[MUD-Dev] Next gen MUD wishlist

[adam at treyarch.com]

I'm going to briefly break list rules and quote the entire list of questions:

On Wed, 23 Feb 2000, Sellers, Michael wrote:
> Adam wrote:
> > Which begs the question, of course: what really IS the next generation?
> > Is it simply more scalability, so that instead of 500 people online we go
> > to 500,000?
> > Is it more immersive worlds via graphics and sound?
> > Is it more malleable worlds, with more 'realistic' entity interactions,
> > and especially more complex player<->world interactions?
> > Is it better tools for organizing societies within the mud world, so that
> > players can better interact with each other?
> > Is it enhanced building/scripting tools so that huge, complex, dynamic
> > worlds can be created without requiring thousands of work-hours of effort?
> 
> I think the answers to these questions are going to vary by developer.  For
> myself, I'd say the answer to the above questions are "yes."  Of course,
> YMMV.

Always the minimalist, eh?  Actually I was hoping to not only determine
the order of priority of these things (or others not listed), but also
the details that would make them happen.

For example, what constitues a next-generation building/scripting tool?
Or a next-gen social mechanics?
Or a 'malleable' world?

> One other thought: I haven't seen the new NeverWinter Nights so I don't know
> what they actually have... but maybe the next-next-generation of MUDs will
> allow developers to finally ignore the low-level questions (e.g.,
> "spinlockable disk-based DBs") and focus on the game itself.  What if you
> had usable tools that enabled you to put together something like a subset of
> Asheron's Call, but using your own system, locations, NPCs, and story arcs?
> *That* IMO will be seriously cool.  Dunno how long it'll take us to get
> there though.

In other words, the concept that we create some incredibly flexible and
powerful tools that allow us to develop at a higher level and not muck
around with C/C++-level code?  Although I don't disagree that this sounds
great, people have been talking about this idea (and attempting to implement
it) in the game industry for fifteen years, and I've never seen it come
to fruitation.  Perhaps the closest thing is the Quake engine, and honestly
all the games that use it look and feel pretty much alike, to me.

By the way, a few minutes ago I was bored waiting for a long compile, so
I started flipping through the March 2000 issue of Game Developer someone
left near my desk.  Low and behold, there's an article about online games
on the last page written by some shmoe named Mike Sellers who claims to
have worked on Meridian 59. :)

Adam





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