[MUD-Dev] Re: Wild idea.. :)

[Ben Greear]

On Wed, 2 Sep 1998, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:

> On 09:41 PM 9/2/98 -0700, I personally witnessed Ben Greear jumping up to say:
> >
> >So, who here is considering writing a server that talks (only)
> >with a graphical client.  And not just a web browser.  I'm talking
> >fully 3-d rendering with all the assembly (or whatever) that goes
> >with it.
> 
> You mean like Quake? <GDR>

I spose..never played Quake.  However, it would be heavily strategy
oriented...  I would try to model large scale battle (armies),
personal combat (ship-to-ship), economic power...and of course all
the normal politics that goes into a good MUD :)

Think of it, perhaps, as a cross of Risk/Civilization/Quake and
Star-Wars...

> 
> I have some fundamental problems with the idea of this, namely that in
> order to create a client and server that do this effectively, you have to
> make some pretty severe tradeoffs in functionality. But that's a big hairy
> religious issue, so I'll just leave it at saying "I don't think a graphical
> client would appropriately or effectively support what I want to do." 

I will code to be useful on a PentiumII 400 Mhz...they will be passe by
the time I could finish such a project.  What tradeoffs do you see?

> 
> And yes, a lot of people are discussing this sort of thing. I don't know
> how seriously they're considering it, but I've often thought that it might
> be very cool indeed to do something with an interface very much like
> Dungeon Keeper -- you look at the world in a sort of 3D isomorphic view
> most of the time, for perspective, but you can jump down into first-person
> mode and get that full rendering effect. (Of course, DK's rendering is a
> lot more like Doom than Quake... and honestly, the build interface is more
> or less like Wolf3D.) 
> 
> It might be really cool to do a graphical/text client. Something where you
> can have a text mode interface *and* a graphical interface. I'd like that a
> lot. I'd be really impressed by it. I'd jump from mode to mode depending on
> what I was doing. Hanging around chatting, use text mode. Exploring, use
> isomorphic. Fighting, use first person. That would rock.

I see no problem with having communication be text based, but other than
that...its much harder to write a text world (I'm doing it now.).  I think
it might be easier to let the computer do all the work.  Of course, I'm
probably highly ignorant of the real work that goes into making the
graphics work..


> 
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Caliban Tiresias Darklock <caliban at darklock.com>   | "I'm not sorry or 
> Darklock Communications <http://www.darklock.com/> |  ashamed of who I 
> PGP Key AD21EE50 at <http://pgp5.ai.mit.edu/~bal/> |  really am."      
> FREE KEVIN MITNICK! <http://www.kevinmitnick.com/> |  - Charles Manson 
> 
> -- 
> MUD-Dev: Advancing an unrealised future.
> 


Ben Greear (greear at cyberhighway.net)  http://www.primenet.com/~greear 
Author of ScryMUD:  mud.primenet.com 4444
http://www.primenet.com/~greear/ScryMUD/scry.html