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I heard really good things about The Reach from a friend who played it for awhile but apparently the GMs recently cocked up the Vampire scene, causing most of the good players to quit. So it always goes. I don't know how the other scenes like Mages and such are though.
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Nov 26, 2013 03:41
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Reene posted:Primary argument I see trotted out is that it somehow ensures the person is very serious about the game and also a good roleplayer and not just there to cause trouble or be lovely. This is flawed reasoning for obvious reasons: firstly, why should a new player care about your game without ever having set foot in or interacted with anyone in it? And since when does having a mountain of exposition available to drop on someone on cue equal good roleplaying? Basically I think the best way to do applications if you want to do it that way is to let people play as newbies and get to experience the lore/world/gameplay first hand. It makes it easier to do since you have a better idea hwo stuff works, plus it lets people see the game before they put in a commitment.
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Nov 26, 2013 03:47
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nucleicmaxid posted:Absolutely not worth bothering with at all. World of Darkness MUSHes are dead. It's all just people cybering forever with ripoffs of the Supernatural duo or whatever flavor of the week TV show nerds are spergin' over. I have fond memories of playing on a WoD talked way back when I was in high school. I've tried to find a place like it once or twice since then and have pretty much found this to be the case, which makes me really sad. I can't tell if I actually got lucky with the place I played or if I was just too much of a dumbass kid to see all the awfulness surrounding me.
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Nov 26, 2013 03:57
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App-only only really works with a small player-base, and when PCs have the capacity to do some really disruptive poo poo from the get-go. (N)WoD games where half of everything relies on secrecy, superhero games, poo poo like that. It can be a good way of telling if the applicant has really done much reading about your game's setting, but generally it's just a first-pass filter for the biggest idiots. Like the guy who wanted to play Doctor Strange with a ~katana~ in an 1800s Marvel game... and who also wanted to play a completely feral velociraptor in the same game. I don't think I'd put myself through that for a traditional MUD. I can't speak for The Reach, but so many games do a lovely, lovely job of keeping track of their newsfiles or putting that stuff up on their websites. If you log in as a guest, you'll probably be put into a guest/helper chat channel. If you pipe up there, someone can probably help you. If they don't... that probably speaks volumes. 
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Nov 26, 2013 03:58
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Bieeardo posted:App-only only (snip) can be a good way of telling if the applicant has really done much reading about your game's setting, but generally it's just a first-pass filter for the biggest idiots. More or less this. It's why it was so eyeroll worthy when that guy posted about Octodad. I mean, you know it's an app only RPI game, so why make a stupid app, then post about it like some goon hero? In the MUD thread of all places. Some people enjoy that, some people don't. It's not that hard to get really. And it's done poorly a lot, sure, but that doesn't invalidate the idea behind it, merely the implementation. But I'll stop now, lest I sound even more like a grognard.
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Nov 26, 2013 04:06
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nucleicmaxid posted:More or less this. It's why it was so eyeroll worthy when that guy posted about Octodad. I mean, you know it's an app only RPI game, so why make a stupid app, then post about it like some goon hero? In the MUD thread of all places. Yes some people like different things than you. Glad you figured that out. 
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Nov 26, 2013 04:48
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After this character of mine dies of starvation after falling down the well in the Labyrinth, I'm going to make a dwarf alchemist whose sole goal in life is to grow a loving mustache. If they don't let me do that this game is hopeless. Hairless Dwarves are an abomination 
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Nov 26, 2013 05:13
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Reene posted:Since when does having a mountain of exposition available to drop on someone on cue equal good roleplaying? Exactly, which is why it's nice that Unwritten Legends doesn't actually ask you for anything more than a character name and some basic account info. Still, the fact that an application exists at all serves as a pretty strong deterrent. Highblood posted:Speaking of RP, has anyone played The Reach? Yes. I made a ghoul and decided to putter around in the Vampire sphere. Ghouls naturally have a hard time fitting in with vampires, but a few of the biggest movers and shakers in the Vampire scene went out of their way to get me involved and make me feel welcome without ever once trying to make it into some weird cybersex thing. Then they made a grab for power against the prince of the city (who was a player character) and staff responded by having a team of unbeatable super vampire npcs no one had ever heard of come in and assume control of the city, disabling characters without rolls, ignoring all powers, resources, and circumstances that were set up by players to prevent such a thing, and assuming permanent, unshakable power in a coup that immediately robbed the sphere of any real upward mobility and that sense of paranoia Vampire's politics is kind of built on. Several people deleted their characters immediately, and about twenty from various groups followed them shortly after, myself included. The Reach's Vampire sphere is a ghost town now, which is sad to see. There's plenty going on with Mage, though, so that's not so bad if you like that atmosphere. So: Worth checking out but I had a really bad time and Vampire is dead.
