16 Sep, 2014, Theodrick wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
Hello everyone!

I'm new to the forums, I've been a long time player of most muds, DR, GS, Achaea, and im trying to figure out what type of mud type/ coding type I should use.

I really like crafting and RPing, so I would really like for my mud to be based around crafting, rping, and of course hack and slash. But I'm just beginning, so I"m not sure which route I should take ((code wise, or MUD wise)).

player owned housing, and being able to customize those plots of lands are a huge plus for me, customizable crafting items are also in the mix.


I would appreciate anyone's input, links, or anything really to set me on the right path.

Many thanks in advance!

Theo.
16 Sep, 2014, roguewombat wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
Hey Theo, welcome aboard. Do you have a background in any particular programming language, or are you really just looking to start from scratch as a new developer? For a first time project, I'd typically recommend starting with an existing codebase that meets the majority of your needs and customizing from there. Your experience level and preferred language will influence where we can help you dive in.
16 Sep, 2014, quixadhal wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
A good first decision is if you want a MUD that features a distinct driver/mudlib seperation, where you code the majority of the game in an internal language, modifying the driver only when absolutely necessary? Or the more common game driver, where the game code and the driver are the same, and a change to the game usually requires a reboot?

If the former sounds appealing, and you don't mind a fairly steep learning curve and investing the time to learn a special-purpose language, I'd look into LPMUD systems.
16 Sep, 2014, Nathan wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
Try to figure out how you want things to work on paper/whiteboard first. That will help you to determine the size/scope of your design. You should also make some definite decisions up front about whether you want to go the super flexible (works for any game or at least any genre) route or if you'd rather focus on making just one particular game.

Once you figure that stuff and things of it's ilk out it'll be a little easier to make the sort of decision @Quixadhal is talking about. If you don't need/want tons of flexibility then starting out with something other than LPMud seems like a valid decision to my thinking. I tried to work with LPMud once, but it felt like the complexities of a MUSH (no built-in systems, rp almost chat focused) multiplied at least ten-fold. That's not to say it doesn't have it's advantages, you'll just have to do a lot more work to build up from nothing unless you start with an existing system (mudlib?). Once you have an existing system then you have a certain degrees of similar issues with anyl mud codebase. By which I mean that doing large modifications that are drastic changes will likely be quite tedious. Perhaps LPMud is less painful in that regard, but I doubt it and it definitely comes with a steep-ish learning curve. If you commit to designing things (at least preliminary concepts and considering how stuff will interact) before coding them (i.e. just making it work on the fly), it will be that much easier to switch to a different way of doing things later.

P.S.
Knowing how to write code (i.e. programming) that works will be very helpful in realizing your desires, but you may be able to achieve things in soft-code of some kind that at least meet your basic desires/expectations.
17 Sep, 2014, Theodrick wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
Thank you so much for your replies! Looks like I've got quite a bit of work to do, as far as research.

I know C#, but I'm thinking of picking up python and learning that. I'm not sure about engines tho.

What I would like is something flexible, and able to personalize.

But I am open to leaning other types of languages if you think they would benefit me for customizing.

Thank you once again!

Theo.
17 Sep, 2014, Theodrick wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
just got home from work, so im able to further expand on the goals im planning for the mud.

I'm open to learning any different language if it helps with the development of the mud.

I'm looking to really dig deep into crafting, home ownership, modification by players of their homes, items, and even let players own player run shops, while having an economic general store where people can buy or sell goods, that will fluctuate with player demand/sales.

classes or a guild system, where people would start as a normal person, or go through a dream state where they would choose what they would like to be, mage/ranger/cleric/paladin/rouge/warrior mage/empath/merchant/farmer

i would also like to implement a front end for the game if others dont have a client.

monetary system that consists of copper/silver/gold/plat

trade routes, carnivals, festivals, also with dynamic events such as these, invasions, different deities being at war. factional warfare/or Kingdom warfare.

Thats about all i can think of right now, off the top of my head.

