Was pointed to this project on Reddit: Harmonia. It's a MUD that has a ascii tile style approach and is going away from telnet to a 3D minecraft representation of their world. The 3D representation isn't deployed yet, so I thought I would check out the current telnet based solution and see what it was like. I decided to try Windows Telnet even though the site recommended Putty, because Putty isn't in my path and I was feeling lazy.

Character mode: The first thing I noticed that it was laggy. I guessed character mode and it was fairly obvious that was the case, as all input is menu or form based. You enter a user name when the character is at the username field, hit enter and it goes down to the password field, etc. Very nice, although the movement of the selected item in menus isn't obvious in Windows Telnet, as the selected option is indicated by the cursor over the first character of the given item. This is likely fine in proper cursored clients, like Putty.

Account/user/characters: You create an account and are presented with a menu that shows 10 character slots. You pick one and it takes you to character selection. It's simple and easy to understand, there's text to the side which tells you what to do. I've always wanted to have this account/character split myself, but never gotten around to it.

Character creation: The first screen you see is class selection. The menu on the lelft hand side of the window shows 9 classes, and for the currently selected one, the right hand side of the screen shows a one line summary of the class, and a paragraph each on its traits, strengths and weaknesses. One thing I appreciate about this, is that the descriptive text fits nicely on the 40x24 area of the window. Unlike previous experiences I've documented here in the past, I get somewhat more of a sense of what picking a class means as a lifetime choice for my character, before making it. After picking class, which is I guess also linked to an implicit race (as the Knight description refers to being a Centaur), I pick a gender and personality using the same menu/descriptive text combination for each stage. Then I'm returned to the character selection screen for my account, where selecting the menu item for the just-created character, I see the character sheet for it.

In-game: Entering the game, it appears I am in newbie area. I know this because I am given a hint to read a sign (using shift-L) and it tells me so. But I can skip it and stuff. Big wall of text. Would personally prefer this was done in a not breaking the third wall kind of way, if that's the right expression. Moving around, there's a bit of escape code leakage, but that's most likely because Windows telnet is deficient. In-game movement/action is done through viewing a ascii field of view that when cursor keys are pressed, scrolls ansi window area style.

Controls: When I play a graphical game, I expect to be able to press escape to return to some sort of menu. In this case, it seems to be linked to engagement and just tells me "You are not engaged". What I really want to do is quit and reenter the game using putty, so I can see if I am missing out on colour or some other uplifting part of the experience. Pressing 'q', tells me "You can only quit at the inn.". Oh well, let's try quitting and reconnecting. Done. First thing I notice is the use of underline to delineate text grouping where text is displayed. And re-entering the game, I am where I left off, except now there's an entirely new dimension of colour. However, the screen is a little too noisy when multiple different sources of text are on it, like small signs.

My game experience ended when I read a sign telling me that this was a building and I needed to go through the door. Unfortunately, "You can't go there" was what I got when I tried. As the tutorial was linear, this made it impassable and I had no idea what to do next.

Imgur album of client screenshots.

Interesting, the screens give it an old school text RPG look (as opposed to our new school muds ;D).

Or roguelike look. I would say this is still a text-based MUD, even if the player interface is not text input based.

I think it's worth mentioning that the telnet-accessible version of the game hasn't been touched in months. All current effort is going into the new game engine and applying existing game content to it. Think of the MUD interface as a rough draft. Then check out the development progress with ...

The final goal is to have an RTS-feeling game but with each player controlling only a handful of characters in a very deliberate and tactical way. Something like DOTA on a much larger scale. But Shining Force-flavored :biggrin:

Just checked out the site, it looks cool. Worth keeping an eye on I'd say.