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Nov 26, 2013 09:00
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Who were you? If you're comfortable telling me.
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Nov 27, 2013 00:36
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So, I really want a specific type of MUD, but I don't think that it exists. Here's what I'm thinking... - Permanent inventory. I want none of that BS where it just randomly disappears while you're sleeping or some such. - Hack/Slash with no RP background. I actually do enjoy RPing, but I just don't have the time anymore that I had when playing games like New Worlds. - Dungeons. I'm looking for something akin to current MMO dungeons where you have a boss and whatnot, going through with friends. - No Permadeath. Just doesn't work in what I'm looking for, honestly. - Varied, interesting classes. It's hard to balance around multiple classes, I get that... but I want there to be more than just a bunch of warriors and priests running around with a rogue class sitting around throwing stuff. - A way for high level characters to group up with lower levels for doing content. Something akin to the dynamic leveling of Guild Wars 2 or something so that you can bring your ubergodly character to help out the newbies and still feel like you're challenged and having fun. - Multi-classing of some sort. Even if this is just... let me switch classes between dungeon runs or whatever so that I don't have to have 500 alts, that'd be awesome. This also isn't the highest priority ever. Now, I'm already aware that this is a tall order and honestly, I would take a number of these things, versus having all of them. I do like Alter Aeon, because it seems to have a nice quest progression and gives you a pretty clear idea of what you should be doing and whatnot. I haven't gone super far in it, so I don't know how the upper game feels... only got to around clevel 30? so I was still on the newbie island, I guess. Long newbie zone. Anyway... if anyone knows of anything that fills some of these, I'd be open to suggestions. I haven't tried Icesus much, so I'm not sue what's there, but I am not interested in the MOO/MUCK/etc variations. I like the hardcoded side of playing actual MUDs. Also, is there still people really playing a MUD in particular? I read the last 7-8 pages of this thread... not anything between that and the OP... but I wasn't sure if this is still a thing. Used to be a huge MUD player back in the day when I had hours and hours to RP out some weird coronation event... but haven't played a lot lately. My internet here sucks though, so I definitely can't play LoL, GW2, or what have you. Thoughts? Ideas? Suggestions?
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Dec 2, 2013 03:23
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TypeAskee posted:Also, is there still people really playing a MUD in particular? A few of us have gotten really into Unwritten Legends and are still playing. For the rest I honestly can't think of any MUD that hits all those points, only most of them. Honestly I've never seen a MUD with proper dungeons like that at all, but that sounds like a really cool idea.
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Dec 2, 2013 04:20
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Reene posted:
It does, doesn't it? I think it would be awesome. Unfortunately no one with with the resources/skills seems to want to create something of that nature. I've considered undertaking a project like that multiple times, but with the lack of general interest in MUDs these days and my varying busy-ness, I just haven't made the final push to get designing the darn thing. Of course, I've got lots of ideas if for some reason a coder/team of coders wanted to listen to all my ideas and make them come alive. But then again, who doesn't have ideas? Unwritten Legends, eh? I played that a long time ago... that's a pretty RP heavy one, right? Doesn't most of that game consist of sitting around taverns and chatting with other patrons? That was my impression of that game, honestly. But then again, I played a long time ago, and not for very long either.
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Dec 2, 2013 04:38
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TypeAskee posted:Unwritten Legends, eh? I played that a long time ago... that's a pretty RP heavy one, right? Doesn't most of that game consist of sitting around taverns and chatting with other patrons? That was my impression of that game, honestly. But then again, I played a long time ago, and not for very long either. It's largely about hanging out and roleplaying, yeah, though some definitely neat stuff ends up happening even without staff being involved. Combat exists but it's pretty shallow and after every class got stripped down from a ridiculous power-spiral that it used to be there's not all that much character progression, and work on it is slow since staff is entirely made up of volunteers. The creative staff put a shitload of work into the world though, and there's a really nice amount of detail in pretty much everything which makes for a nice sandbox for people to have fun and interact. It's been pretty fun and I've enjoyed it a lot, and had a bit of shellshock when I went around to look at other MUDs and realized how much I was taking the detail in UL for granted. It's definitely not a game about combat though, so if you're looking to beat up orcs you could probably find far more complex and interesting combat-oriented MUDs to mess around in. Combat as my high level monk consists entirely of walking around and sending 'bear foo' to punch things in the head.
