Nostalgy (Re: [MUD-Dev] A flamewar startingpoint.)

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad <olag@ifi.uio.no>]

Adam Wiggins <nightfall at user1.inficad.com> wrote:
>[Ola Fosheim Gr=F8stad:]

>> I was thinking about the state of the art (games) today, I couldn't
>> really find many examples of new concepts that haven't been used in a
>> classic CBM64 game.  On the other hand I can think of a couple of
>> "C64" concepts that isn't visible in the current games I know of.
>
>Yup.  My big complaint is that all the technology availible to us
>goes into sparkle, and not into making bigger, more interesting, and
>more complex gameworlds.  There are a few genres that have been
>able to take advantage of the new technology - action mainly (something
>like Quake was unimaginable even ten years ago), but also flight

The whole concept of Quake and Tombraider is found in mid-eighties
games.  Your comment made me go upstairs and look through my 64-stuff
to look up the name of one of them.  "Talisman", written by a teenager
(at least I think so, I believe he greeted his schoolfriends in a
scroller :) has it "all".

I think it might be interesting look back to "the roots" where
everything had to be simple due to hardwarelimitaions.  Maybe the
important aspects of the concepts are more visible there than in the
flashy games of today. (To balance this: I do remember that I
complained about flashy licenced games without real gameplay back in
the 80's as well.  I might even say that licenced games have improved
over the years.)

What I am thinking of is to go back look at simple, ugly and FUN games
from the past and try to see if some of these concepts could be done
in a way that won't suffer too badly from lag. Then one build a new
enjoyable platform for muds, with reduced bandwith and everything
(What would fit in a C64 won't burn too much bandwidth :^).  I'm not
so convinced that commercial MUDs have to be so flashy, at least not
with the current competition.  After all, a MUD should be enjoyable
for more than a week or two.  Communication and contents is more
important in the long run, right?  Maybe funny graphics, puns and
soforth is more important than smooth animations?

Ola.