So I'm guessing what im looking for is a game engine that would be able to run all of this, and I'll also need to decide on a code base, Python, C, C++, etc. as i dont really know what different code or engines would be able to handle all of these different ideas that keep popping into my head.

Thanks so much for everyones input, I really look forward to hearing from you

Theo.
17 Sep, 2014, Idealiad wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
If you want to do it all yourself, Evennia (Python).

If you want much of it already done, CoffeeMUD (Java).

One of those options will take 5 years longer than the other. :)
17 Sep, 2014, Nathan wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
@Theodrick Those are some *very* ambitious goals and it's certainly far from the first time it has been attempted. What you've listed amounts to several substantial systems you'd have to implement/configure:

- crafting
- player housing
- dynamic economy (could include trading, etc)
- dynamic events
- guilds
- combat

Within those larger systems there are subcomponents. Unless you want to start with an existing engine, I'd suggest focusing on a maximum of two of those goals as the ones you think are the most important. What you don't want to do is spend -years- and never have a playable system/game. You might consider a smaller project like a single player game or one focused on pvp arena combat or really anything where one system is very central to the gameplay/game mechanic so that you produce something tangible and working and that can be used as a model of what you want your later effort look like/incorporate. – Alternatively pick an existing engine and change that one or two aspects/systems as much into what you want as you can within the confines of the existing work so that you can achieve what I said before without having to come up with all the fundamental parts yourself.
17 Sep, 2014, Ssolvarain wrote in the 9th comment:
Votes: 0
I'd like to see someone take my Winterhold area and make a whole game of it. Creating a very large, stock world and letting people gather and craft their own civilizations. Building cities and furnishing them with their own hands, rather than relying on builders and staff to create content for them.
17 Sep, 2014, roguewombat wrote in the 10th comment:
Votes: 0
My favorite crafting / player built housing MUDs was Walraven / SIMud. Looks inactive, but I'm pretty sure I connected to it successfully earlier this year. I wonder if its codebase is publicly available: http://mud.simud.org/blog/
19 Sep, 2014, Nathan wrote in the 11th comment:
Votes: 0
Ssolvarain said:
I'd like to see someone take my Winterhold area and make a whole game of it. Creating a very large, stock world and letting people gather and craft their own civilizations. Building cities and furnishing them with their own hands, rather than relying on builders and staff to create content for them.


Nice thought, but the reality is that the reason the non-builders and non-staff are called 'players' is because they /play/ the game. Those people are not interested generally in spending a substantial amount of time /creating/ content and probably wouldn't want to play what they had themselves created since they know all about how it works. Also you can't "craft civilizations" with your own hands. Much of civilization hinges on there being needs/wants and supplying those needs and wants. So you have to create artificial needs/wants and basically have a player run economy of sorts for that to work. You'd have to make building the civilization into a game somehow, which would probably requires some minimum builder/staff involvement like providing initial materials in game and an in-game way to get more of those basic materials plus a reason to have a home (shelter from weather, storing money made from selling crafted objects – clothing, etc) and you might still need a traditional mud element to give people something to do and a need for basic equipment (like swords, shields, armor, potions, survival gear, etc). You're basically making everyone builders and allowing them to create rooms, but instituting game level resource costs (e.g. you need X wood and Y time/Z gold to have a basic house/home built or to add a room to your home).

Also, you should provide some information about this area of yours just in case anyone is interested.
19 Sep, 2014, Ssolvarain wrote in the 12th comment:
Votes: 0
Why should I include information? So you can write another boring paragraph telling me, in your glorious opinion, about how wrong I was to build it?There are entire genres of games centered around world building (which means your opinion is wrong and stupid, btw).

You can use the search function on any major mud site and find out what it is. You might have opinions about search engines that are wrong, though.
19 Sep, 2014, KaVir wrote in the 13th comment:
Votes: 0
Nathan said:
Nice thought, but the reality is that the reason the non-builders and non-staff are called 'players' is because they /play/ the game. Those people are not interested generally in spending a substantial amount of time /creating/ content and probably wouldn't want to play what they had themselves created since they know all about how it works.

When City of Heroes introduced player-generated content, the players produced more content within the first 24 hours than the entire development team had created during the game's five year existence.