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Dec 2, 2013 04:59
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TypeAskee posted:It does, doesn't it? I think it would be awesome. Unfortunately no one with with the resources/skills seems to want to create something of that nature. I've considered undertaking a project like that multiple times, but with the lack of general interest in MUDs these days and my varying busy-ness, I just haven't made the final push to get designing the darn thing. Did you try Conquest the second time it rolled around? Seemed like there were the beginnings of a decent player-designed dungeon system there. Pity the guy seemed to have been married to the idea that he could eventually monetize it.
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Dec 2, 2013 05:07
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Hello Sailor posted:Did you try Conquest the second time it rolled around? Seemed like there were the beginnings of a decent player-designed dungeon system there. Pity the guy seemed to have been married to the idea that he could eventually monetize it. No, I never did see this one. Player-created content though, in my opinion, is definitely a strong way to go. Something along the lines of the current Neverwinter MMO's way of allowing the players to create adventures for their friends and the general public seems like it would increase the desire of people to play your game. After all... what's better than a crack team of designers for content? An entire general public of designers. ;P And now... it seems to have died a horrible death, so no more looking at that one. On the concept of monetizing MUDs, I disagree with a subscription cost at this point... it just doesn't make any sense. Something similar to IRE where you can earn everything in game if you want to is a better way to go. You can either do it in game the long way... OR... you can buy the credits with real money and have a hey-day a lot sooner. I've played it both ways and both are completely viable (on two different characters). I wonder if you could have like... "expansions" where you released like... five or six new dungeons and a new level cap that the players had to buy to get access to. I wonder if that would even be feasible, I'm really not sure. Just considering... I love MUDs, but I feel that the concept overall needs some modernizing. If you had games that were more modern, I bet that they would appeal to a wider range of people. But of course, the current base of MUDders are the old fogies that have been doing it for years and don't want their games to change.
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Dec 2, 2013 13:45
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TypeAskee posted:I love MUDs, but I feel that the concept overall needs some modernizing. If you had games that were more modern, I bet that they would appeal to a wider range of people. But of course, the current base of MUDders are the old fogies that have been doing it for years and don't want their games to change. I've thought MUDs being built and run today need to ditch the idea that people are connecting to them via a terminal emulator over telnet and have a really nice web-based interface. Not too far removed from the text-based root of a MUD, but at least something to give the experience a bit of a fresh paint job, and make it more accessible to new players. I've poked around with a few ideas in that area myself occasionally, but it's always a project I set aside because I don't have the time to implement a MUD core and design game systems on top of it and create and populate a world; nor do I really have the graphic design skills to make the interface look good, and I'm not well-connected enough in the MUD world anymore to be able to lure in players.
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Dec 2, 2013 16:00
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biznatchio posted:I've thought MUDs being built and run today need to ditch the idea that people are connecting to them via a terminal emulator over telnet and have a really nice web-based interface. Not too far removed from the text-based root of a MUD, but at least something to give the experience a bit of a fresh paint job, and make it more accessible to new players. This I entirely agree with. I have a friend that is into MUDding but he won't play a MUD without having a minimap so that he doesn't get constantly lost. Things like this used to be interesting and set MUDs apart from the "common" lot, but I think it should definitely become industry standard.
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Dec 2, 2013 16:18
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biznatchio posted:I've thought MUDs being built and run today need to ditch the idea that people are connecting to them via a terminal emulator over telnet and have a really nice web-based interface. Not too far removed from the text-based root of a MUD, but at least something to give the experience a bit of a fresh paint job, and make it more accessible to new players. Let's not forget how incredibly lovely pretty much every MUD codebase is. Lambda and HellMOO seem to be the most cohesively developed, but they are not very well documented, and while I appreciate the OO design, I never had much luck finding out what objects already exist to be extended--you just kind of drop objects into the database, and if you know the right keyword you can find them again but otherwise who knows. Of course there are 3000 Diku/ROM/Merc derivatives out there because they're easy, but it's horrific how you expand the code. Want an OLC system? Drop these .c files in, and patch your existing code with these hooks so it'll work. Hope there's no bugs in the OLC because it's not a module, a segmentation violation will take down the whole MUD.
