27 Jan, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 1st comment:
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Tonitrus recently sent me the link for an entertaining article discussing early mu..., but it was really the last part that got me thinking:

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Since this seems to have become a history of MUDs, I should also mention CornMUD. CornMUD was the most advanced game of its kind ever written. It ran at Cornwall Agricultural College on their large VAX systems and it was loosely based on a feudal Baronial land with Knights, Serfs, Kings and a full blown class system. The game was run by Lorry the Arch-Farmer and jam packed with the latest in artificial intelligence driven mobiles. A lot was written about CornMUD and a lot of people talked about how they were doing but it has to be admitted, 18 years on that there never was such a game, and as far as I know there is no such place as Cornwall Agricultural College and if there is, they certainly weren't on the Academic Network. The amusing thing about CornMUD was just how well the legend spread in academic circles, despite there being no more to it than occasional discussions of tactics on bulletin boards and the rare posted log of an Arch-Farmer burning down somebody's small-holding.

To this day, when I am in a cynical mood, I consider CornMUD to be my greatest contribution to the world of Multi User Games and I still defy anybody to write a better game than it was!


Along similar lines, I know some people don't believe that Nathan Yospe's PhysMUD ever existed either - indeed I don't know of anyone who ever played it, and I recall thinking that some of the logs appeared doctored. I'd be particularly interested to hear Tyche's thoughts on this, as he's been around a lot longer than me, and was a lot more involved than I was on MUD-DEV (the mailing list where PhysMUD was frequently mentioned).

Many of my features were inspired by Yospe's descriptions of PhysMUD, although I've always felt my implementations were pale imitations. I'm not sure how I'd feel if I learned that one of my greatest sources of inspiration never actually existed. But perhaps I'm being overly cynical, and PhysMUD just never reached the point of being open to the public. At this point I'm not sure that it even matters, but I can't help feeling curious.

It does also make me wonder if any of the features in todays muds were inspired by CornMUD.

I'm trying to think of any other muds that boast incredible features, yet have never actually been open to players or even play-testers. You occasionally hear new mud owners talking about the amazing game they're going to make, but I'm talking about muds that claim to already exist (often with logs posted as examples of their features)…yet nobody has ever seen or played them.
27 Jan, 2010, Davion wrote in the 2nd comment:
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The only one that comes to mind is A Dark Portal: New World. Boasts features such as built in c scripting language, physics, dynamic descriptions, autogenerated areas w/ descriptions, fauna, full set of crafting, house building, material gathering (cloth, ore, wood, etc, etc, etc). Optionally Manual controlled automated combat, more skills and spells then you can shake a fist at. Also, the interaction with the world is second to none. All five senses can be indulged in.

Now! As to not leave out the non-coder parts: The world was hand crafted and unique. Had over 8000 rooms full of all kinds of quests with some of the best written areas I've ever seen. Abetka (think, The Architect from The Matrix) designed two continents with methos for the half-dozen or so races, and practically wrote his own language for the Mariners.

Though this game had some limited beta testing, it didn't go much past that :(.

Pretty sure a few people here actually tried it (Noximist was loud :P) like Idealiad, and I think I met KaVir there for the first time ;).
27 Jan, 2010, Idealiad wrote in the 3rd comment:
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Yes, ADP:NW was one of the first muds I got a builder slot on in my younger days. I'm ashamed to say I flaked out on the job :sad:….even more dumb on my part because Noximist and Abetka were both really great people to work with.

Interesting topic though. I do remember a mud like this, unfortunately I can't remember the name. On its development page it boasted an amazing alchemy system, NPC AI, a dynamic world, and tons of other cool features…this was probably 1998-9ish? I never saw it open or even hint that it was playable, but it actually inspired a lot of my design ideas about muds after that point, similar to KaVir's experience. Maybe these kinds of projects server a purpose in the end.

edit: this is sort of straying off-topic, but anyone remember Robbert's (i.e. developer of The Inquisition) Dark Voyage? Another cool innovative project that I'm not sure ever was made real.
28 Jan, 2010, Tyche wrote in the 4th comment:
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I have no idea whether PhysMud ever went online or not. I do know from his posts that Nathan was certainly very competent and capable in C++, more than enough to pull something like it off. And yeah, those were some compelling descriptions. I remember he claimed to have written sci-fi and I have stumbled across some of his short stories across the net. So I would tend to think that he wasn't talking about vaporware, but more likely he just got bored with muds or the project and never thought it complete enough. IIRC, Bartle lists a few of these on his old site… VaporMuds(?)
29 Jan, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 5th comment:
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Idealiad said:
this is sort of straying off-topic, but anyone remember Robbert's (i.e. developer of The Inquisition) Dark Voyage? Another cool innovative project that I'm not sure ever was made real.