Minecraft was originally created by a single programmer and first released in 2009, the player-generated content is its main focus and attraction. It passed 1 million purchases without publisher backing or commercial advertising, and was recently sold to Microsoft for $2.5 billion.

The problems with player-generated content have never been about popularity. The problems are related to quality control. That's why many MUDs keep it simple, and stick to things like crafting systems, or require manual authorisation from trusted members of staff.
19 Sep, 2014, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 14th comment:
Votes: 0
>The problems are related to quality control.

Rainbow colored title in who list ftw!

indeed, indeed…
19 Sep, 2014, Nathan wrote in the 15th comment:
Votes: 0
Ssolvarain said:
Why should I include information? So you can write another boring paragraph telling me, in your glorious opinion, about how wrong I was to build it?There are entire genres of games centered around world building (which means your opinion is wrong and stupid, btw).

You can use the search function on any major mud site and find out what it is. You might have opinions about search engines that are wrong, though.


Now you're just being unfairly judgmental. Insulting my opinion is rather obnoxious especially when you clearly don't understand. The point isn't that a game centered around building stuff doesn't exist or won't work persay. However, "world-building" generally means more than just constructing a bunch of buildings (or heaps of blocks) and the same goes for content (a bunch of monsters standing around, some inactive "trap" objects and a pile of loot do not content make).

If you look at Minecraft, for instance, it gives you a rather refined way of doing things. In most muds the world is not comprised of blocks that you can pick up and move around and place again nor is there any sort of stuff to place. You can't create a chest for storage much less slap it down anywhere in the world. There isn't anything remotely resembling redstone (i.e. a way to build logic circuits). Is there anyone who has actual trees that take time to grow (i.e. not instant re-pop after X time) and can then be cut down and/or replanted? What can you even do with the wood? What you seem to be asking is the text-equivalent of "here's an empty space. You can build whatever you want if you have all the requisite in 3d modeling, 3d animation, game logic scripting, etc, etc.". I.e. it's not very interesting and fairly tedious to make something interesting because the tools don't allow intuitive building. On the other hand vanilla Minecraft has almost zilch for any sort of roleplay and doesn't have any story to it at all. It's just a virtual world with some ai and ways to build things out of blocks. Sure, I could be more detailed, but conceptually it's not all that complex.

KaVir said:
Nathan said:
Nice thought, but the reality is that the reason the non-builders and non-staff are called 'players' is because they /play/ the game. Those people are not interested generally in spending a substantial amount of time /creating/ content and probably wouldn't want to play what they had themselves created since they know all about how it works.

When City of Heroes introduced player-generated content, the players produced more content within the first 24 hours than the entire development team had created during the game's five year existence.

Minecraft was originally created by a single programmer and first released in 2009, the player-generated content is its main focus and attraction. It passed 1 million purchases without publisher backing or commercial advertising, and was recently sold to Microsoft for $2.5 billion.

The problems with player-generated content have never been about popularity. The problems are related to quality control. That's why many MUDs keep it simple, and stick to things like crafting systems, or require manual authorisation from trusted members of staff.


I don't think quality control is the only issue. There is also the question of the usability/flexibility of the tools available. Lots of text based games let you have/create rooms, objects with names and descriptive text and have some primitive containers. Most don't give you a whole lot of ways to have anything non-passive or are very limited. Want a vending machine,? Good luck with these incredibly primitive tools. What could you possibly create with the usual tools that's not simply combat or a simplistic quest? It's a lot of work to get something even vaguely fun. Also, tweaking existing content isn't quite the same as creating something that's really new. Often all you are doing is learning about a very limited set of pre-existing possibilities.

A billion pairs of identical pairs of sunglasses except for the color is hardly something to call home about in the content department. And even if there are 5 different variant styles of them it's still not really new content.

A lot of the interesting stuff regarding Minecraft is not done with the vanilla versions it involves serious modding of things and the people playing those mods are not the people who actually created them. And there is very little depth to most of it. It's still just a nice looking shell of a building or just a structure that doesn't fit in the middle of the landscape.

