[MUD-Dev] Re: Introduction

[Mik Clarke]

Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:
> Mik clarke wrote:
> >Text based ones with autonomus mobs, as opposed to mass simulations or
> >3D graphics extravganzas.
> 
> YES! Cool! Another one! And here I thought I was alone.

*grin*. 
 
> >I feel there's a lot of life left in text
> >based interfaces and that they give the best return on effort.
> 
> Since I've recently come to a tentative agreement with a text-based game
> author on resuming development of his game, I'd have to agree. We're still
> talking price, but we're pretty committed to bringing the game back.
> 
> Now, agreed, you have to be pretty nuts to try and port a DOS real mode
> single-client game to the internet... but I never claimed to be sane. At
> least the networking is trivial. ;)

Sounds good. If you're looking for insiration, I've got a
single-adventurer program engine written in Java.  Adventures are
written in HTML like files, should be able to play them off of the web
(if I can persuade Netscape to run it).  Mean while it runs in
application mode.  You can find more details and a download (along with
half an adventure) at:

    http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/2260/explore/expweb.html

It's more for the numbered paragraphs type of adventure, but you can get
some fairly sophisticated results with it.
 
> >They
> >also tend to give far richer games than most of the graphical ones I've
> >seen.  Good text is fairly easy to do, but good graphics?
> 
> Depends on your definition of "rich" -- some people think looking good is
> plenty rich enough, no matter what the game itself is like. Many of those
> people have money and will spend forty bucks on a game because it looks
> good. As a result... lots of very pretty games that suck come out every
> year. That also means I don't buy many games, and that I don't find fancy
> graphics appealing.

Yeah, pretty but shallow.  Unfortunately when it comes to amatures (like
most mudders), the result tends to be ugly and shallow (but with
promise).  I like the brevity (and low bandwidth) of text and the
pictures a few sentences can draw in peoples imagination are better than
any sort of artwork that can be producted as fast.

Mik
--
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/2260