Not heard of that one, but I do recall Robbert working on The Inquisition II, which sounded like it had real promise. And of course there was The Cathyle Project, which was extremely ambitious and had a lot of people interested. Both of those were being developed at around the same time I started developing GW2, and all three games shared a number of design ideas that were fashionable at the time.

There was also Ilyrias, which promised a lot of unique features (although it used the IRE engine and was obviously heavily based on the IRE games, so I'm not sure how unique it would actually have been).

Armageddon II sounded interesting, but seems to have gone quiet. I think they underestimated the effort involved, as they kept shifting deadlines, but as far as I know the project is still alive.

But I don't recall any of those projects describing features they already had (except perhaps for the occasional simple prototype), only what they planned to have.
06 Feb, 2010, donky wrote in the 6th comment:
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KaVir said:
It does also make me wonder if any of the features in todays muds were inspired by CornMUD.
A quick google failed to find anything about CornMUD other than this topic, and the post you link to. Anyone have any of these fictionalised sightings of CornMUD they can link to?
06 Feb, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 7th comment:
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donky said:
Anyone have any of these fictionalised sightings of CornMUD they can link to?

I looked before and couldn't find anything. The article mentioned "occasional discussions of tactics on bulletin boards", so it could be the information never made it onto the web.
07 Feb, 2010, donky wrote in the 8th comment:
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I've started writing up all the known "information" about PhysMUD. It's strangely hard work to track down all the posts, and google doesn't seem to have most of them indexed. Hopefully I'll maintain the momentum to index all the posts, then summarise the complete known functionality provided by it.

Did you know for instance that PhysMUD had two scripting languages? And that players had to write scripts in one of them to attach to their character, where the quality of the area that a builder made was measured by a script controlled character playing it through?
17 Feb, 2010, Nathan Yospe wrote in the 9th comment:
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Wow… I don't know what to say.

No, physmud never went online. I got diverted by other things… finishing a physics degree, starting grad school, dropping out of grad school and becoming a professional programmer… and somewhere along the line, I had a catastrophic crash, and discovered that the backup that had the physmud source (which I hadn't looked at in over a year by that time) was also bad.

I'd forgotten about the character scripting… it was something I wrote mainly to assist in testing other stuff. I really intended to use it to test areas? I don't really remember it being robust enough for that. I'm not even sure both of those scripting languages were ever implemented in the same version of the project… I remember scrapping the main development several times, only retaining specific libraries, and often reimplementing the same algorithm as my sense of what constituted clean code changed.

… strangely, I seem to do this for a living now, although, to be fair, we do ship, which my solo efforts never did.
17 Feb, 2010, donky wrote in the 10th comment:
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Nathan Yospe said:
No, physmud never went online. I got diverted by other things… finishing a physics degree, starting grad school, dropping out of grad school and becoming a professional programmer… and somewhere along the line, I had a catastrophic crash, and discovered that the backup that had the physmud source (which I hadn't looked at in over a year by that time) was also bad.

Thanks for the insight Nathan.

Nathan Yospe said:
I'd forgotten about the character scripting… it was something I wrote mainly to assist in testing other stuff. I really intended to use it to test areas?

It sounded like a good idea to me. Although writing scripts seems a little cumbersome. I'd probably start with NPCs that do an action based attempt at what on the code level we call fuzzing.

Nathan Yospe said:
I don't really remember it being robust enough for that. I'm not even sure both of those scripting languages were ever implemented in the same version of the project… I remember scrapping the main development several times, only retaining specific libraries, and often reimplementing the same algorithm as my sense of what constituted clean code changed.

… strangely, I seem to do this for a living now, although, to be fair, we do ship, which my solo efforts never did.

I also used to do it for a living.

One thing that struck me about the work I did for a living, was how the implementation of those wild ideas would never fly. And that's why I never used to play any of the games I worked on, because I knew what sort of things were possible and how what was done was a simple approximation of what I would like to be playing. But of course it takes long enough to do that simple approximation, that the possibilities are most likely at this time infeasible anyway.
17 Feb, 2010, donky wrote in the 11th comment:
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KaVir said:
Tonitrus recently sent me the link for an entertaining article discussing early mu..., but it was really the last part that got me thinking

I've tried three addresses that should be the right ones for Lorry, one of which bounced, and the other two I do not know. He was the person who faked CornMUD, so if he receives and chooses to reply to the email, maybe he has an idea where the posts can be located.

