01 Jan, 2009, Kaeden wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
Hello,

SpaceMUD is a futuristic space-themed MUD. SpaceMUD was developed from scratch; it is completely custom.

My MUD's plot would be as follows: Earth's government sometime in the future has developed a 'hyperspace catapult' that can launch spacecraft enormous distances across the universe into uncharted space unfeasibly reachable by any other means. The hyperspace catapult is a one-way ticket. As part of a scientific expedition, a colony ship is launched by the catapult to explore and colonize the far regions of the universe.

The colony ship arrives in the new region of space, to discover that there are no planetary objects within light-years in any direction. However, there are stars, comets, asteroids, black holes, etc. With what resources it has available, the colony ship must now build a civilization that lives solely in space.

As a player, you have two options for what your character can be: a Human, and an AI Construct. The AI Constructs will be discussed later. Humans start aboard the colony ship, Arc One, as a sort of indentured servant/contractor, provided only with a small pod-like spacecraft in the ship's hangar. The starter spacecraft has minimal life support systems (it cannot generate its own oxygen or energy supply, for example, and must periodically resupply at the hangar) and meager outfittings in other areas.

The player may leave the carrier in their pod ship to harvest resources from asteroids and other space debris, and bring it back to the carrier. The carrier will tax a percentage of the resources you collect as a fee for the ship they have provided you with. The remaining resources can be used to expand and upgrade your ship. Human players will have the ability (provided they have enough resources) to add 'expansion modules' to their ship, effectively increasing the number of rooms of the ship, in addition to hull strength and other things.

With the new space, they can spend more resources to designate a function for the room. In the case of new players, the most logical choice will be to expand their cargo holds in order to expedite the process of working their way to independence of the carrier. Such things needed for independence are an atmosphere regulator (which would upkeep oxygen, temperature, and air pressure levels), a water distiller (a device capable of turning resources into water, which is used by other systems as coolant or as a resource to produce food/drink), and a reactor for providing energy.

At about the point where a spacecraft has become this large, the player is required to add a hatch to their ship as it has now become too large to park directly in a hangar. Once the player has progressed this far, they are more or less free to break away from the carrier to explore space for more lucrative sources of material and do as they please.

There will be a large number of possible upgrades for a player's ship (prepare for a big run-on sentence), including weapons of all sorts (lasers, mass drivers, missile launchers), a security center (it will be possible to install blast doors in every room exit of a ship, and from certain locations a player can initiate a lockdown of the entire ship in the event of an intruder, also, cameras can be viewed from the security center), a communications array (needed for transmitting messages over longer distances or for jamming communications of others), a workshop for crafting weapons, equipment, and tools (I intend for there to be many tools), a medical bay for crafting medical supplies, a hangar for allowing small spacecraft to board or for stashing captured enemy ships, a shield generator, a cloaking device, an advanced sensors array for detecting cloaked ships among other things, a jettison pod, tractor beam, jump drive for travel between different sectors (not on the level of the aforementioned 'hyperspace catapult'), a fusion chamber for manufacturing cores needed for ship reactors, a drone support bay (will be discussed shortly) and a central processing core for AI Constructs (will be discussed eventually).

I intend to implement a very detailed and in-depth damage system for the ships. While hull condition will be a very rough metric for how damaged a ship is, each individual room will have its own health. Both the interior and the exterior of the ship will be subject to all kinds of malfunctions, including fires that must be extinguished, oxygen/water leaks, shorted electrical equipment, tears in hull, etc. Early on, a starter player will be able to have their damages repaired while docked at the starting carrier, but later they will have to conduct repairs themselves. In the case of external damage, this means…spacewalks! The player will have to don a spacesuit and enter their hatch. The hatch will depressurize, and then allow them to traverse the exterior of their ship. Using things such as a welding torch and spare parts they have crafted, they can mend the damage to their ship.

Once the player has constructed a drone support bay (think little hovering robots like Guilty Spark from Halo), the player can control them from within his ship to send them outside and conduct repairs so they don't have to risk their neck. Drones are just like humans with an inventory of one (meaning they can only operate one tool or carry one spare part at a time).

And now…AI Constructs! Players will also have the option of being an AI Construct (like Cortana from Halo), a super-intelligent human-like computer program. Once a human has outfitted their ship with a central processing core, they can 'download' a willing AI Construct player (who until they have been chosen by a human, sort of hang out in AI limbo) to their central processing core. AI players exist sort of on an entirely different plane than regular human ones do; instead, they live in the ship's virtual network. From the network, the AI player can access a plethora of information about the ship and can control nearly any function of the ship (combat, travel, open the hangar baydoors, initiate a lockdown, shutdown the reactor, etc). AI players can also 'possess' any drones that may be aboard the ship.

My MUD is still far from completion, but I am confident that players who log in now will find a number of neat features. I have been on hiatus from my work on SpaceMUD, but have recently revived the project with my spare time during my winter break from college. I do not have a permanent host for my MUD at this time and am currently running it sporadically off of my own computer.

I am currently entertaining requests for any perspective players who would like to tour my MUD and see what it has to offer. Please contact me to find out the connection information. (You'll get the best results by contacting me via AIM).