I can't speak mud crafting systems beyond speculations and my own thoughts, but I've yet to see one in an MMO that I could really call great that doesn't simply act as a money sink without producing anything better than randomized loot. Guild Wars 2 is sort of half decent, but you're just "discovering" pre-existing recipes. It stills feel tedious and non-exciting and it is next to impossible to make any profit. Once you don't have the item anymore you have no connection to it either, because it's one of three billion other gold, amethyst rings. Besides, most of the crafted stuff is simply stat boosts that don't make any sense to get from a ring (basically just generic magic rings) and they don't do anything interesting. There are no rings of teleportation or invisibility or anything of that sort.
19 Sep, 2014, Theodrick wrote in the 16th comment:
Votes: 0
Hmm.. Well I've taken a look at coffeemud, and it looks great from what I've read, I really like the freedom in the code, and there is a lot of documentation on it at the developers website.

I was just wondering is it Java or Javascript language? That's what it seems to look like. But I don't want to be wrong and learn java/js and it be another language. Mind telling me exactly what language it is written in?

Thank you so much for all the helpful information!

Theo
19 Sep, 2014, plamzi wrote in the 17th comment:
Votes: 0
Theodrick said:
Hmm.. Well I've taken a look at coffeemud, and it looks great from what I've read, I really like the freedom in the code, and there is a lot of documentation on it at the developers website.

I was just wondering is it Java or Javascript language? That's what it seems to look like. But I don't want to be wrong and learn java/js and it be another language. Mind telling me exactly what language it is written in?

Thank you so much for all the helpful information!

Theo


Idealiad said:
If you want much of it already done, CoffeeMUD (Java).


It's Java and not JavaScript.

The worst thing that can happen if you learn the wrong language is you'll know two languages!

Also, it will save you a lot of time if you try to find answers to the simple questions yourself and reserve posting to MudBytes for when you really get stuck! :)
19 Sep, 2014, KaVir wrote in the 18th comment:
Votes: 0
Nathan said:
I don't think quality control is the only issue. There is also the question of the usability/flexibility of the tools available. Lots of text based games let you have/create rooms, objects with names and descriptive text and have some primitive containers. Most don't give you a whole lot of ways to have anything non-passive or are very limited. Want a vending machine,? Good luck with these incredibly primitive tools. What could you possibly create with the usual tools that's not simply combat or a simplistic quest?

You seem to be viewing the question from a very Diku-centric perspective. However if you were playing a MOO or an LPmud, there would be very little you couldn't create within the game, as long as you had the appropriate security permissions on your character.

Nathan said:
It's a lot of work to get something even vaguely fun. Also, tweaking existing content isn't quite the same as creating something that's really new. Often all you are doing is learning about a very limited set of pre-existing possibilities.

You're trying to shift the goal posts. My response was to your claim that players "are not interested generally in spending a substantial amount of time /creating/ content". That statement is simply not true - content creation features (such as crafting) are usually very popular, and even "tweaking" is better than nothing.
19 Sep, 2014, quixadhal wrote in the 19th comment:
Votes: 0
VMS MONSTER, which predates MUD's, was a text game that allowed players to build and create the world via OLC commands (sorry Locke!). I'm not sure exactly when it was written, but I know it was very popular at my university in 1989. The admin could give out "description blocks" to anyone, which they could use to create rooms. Essentially, this meant you had a quota. You could re-use them at will, and you could make several very simple rooms, or use all the description blocks in a single room with lots of stuff to look at, as you liked.

It was written in Pascal. I believe someone ported it to C, however it likely still relies on VMS "mailboxes" unless somebody has rewritten the networking system to use tcp/ip.
20 Sep, 2014, Idealiad wrote in the 20th comment:
Votes: 0
The late, great ConQUEST had a fun build your own dungeon system where you could store your loot and place monsters (ones you had defeated if I recall) as guards. The trick was that your loot would age properly (i.e. become more valuable) when other players raided your dungeon. I wouldn't be surprised if other muds had/have similar systems though I haven't seen one that I remember.
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