KaVir said:
I'm trying to think of any other muds that boast incredible features, yet have never actually been open to players or even play-testers. You occasionally hear new mud owners talking about the amazing game they're going to make, but I'm talking about muds that claim to already exist (often with logs posted as examples of their features)…yet nobody has ever seen or played them.

One idea this thread brought to mind, was that we could try and reproduce this in some way.

Post a description of the advanced functionality you have implemented in your MUD, made up in the same way as CornMUD. If people joined in the discussion, try and hold the facade as long as practical. You'd need to be a competent programmer with experience to pull it off, or at least have a gift for BS and a talent for hand-waving.

Now, this could either be done as part of a competition of sorts. Or as an act of brainstorming, or even of course someone resorting to trolling ala Lorry. We could draw ideas randomly for people to have to encapsulate. It might be a valuable exercise in thinking outside of the box or creativity. I've been trying some techniques that were mentioned in the art of building which someone kindly provided me a link to in another topic. These are things I never would have considered doing, or expected the benefits I have gained, and have been a valuable and productive experience because of this. Similarly, attempting to justify and explain advanced functionality to others in such a way that it might be convincing and appealing, might also prove beneficial.

It would probably be best done with a second account, just so whomever is posting isn't undermined by any preconceived notions others have accrued about them. If your posting style is distinct, translate it to Russian and back via an online translation tool, and claim you do not natively speak english and that your MUD is popular on internal networks only accessible in isolated parts of your country. Etc.
17 Feb, 2010, donky wrote in the 12th comment:
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donky said:
Now, this could either be done as part of a competition of sorts. Or as an act of brainstorming, or even of course someone resorting to trolling ala Lorry.

Another way to approach this might be if someone comes up with a description of gameplay, and then people have to propose how it might be implemented without losing what makes it appealing. I have been reading a book called "The Lady Tasting Tea" about the people who have built up what we know about statistics and how it should be used, and one of the people used to like to take answers and challenge himself to work out what the question was. This might be a challenging exercise.
17 Feb, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 13th comment:
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donky said:
It would probably be best done with a second account, just so whomever is posting isn't undermined by any preconceived notions others have accrued about them. If your posting style is distinct, translate it to Russian and back via an online translation tool, and claim you do not natively speak english and that your MUD is popular on internal networks only accessible in isolated parts of your country. Etc.

You might have single-handedly doomed any new poster with feature ideas, etc., to be considered some veteran's sock puppet, especially if their English isn't terribly good. :rolleyes:
17 Feb, 2010, donky wrote in the 14th comment:
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David Haley said:
donky said:
It would probably be best done with a second account, just so whomever is posting isn't undermined by any preconceived notions others have accrued about them. If your posting style is distinct, translate it to Russian and back via an online translation tool, and claim you do not natively speak english and that your MUD is popular on internal networks only accessible in isolated parts of your country. Etc.

You might have single-handedly doomed any new poster with feature ideas, etc., to be considered some veteran's sock puppet, especially if their English isn't terribly good. :rolleyes:
Oh dear, as if the _grahams of this world don't have it hard enough as it is.
17 Feb, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 15th comment:
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donky said:
Post a description of the advanced functionality you have implemented in your MUD, made up in the same way as CornMUD. If people joined in the discussion, try and hold the facade as long as practical. You'd need to be a competent programmer with experience to pull it off, or at least have a gift for BS and a talent for hand-waving.

I think today's mud community is too jaded to fall for something like that, to be honest. Perhaps with some well-known mud developers behind it (or better yet, some well-known members of the mud community talking about their "playtesting experiences") it might get taken seriously, but players these days aren't so easily impressed with talk.

donky said:
Now, this could either be done as part of a competition of sorts. Or as an act of brainstorming, or even of course someone resorting to trolling ala Lorry. We could draw ideas randomly for people to have to encapsulate. It might be a valuable exercise in thinking outside of the box or creativity.

Now that might be more feasible - a theoretical mud combining the most advanced features people can come up with, along with proposed approaches for implementing those features.

