[MUD-Dev] Story Implementation

Veynom veynom at swcombine.com
Sat Dec 8 15:05:47 CET 2001


Wow, considering the interesting comments I received, I will expand the
concept a bit further.

Valerio, your answers will be at the end of this message.
******************************************************************

Matt Mihaly wrote:

> I strongly believe your approach (which used to be my approach as
> well) to generating player-led stories will NOT work without
> worlds that are considerably more complex than any existing or
> planned worlds that I know of.

Depends of your definition of complex. If you mean large, then I
agree.  Our universe is a huge galaxy map of 500x500 squares (call
them G for Galaxy). Each square is also divided into a 10x10 grid
(call these squares S for System). In each S, you can find planets
(1 to 9). And each planet is composed of 2500 to 40 000 squares
where you can build up to 10 000 facilities.

We have around 2400 planets. Meaning it could be possible to build
over 20 million facilities ... each facility can be seen as a
dungeon with rooms inside.

This is theory. Currently, we have only 1500 active players (playing
weekly) and they built over 15 000 buildings so far, only. :)

Now the only things you have to add to this are:

  1) ability to create and develop a character.

  2) ability to own, build, enhance assets.

  3) ability to trade.

  4) ability to create and manage groups (even large)

  5) ability to fight, of course :)

  6) Actions must last long enough so that NO player could actually
  do all possible actions unless playing for years (and I mean 5-10
  years easily).

  7) ability to play or whatever side of the game (good guy, bad
  guy, neutral guy).

The complexity can be the choice of these options. And in order for
this to work, the Admins have developed rules more related to the
physics of the universe than what players can or can not do.

Of course, our background (Star Wars) is easy for a plot. We have a
civil war, 2 large groups (200 active players in each) struggling
and 50 smaller groups helping them or not on matters like
production, piracy, services, ...  Even if the war would end one
day, the universe would be full of new uprising, defections,
troublemakers, ... new discoveries, ...

Last point, no direct admin interference. In the worse case, Admins
can only add new small rules or assets allowing to some to develop
their ideas. Interfering with the game-play is something we refuse
to do (anymore).

Valerio Santinelli [tanis at mediacom.it] wrote:

> I'm quite interested on how things work You're saying that you're
> actually using a mix of PHP, Java and VB, but how does every
> language take its part in the whole game?  I've seen that you've
> got an ActiveX client. Can you spare some technical comments about
> how it interacts with the actual server?

The server is made of a mySQL DB with php scripts to interact with.

The ActiveX client (in VB) is working on a Action/Reaction base with
the server using http protocol.

Each time an action is commanded by the client, it calls a script by
URL and get a reply in text. The text is decoded and interpreted in
order to be useful for the client user. The client provides so a
graphical interface ...

If the user is not doing anything, the client is running but not
connected to the server.

PHP and JAVA are also used to provide functions available in beta
stage or in advance to the VB client development.

Of course, I dream of a Java team working to develop a unique
multiplatform client OOP, well documented and easily updatable by
any Java programmer.

Enough for today I think. :P

--
Veynom
Sim Master of the Star Wars Combine
www.swcombine.com
 
*** This message is printed on 100% recyclable electrons. ***

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