world. We are going to use it to teach people how to bargain for items. Along with other kinds of teaching. For example. The user would approach the bot. The bot can sense the person
• [BIZ] I have a new site for sims I created a new site http://sim.mischiefworks.net. I dont know if it going to reach the level of maddog.com, but i hope so. I had to a little thinking of MUDs, 3DMUDs and the rest. I finally decided on the word "sim". I hope i dont have to changed it. Right now it is for Second Life and the clones; I will add Project Darkstar and maybe OpenCroquet. It is not a development site but rather a place where people can get some of the questions answered and where we can do testing. the rest of it will fall in place in time. right now there is not much there. _______________________________________________ MUD-Dev2 mailing list
• Bad Terminology: MMO, MMORPG vs. MUD And it can be pronounced as a single syllable so you can easily throw it up against other words and acronyms to make "pow game", "pow FPS", "pow RTS", "pow RPG" etc., which are all much easier to say out loud than MMOxxx... I'd certainly rather be using POW than MMO or even VW. But there's the
• Bad Terminology: MMO, MMORPG vs. MUD No one from the USA is allowed to redefine acronyms until the country adopts the metric system. _______________________________________________ MUD-Dev2 mailing list http://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/mud-dev2
• [Design] "Why Pirate Games" Article I happen to come across this article in which a game developer solicited "pirates" on why they steal software. Interesting read especially the http://www.positech.co.uk/talkingtopirates.html Talking To 'Pirates' A few days ago I posted a simple question on my blog
• [BIZ] Taxes? If you have customers in the UK then I think VAT will apply to subscriptions - there is probably a similar thing for other EU countries. ren _______________________________________________
• [Design] Design challenge: Bed-time game Perhaps something like a coffeebreak roguelike. These are supposed to have low graphic requirements, little sound, fairly low complexity (for a roguelike, this can still be a bit to much). And they should not take up to much time. http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=Coffeebreak_roguelike
• [Design] Design challenge: Bed-time game Good point. Too much adrenaline is bad for sleep. I've never had a dream that I was a protozoan... I suspect that being a protozoan being chased by an amoeba would make for an interesting stress dream; certainly differnt than being chased by orcs. :-) Humorous anecdote: When I worked at Microsoft, one of my coworkers had a
• [BIZ] Taxes? Do you charge taxes for your MUD/MMO? An "interesting" discussion has popped up around the office wondering if we are responsible for charging state sales tax to our customers if they are located in Texas. Anyone have any experience with this? AFAIK WoW is the only game that I can recall playing where I payed
• [DGN] Multiple Guild Membership A Tale in the Desert is built around multiple guild membership. I haven't played the current telling, but in the first couple of tellings some expectations evolved around having a "primary" guild that you gave access to your buildings and coordinated with. But then guilds popped up for social networks, to unify particular interests across the
• [JOB] Linden Lab Brighton Party 29th July Linden Lab is hot on the trail of the very best minds. We'll be hosting a special event after Develop Online in Brighton on the evening of July 29th, and it's all about meeting you. We'll provide the food, drink and virtual
• [Design] Design challenge: Bed-time game I've been thinking lately: Before I go to sleep, I often lie in bed reading a good book. I want a computer game (IF, Adventure, CRPG, or MUD/MMORPG) that I can play on my (as yet un-purchased) UMPC/Eee in the same way: in bed and relaxing. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tired of killing rats? Why not talk to them instead? www.CircumReality.com
• [DGN] Multiple Guild Membership Just a quick introduction: I've been a long-time lurker on the MUD-Dev forums (since about 2002 - ok, so not _that_ long) but this is my first post. I've searched through the old archives and can't find this topic discussed in any depth so figured I would punt it out there and see if anyone is interested...