Maybe you could tell us about your mother…?

ADP (at least the New World) was pretty impressive for its time, but I've seen (and done) a lot more impressive things since then. It's been in cold storage for too long - at this point virtually nothing but the unimplemented ideas Noxi and I used to brainstorm all the time are at all innovative. Its innovative stuff has been done, and done better, a dozen times over. And I really doubt you're going to get it to a reasonably finished point without being willing to talk to me (I definitely did not document the multitude of scripting engines I wrote for that sucker very well).

You know, it's like trying to talk to a kid whose father taught him six different languages - none of which you speak. And it doesn't help any that you have decided it's most convenient to forget who that father was - the kid won't. And generally speaking, kids don't like replacements. Am I taking the 'you stole my baby and are trying to pervert its brain' analogy far enough? I don't really think so. But I'd like to leave the grievances in the past. I think it's incredibly rude of you folks to try resurrecting it without even asking me about how I feel about it, regardless of said grievances, and I will admit I am somewhat enjoying the fact that it won't bend easily to your will.

If you wanted a job like that done… you shoulda brought back in your ubercoder. Not tried to pool all your amateur programming experiences into a thinktank to repurpose my baby. Good luck noobs. If you ever succeed in doing anything interesting with that codebase, my hat's off to you. All it should really take is some perseverance. Heh. But none of you really cares enough for that. Ya never did. :P

Noxi's the one who wanted it resurrected ya know? I mostly tool around on the OW anyways. I'd rather play the NW then work on it :). I'm pretty sure you're well aware of why she wont talk to you. Anyways, glad you're still kickin!

I don't really know who you are, but you called Davion a noob, so you're okay in my book.

Was Davion the newb or the ubercoder of that story? I guess I should read it again.

inflammatory post much

Mine too! I've [post=15465]talked about him[/post] a bit in the past

It could have been. But it wasn't. Maybe you should lighten up a bit.



I totally forgot about that thread. You do mention him though. So I guess I kind of know who he is. But he still called you a noob. Which is good times.

After Ilyrias was shut down, IRE hired Baram to produce Tears of Polaris, which promised "unique features ranging from a semi-classless structure, a novel approach to combat, a new skill system, flexible organisations, and of course, spaceships!". The projected date for the open beta release was 2008.

Well Tears of Polaris never reached open beta, and it has now been put on hold indefinitely, with Baram (aka Kunin) having been removed from the project. After 4 years of development and hype, it turns out that their code was outdated beyond repair, their skills were mostly stock, and their space system (which they describe as "one of the main reasons for playing a sci-fi game") wasn't even close to being ready.

It's unfortunate, particularly for those who were excited about the project, but it does me think again about those incredibly advanced muds that are talked about, but then die an early death, without anyone ever having actually played them…I wonder how much of what they promise was real, and how much was just hype.

My money is on mostly hype :p

I actually spent some time researching the Tears of Polaris situation this week, so it's interesting you'd mention that here. My best guess is that most of the features were definitely just hype. And from what I've read, their hiring process for Kunin was basically a no loss situation for IRE. The fact that they shut it down at all is most interesting, because there's zero paid staff and only a small promise of profit sharing. (I believe it was 10% after competition of profits?) Maybe they just decided they didn't need a Duke Nukem Forever when it was going to be a dud after release. In any event, I think it was a playground for cronies, as most of these IRE ventures seem to go. It's a bit like franchising fast food chains, without the profitability or the risk. You give the manager the keys to the store, then he hires whomever he wants. Most mud devs who are making free games would love to make one using the IRE name. It means having access to a rabid playerbase from the beginning. That doesn't mean most mud devs can execute such a thing, and it's unfortunate that IRE seems more interested in no-lose situations (where no matter what happens they don't lose a dime) than actually reinvesting a little of the money they make from virtual goods sales. And no, I don't mean Earth Eternal debacles.

If you have a detailed and realistic design document it only needs to be implemented. I think that's where most MUDs go wrong, they simply start coding and end up spending 90% of the time tweaking old software.