Contact information:
AIM: KefkaTheSaviour
MUD Forums: http://s9.invisionfree.com/SpaceMUD_Foru...
01 Jan, 2009, Zenn wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
I really LOVE this idea. How will you handle movement in space? Similar to SWR does, with X, Y, Z coordinates? Or some sort of ASCII map? Or both? Neither?
02 Jan, 2009, Igabod wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
I too am intrigued with this idea. It has some serious potential to be a great base for a large number of sci-fi themed muds. I for one will play your mud when it is open for players. This might just be what is needed to pull me back into the player side of mudding. Keep up the good work and be sure to let us all know when it is open for players.
02 Jan, 2009, Zenn wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
I took a look at his game a while ago, and I have to say I'm astounded. In a very short time, he's accomplished a hell of a lot more than half the MUD community has been able to accomplish in eight years, put together. There are some bugs, and it's nowhere NEAR finished, but..

I really think this game will be one for the ages.
02 Jan, 2009, Igabod wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
That is definitely good to hear. The mudding community has been in dire need of something new in this genre.

[edit to add] oh yeah and since you checked it out, how does he handle space flight? I noticed he never answered when you asked the question.
02 Jan, 2009, Kaeden wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
Thanks for all of your confidence in my project.

To answer Zenn's question, movement in space at the moment is handled by X, Y, Z akin to SWR, however, I may make an ascii map of sorts to represent position in space in the future. I've modeled some of the basic space commands, such as radar, status, course, speed, target, and fire after SWR, in order to reduce the learning curve for new players.
02 Jan, 2009, Igabod wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
Sounds great, as for the fire command and target command, I'd hope you would add a little more functionality to them than the standard SWR. I'd like to be able to have one ship as a main target but still be able to fire on a different target at will, it's a little more realistic I think. I would go into further detail but my relief just showed up and I'm ready to go home, it's been a long boring night. I'll add more details later tonight.
02 Jan, 2009, Kaeden wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
But oh, there is more functionality. :D

The MUD already supports multi-targetting. You can have an indefinitely large list of targets at any given time. Targets are prioritized by the order in which they are targetted. Suppose you first target something that is far away from your ship, and then you target something that is close by. And suppose you have both long-range and short-range weapons on your ship. When your ship fires, it'll fire all available long-range weapons at the far-away target, but then since the short-range weapons can't hit the far-away primary target, they will hit the close range secondary target instead, and so on.

Also, it is possible to target and shoot down missiles in my MUD, both with conventional weapons like lasers/mass drivers, and with more missiles.

I'm more than happy to answer any other questions you may have.
02 Jan, 2009, elanthis wrote in the 9th comment:
Votes: 0
Who exactly will players be fighting? Is this a PvP MUD or are there some mean ol' aliens about to shoot?
02 Jan, 2009, Kaeden wrote in the 10th comment:
Votes: 0
PvP will play a strong role in the MUD, but there will also be ships piloted by human NPCs that players will be able to attack. There will be different factions with different agendas (also, player-created factions), and war between them will be possible. Also, there will be a race of robotic spider-like aliens that inhabit asteroids throughout the game. They can latch onto players' ships, burrow into them, chew through just about anything, and cause all sorts of mayhem that a player will have to deal with quickly if they don't want their ship to fall apart before their eyes. I may introduce other stuff than that to fight against in the future, but I try not to get too ahead of myself.
03 Jan, 2009, Igabod wrote in the 11th comment:
Votes: 0
Wow, the multi-targeting sounds exactly like what I had in mind when I posted this morning. Awesome. And the spider-droids sound an awful lot like sentient versions of buzz droids used by the Zahn Consortium and Black Sun. Interesting. I can't wait, you got me all antsy; like a little school boy eagerly awaiting the next Transformers movie or something.
03 Jan, 2009, Kaeden wrote in the 12th comment:
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Boy, I hope it can live up to all the hype…
04 Jan, 2009, Idealiad wrote in the 13th comment:
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I had a look at this a while ago too, and I remember it being pretty neat. Kaeden, have you had any success finding a free server to put this on? Or are you holding back until you buy server space?
04 Jan, 2009, Kaeden wrote in the 14th comment:
Votes: 0
Thanks for everyone's encouraging words regarding my MUD so far.

To answer your question, Idealiad, a few different sources have told me they or their acquaintance /might/ be able to accommodate my MUD, but nothing is concrete yet. I probably won't be purchasing server space. I'm frugal, I guess. :redface:
07 Jan, 2009, Igabod wrote in the 15th comment:
Votes: 0
Check out zeno's free server, you've already got the required 5 posts. There's a thread about it stickied somewhere around here. If you don't like that idea you can try www.evileyehosting.net as well. I'm sure there are others but I don't know of em at the moment since slayn is down apparently.
07 Jan, 2009, Kaeden wrote in the 16th comment:
Votes: 0
I spoke with Zeno a little while ago, and I think I may apply for hosting with him. Though I wouldn't have considered five of my posts to be 'quality' ones, and I haven't quite been a member of MudBytes for a full week yet…But it's certainly a possibility for the future.
07 Jan, 2009, Zeno wrote in the 17th comment:
Votes: 0
Your posts are fine. :)

When I mean quality, it simply means not posting in topics saying like "that's cool", or "does anyone play WoW??1"
07 Jan, 2009, quixadhal wrote in the 18th comment:
Votes: 0
Zeno said:
Your posts are fine. :)

When I mean quality, it simply means not posting in topics saying like "that's cool", or "does anyone play WoW??1"


Oh, OK. Does anyone play WoW? That's cool.

*runs away*
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