Before someone else responds to my post, yes, I realise that advanced features don't necessarily equate to a fun game, and indeed if your primary goal is complex features then they may well be at the expense of an enjoyable game. But this would just be a theoretical mud, not a real game. It might still give people inspiration for real features though.
18 Feb, 2010, Tyche wrote in the 16th comment:
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KaVir said:
donky said:
Now, this could either be done as part of a competition of sorts. Or as an act of brainstorming, or even of course someone resorting to trolling ala Lorry. We could draw ideas randomly for people to have to encapsulate. It might be a valuable exercise in thinking outside of the box or creativity.

Now that might be more feasible - a theoretical mud combining the most advanced features people can come up with, along with proposed approaches for implementing those features.

Before someone else responds to my post, yes, I realise that advanced features don't necessarily equate to a fun game, and indeed if your primary goal is complex features then they may well be at the expense of an enjoyable game. But this would just be a theoretical mud, not a real game. It might still give people inspiration for real features though.


Before anyone posts any weird ideas, let me just state for the record…

"It won't scale and most players will never accept it." ;-)
18 Feb, 2010, donky wrote in the 17th comment:
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KaVir said:
donky said:
Now, this could either be done as part of a competition of sorts. Or as an act of brainstorming, or even of course someone resorting to trolling ala Lorry. We could draw ideas randomly for people to have to encapsulate. It might be a valuable exercise in thinking outside of the box or creativity.

Now that might be more feasible - a theoretical mud combining the most advanced features people can come up with, along with proposed approaches for implementing those features.

Based on things I have read, my impression is that what constitutes an advanced feature is subjective and varies from that which is not really that advanced to things which actually are. My primary worry about this would be getting side-tracked into what is or is not advanced. Also, it might be worth separating discussion of features from language-specific implementation details.

KaVir said:
Before someone else responds to my post, yes, I realise that advanced features don't necessarily equate to a fun game, and indeed if your primary goal is complex features then they may well be at the expense of an enjoyable game. But this would just be a theoretical mud, not a real game. It might still give people inspiration for real features though.

I see it a different way. I think the theoretical MUD should theoretically be enjoyable to play.

Most times in the past when someone has claimed an idea I have suggested is something people would not enjoy playing, that claim was simply their initial impression. With enough discussion, they generally came round to seeing it as an appealing addition, and that discussion was valuable in turn as further examination of the idea.
18 Feb, 2010, Orrin wrote in the 18th comment:
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KaVir said:
Now that might be more feasible - a theoretical mud combining the most advanced features people can come up with, along with proposed approaches for implementing those features.

donky said:
Also, it might be worth separating discussion of features from language-specific implementation details.

I think it would also be fun to establish clearly defined areas for feature discussion such as combat, magic, movement, PvP, classes, levels, NPC behaviour, etc., and then try to come up with the most advanced system within each category. Obviously this would assume a certain design in many cases, but I think it could be more productive than a complete free-for-all discussion. It would also make it more likely that the results could be plugged together at the end to form a cohesive playable game.
18 Feb, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 19th comment:
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Well, the question of what constitutes "advanced" is certainly an interesting one. There are many ways you could be "advanced" algorithmically, using relatively recent planning algorithms to plot out your AI's actions, all of which could produce a result very similar to a hand-tailored simple sequence of if statements (as far as players can tell). Basically, there is implementation complexity, vs. complexity actually visible to players. Players will notice if your mobs move around intelligently; they won't notice if your mobs do so because of some quirk or because you implement some totally awesome pathfinding algorithm.
18 Feb, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 20th comment:
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donky said:
Based on things I have read, my impression is that what constitutes an advanced feature is subjective and varies from that which is not really that advanced to things which actually are.

A fair point, but as this would (presumably) be an open discussion it would have input from multiple people. If someone considered a feature "not really that advanced" I suspect they would have ideas for how it could be made more advanced.

donky said:
I see it a different way. I think the theoretical MUD should theoretically be enjoyable to play.

Well my comment was more of a disclaimer to hopefully avoid the usual comments about fun features vs developer toys ;) The game could still be enjoyable to play of course, but many players actually prefer simple and familiar features, so your priorities would be different if your main goal was a large playerbase. If such a mud did become popular, it would be despite many of its advanced cutting-edge features, not because of them.

Of course not every "advanced" feature will be "complex" (at least not from a player's perspective), but many will still be more complex than the simpler alternatives, and unfamiliar enough to give people pause, even with a decent interface.

Thus I think it's better to recognise in advance that this would be a specialised mud for a niche market, and avoid getting sidetracked by comments like (to quote Tyche's tongue-in-cheek post earlier) "…most players will never accept it."
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