[MUD-Dev] DGN: Space MUD

[Sean Howard]

"67Me You" <moreletterq at hotmail.com> wrote:

> I'm also looking at implementing some sort of production or
> manufacturing system but not sure how i will do that because i
> wanted to move away from the ,at least in my view, overused level
> system. The problem i see with this is that the very good players
> will simply buy new players the required equipment to produce
> stuff thus making them almost equal to other much more dedicated
> players who simply are playing on their own. Any solutions to this
> besides the overused ones?

There are several ways. You could make the equipment level based, so
a level 4 character can't use a level 14 weapon. You could make the
equipment decay and require upkeep so a low level player wouldn't be
able to afford to keep the equipment for very long. You could make
players distrustful of each other, like giving newbies abilities
that older characters are jealous of, and they won't go to the
trouble. Make the equipment so expensive that very good players
wouldn't give them out as gifts. lpMUDs used to make you drop your
equipment when you left, so no matter how good an item you had, you
never had it longer than a single play session.

Personally, most of the high level characters who buy equipment for
lower level guys are probably friends in real life and they just
want to play together. So let them. :) I don't see any problem in
letting people play the way they want to play as long as they aren't
hurting anybody.

> I will be writing most of the client side in java but may use some
> C++ in there to optimize on the server side. This will allow lots
> of people to have access to the game while still making the server
> side fast. Any info on server side implementation would be useful
> because i know next to nothing about that.

I should point out that if you are still in high school, selecting a
smaller scale project might have a better chance for
success. Granted, any dedicated team with their heads screwed on
tight can (eventually) succeed, but I'd feel bad if I didn't at
least warn you.

> I was wondering if there were any good space MUDs out there that
> you guys might have heard of? So i could see how they work. Also
> any advice on this project or maybe good books, sites etc would be
> greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance guys.

I haven't MUDded in years, but I remember KobraMUD being pretty
cool.  There were also some MUSE/MUSHes based on Star Trek that
seemed to do the space thing pretty nifty. Head over to
http://www.mudconnector.org and just go through the sci-fi mud
listings.

There are plenty of good books, so I'll recommend the obvious ones:

MUD Game Programming by Penton Developing Online Games by Mulligan
and Patrovsky Designing Virtual Worlds by Bartlet

Also, most text MUDs have their source freely available. Go download
CircleMUD (I think that was the one - supposed to be a cleaned up
Diku that is easy to modify and understand) and poke around.

--
Sean Howard - www.squidi.net
Webcomic: A Modest Destiny
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