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Dec 2, 2013 18:25
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Pham Nuwen posted:Let's not forget how incredibly lovely pretty much every MUD codebase is. Lambda and HellMOO seem to be the most cohesively developed, but they are not very well documented, and while I appreciate the OO design, I never had much luck finding out what objects already exist to be extended--you just kind of drop objects into the database, and if you know the right keyword you can find them again but otherwise who knows. Of course there are 3000 Diku/ROM/Merc derivatives out there because they're easy, but it's horrific how you expand the code. Want an OLC system? Drop these .c files in, and patch your existing code with these hooks so it'll work. Hope there's no bugs in the OLC because it's not a module, a segmentation violation will take down the whole MUD. This is very true and something I've been struggling with on Wayfar. Even though a node proxy to web client is feasible, the MOO server itself is still going to struggle with its own issues, and it's starting to look like something entirely new running on node would be way better. For instance with a 150MB database on Wayfar (for reference HellMOO database is about 600MB, Wayfar does a lot of despawning etc to handle so many theoretical rooms) it's pegging up to 500MB RAM after a week or two of operation. Node could use a real database and 1/5th the RAM. And wasn't written in 1987... edit: Regarding finding the objects in Hellcore you want the @tree commands. Everything in MOO starts at #1, so that's the global parent and then you have your generic "thing", "creature" etc, which all branch from #1. fuck the ROW fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Dec 2, 2013 |
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Dec 2, 2013 18:57
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gently caress the ROW posted:This is very true and something I've been struggling with on Wayfar. Even though a node proxy to web client is feasible, the MOO server itself is still going to struggle with its own issues, and it's starting to look like something entirely new running on node would be way better. For instance with a 150MB database on Wayfar (for reference HellMOO database is about 600MB, Wayfar does a lot of despawning etc to handle so many theoretical rooms) it's pegging up to 500MB RAM after a week or two of operation. Node could use a real database and 1/5th the RAM. And wasn't written in 1987... I mostly work with compiled languages like Go, but I have done a bit with languages like LISP and Smalltalk, and they have some ideas that could be worthwhile when developing a MUD. For example, Smalltalk is well-known for its class browser, which lets you drill down through inheritance and edit individual methods on classes:  If I were designing a MUD, I'd probably eliminate the in-game building tools, which are pretty poo poo anyway. Instead, I'd focus on having external tools for programmers, such as the browser above, which connect more directly to the MUD's VM runtime. Then you could have your character logged in and alt-tab between the editor and the game to test your new functionality. I'd also split off things like mail, because MOO has an incredibly opaque mail system that would be so much better-served with a simple GUI. Despite my prejudices against web applications, for accessibility it's hard to beat, so all these things would probably be on a website.
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Dec 2, 2013 19:27
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Pham Nuwen posted:Despite my prejudices against web applications, for accessibility it's hard to beat, so all these things would probably be on a website. That's what I'm looking at right now - between socket.io and jquery you can do virtually anything you'd want in a web based game, and there's no separation between serving the "web page" and the game. It is more complex overall, and I'm stupid, so there's that, but it's still very appealing.
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Dec 2, 2013 21:09
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If you actually start working on something like this you should start a thread in COBOL and throw it up on Github, would love to contribute.
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Dec 2, 2013 21:14
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a lovely poster posted:If you actually start working on something like this you should start a thread in COBOL and throw it up on Github, would love to contribute. I'm not sure how much of a MUD codebase it would be, or if its just a web game though. I always thought MOO would lend itself well to a generalized web game codebase, with the way objects are handled and can be interacted with, and of course you could use javascript or whatever you want as the in game scripting when objects are used or hit event callbacks and whatnot. edit: I've done some experiments on the node to MOO stuff already, here's an example of multiplayer asteroids with HTML5's canvas (you can add three.js for stuff like Wayfar's rotating globe etc): https://github.com/BonsaiDen/NodeGame-Shooter. fuck the ROW fucked around with this message at 21:43 on Dec 2, 2013 |
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Dec 2, 2013 21:23
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gently caress the ROW posted:I'm not sure how much of a MUD codebase it would be, or if its just a web game though. I always thought MOO would lend itself well to a generalized web game codebase, with the way objects are handled and can be interacted with, and of course you could use javascript or whatever you want as the in game scripting when objects are used or hit event callbacks and whatnot. I've mulled over the idea of making a MUD in Go before. It's not perfect but you could do worse, and my own experience has shown that it's great at network programs. Put together a MOO-like VM on top of it. Go has a pretty usable built-in webserver, which you could use to provide the user interfaces. You certainly wouldn't want to use C any more, especially considering how string-driven a MUD is and how poorly C handles strings. drat it I've got enough outside projects already...
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Dec 2, 2013 22:27
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Pham Nuwen posted:I've mulled over the idea of making a MUD in Go before. It's not perfect but you could do worse, and my own experience has shown that it's great at network programs. Put together a MOO-like VM on top of it. Go has a pretty usable built-in webserver, which you could use to provide the user interfaces. You certainly wouldn't want to use C any more, especially considering how string-driven a MUD is and how poorly C handles strings. Strings actually account for so much space they become a problem on bigger MOOs like HellMOO (where you have hundreds or thousands of player mails).
