[MUD-Dev] The impact of the web on muds

[Mike Sellers]

At 02:39 AM 1/21/98 PST8PDT, Ling wrote:
>On Tue, 20 Jan 1998, Brandon J. Rickman wrote:
>
>> Monsters that move so quickly you never get a good look, and monsters
>> that even when you do see them clearly you can't comprehend them.
>
>That's another one up for text, description of things so bizarre they're a
>bit hard to represent with a 2D flat screen.  That's where imagination and
>substance abuse helps. :)
>
>Talking about cartoons, I've been quietly advocating a move towards less
>photorealistic 3D graphics in favour of something more cartoonie.

Various cartoony-graphical MUDs have been tried.  Thus far, the most
successful of this class has probably been The Realm, though even M59 has
its cartoony elements.  Anyone know what's up with Rubies of Eventide or
Azaria?  As I recall both of those had a somewhat manga-like quality to
them.  

>Ideally, invent an engine to display manga-like 3D graphics, the best
>current example would be Mario64 and perhaps Paparra the Rapper (sp?).
>Unfortunately 2D animation is really a black art and there are no fixed
>rules making the transfer to a set of equations/algorithm somewhat
>difficult.  

Transfering graphics that have been *highly* optimized for 2D
representation, like manga, to 3D is rarely successful.  That's why even a
3D Homer Simpson looks odd.  These are different art forms, and there is
often no correspondence between them.  

>On the other hand, there's the 'who cares' crowd who believe
>that processors will get so fast anyway that future fridges will be able
>to animate small countries in perfect detail.

Well, here's a clue: the target game PC for next Christmas is a 300MHz
Pentium II with at least 32Mb of RAM and extremely high bandwidth graphics.
 For Christmas of 1999, you're probably looking at a 650-800MHz machine
with 64-128Mb of RAM, depending on the yields on the gigahertz processors
at that point (target game platforms tend to be one step down from the
highest selling platform of the time).  A lot of people are spending a lot
of time thinking about what they can do with that many MIPS. :-)


--

Mike Sellers   Chief Alchemist -- Online Alchemy   mike at online-alchemy.com

"One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others 
may despise it, is the invention of good games.  And it cannot be done 
by men out of touch with their instinctive values."  - Carl Jung