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Dec 2, 2013 23:06
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gently caress the ROW posted:Strings actually account for so much space they become a problem on bigger MOOs like HellMOO (where you have hundreds or thousands of player mails). Makes sense. That's why I'd probably shove that poo poo into an on-disk DB.
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Dec 2, 2013 23:15
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a lovely poster posted:If you actually start working on something like this you should start a thread in COBOL and throw it up on Github, would love to contribute. I'm in the process of trying to wrap my head around coding multiplayer HTML5 games. I'd probably be as much of a parasite as a helper at first, but I'd love to be involved with this on some level.
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Dec 3, 2013 04:49
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What about your idea on Wayfar to save large stings onto external databases?? I know you were trying to do it with mail, but iirc it was too slow and worked super funky. Surely there's a way to improve that. Also the idea of using an external editor connected to the live game, and just testing as you go in-game is so much better than two accounts or whatever on the same server. Even though you'd probably want a second account to use for monitoring/chatting/whatever.
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Dec 4, 2013 02:12
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powerful weedlock posted:What about your idea on Wayfar to save large stings onto external databases?? I know you were trying to do it with mail, but iirc it was too slow and worked super funky. Surely there's a way to improve that. Well the basic problem is the MOO server being required to execute all that stuff - it has to make a request from the proxy to get the string or whatever, which slows it down a lot (and it's slow to begin with). Mail worked slightly better (you could read, send, and sort of get your inbox) since you don't need to access it so much, but there are so many mail commands to convert I gave up  Currently I've got the MOO exporting JSON for a lot of stuff, which could be useful in a plugin or for dumping a bunch of items.
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Dec 4, 2013 18:36
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TypeAskee posted:So, I really want a specific type of MUD, but I don't think that it exists. Here's what I'm thinking... http://www.mudconnect.com/mud-bin/adv_search.cgi?Mode=MUD&mud=Project+Bob Goons got into this a couple years ago and it met a lot of the points above.
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Dec 5, 2013 12:45
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Evennia.com is an interesting idea. All python. I used to play with it a lot a while back. Also, actively devleoped. NOTE: Not a mud. It's an open source mud engine, also has built in web server and client.
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Dec 5, 2013 17:22
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Victorkm posted:http://www.mudconnect.com/mud-bin/adv_search.cgi?Mode=MUD&mud=Project+Bob Thank you, I'm going to check this out... it already looks different just reading the TMC page. Definitely going to login and give this a shot a bit later. Thanks for the link!
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Dec 5, 2013 23:29
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Project Bob is pretty cool. Its got a decent race and class selection, or you can just customize your skills from the start. I'm already rolling in random loot and killing event mobs
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Dec 6, 2013 04:54
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I would suggest that people looking for something a bit different in a hack/slash MUD look at Project Bob. The random loot is really neat... you can automatically generate instanced dungeons for you and your friends to go through for more loots, and there's lots of quests. It looks quite fun, and with the interesting race/class choices, this definitely may be something to check out. I'm playing a Treant Monk on there by the name of Rilentaitai. I'm still figuring things out, but if you want to group up or something, let me know!
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Dec 6, 2013 15:12
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Are there any decent low fantasy, RP-required MUDs left? The Middle Earth one seems to be dead or dying, and all the 100+ player RP MUDs on mudconnect look like the highest of high fantasy nonsense with 30 races and 300 classes.
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Dec 17, 2013 18:12
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bathroom sounds posted:Are there any decent low fantasy, RP-required MUDs left? Armageddon?
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Dec 18, 2013 02:41
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Armageddon is definitely your best bet as far as that goes.
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Dec 26, 2013 05:59
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Are there any MUD clients around with mappers/automappers even half as good as the one in zMUD/CMUD?
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Dec 29, 2013 00:38
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I like the sound of some kinda Wizard MOO using HellCore. Or anything using HellCore really, because I like the way Hell plays. Why isn't a proper version of HellCore widely available again?gently caress the ROW posted:Some of the Pvp nerfs have been rolled back or changed - FC is a green zone, and other zones are free for alls. Robbing requires a corp or personal challenge, although you can issue challenges by barging into somebody's room, for instance. Is there still implant degradation? I hope not. That was the worst system
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Jan 2, 2014 02:53
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The hellcore off of the hellmoo.org website is actually pretty feature-complete. I think you would have to rewrite a lot of the RPG system if you wanted to keep a HellMOO feel with the status bars and GURPS and poo poo. I never looked too deeply at it.
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Jan 2, 2014 06:32
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