What annoys me most is MUDs hyping features that are implemented in an overly simple, boring, and/or ugly manner. Like MUDs with ships that end up being a bunch of room with some lame spams about rowing the boat, and tentacle NPCs loaded into the rooms when a giant squid attacks. Even if every promise was real there's still the question if it was a hack job or not.

Jeremy mentioned "it will be faster for us to start completely over". If he feels the project is that much of a write-off, then perhaps it's better to transfer the staff to the other muds. I imagine some would quit (particularly those who were only in it for the sci-fi theme), but work on a dead project doesn't benefit anyone.


And the Sword of Damocles hanging over your head. Ilyrias was announced in May 2004, then after a few years development it lost its licence. Tears of Polaris was announced in February 2008, then after a few years development it got shelved.

That's over 7 years of work Baram has lost. It's a sobering thought, although I'm sure there'd still be a long queue of volunteers eager to take his place. Of course many muds fail, but there's a difference between throwing in the towel yourself, and having the rug pulled out from under you.

I wonder what'll happen to all those builders who signed away their rights in return for credits in the future game.


That's a pretty big "only". Most of the muds described in this thread lost steam and faded away during implementation. The same nearly happened with GW2.

Well, if in 3 years of development Jeremy thinks that it would be faster to just start all over I have to assume that the work that did get finished was low quality. Or there really just was no progress other than brainstorming on forums and playing king for a day. So I feel bad for these people who have their work suspended, but ultimately there should have been substantial progress in 3 years. I would have shut down the studio, too.

Anyways, Jeremy, I'm available for your next project, but it costs more than Divine Favours to hire me.

And still others must have faded even during design. Oodles of passion being a prerequisite, tons of diligence proves a lot more valuable, and to sustain that level of effort over many years, with just about everything in real life being more important, that's just tough.

As to whether a design document makes that much difference, I think it varies a huge deal in such mostly solo enthusiast projects. I don't enjoy planning on paper, and I'm much more likely to complete something once I actually get rolling. While the quest system I never sketched out is now live, the design documents for several other big features are being shelved continuously. There's no formula for what works across the board. If in your own style design documents are important, then go for it. But I would hesitate to recommend that everyone document – in many instances, you have only a spare hour or two, and if you don't actually produce a result for players to enjoy, then you may grow bored and incredibly, solipsistically depressed…

At the very least you've got a better chance to deliver a finished product, even if it's just the design document. One problem I've observed with forums like these is that there is a wealth of knowledge available in hundreds of posts, but no attempts have been made to centralize and organize it.

I'm certainly not disagreeing with the importance of a design - in fact I strongly recommend having one. But in my personal experience, the hardest phase from a motivational perspective is when you're implementing the mud, but don't yet have enough in place to open your doors to players/testers.

Muds that start out with an existing codebase can greatly reduce or even completely skip this phase - a DikuMUD is fully playable out-of-the-box, for example. But many of the muds discussed in this thread were developed from scratch, and that makes a big difference (because you have to do a lot of work before you can bring in players to give you feedback and keep you excited about the project).

To give a real example…

I opened the original God Wars after a couple of weeks work (and I didn't even know how to program in C when I started). The mud started out as stock Merc 2.1, it evolved into a fairly popular and well-known mud, I grew tired of it, then I shut it down to move on to other things…all within a period of 10-11 months.

On the other hand it took 11 months of development before God Wars II was even ready for initial playtesting (despite having a design document, and cannibalising several modules of code from my Gladiator Pits II codebase) - and the gameplay was so basic that despite their initial enthusiasm and my ongoing development, all the playtesters lost interest and quit after a few months. Actually most of the team had given up by that point, too. If you want to see just how basic it was, I'm running a copy of it here: godwars2.org 3003

You could use an open forum to get you through the design and alpha stage, though dealing with unusable feedback can be frustrating. I've seen blogs used for this purpose as well, though I think a forum is preferable as it'll allow you to send a mass email when going open-beta.

The forum (or mailing list) is a great medium for ongoing discussion, but a terrible medium for looking back and seeing what the result of all the discussion was. It's good to have an archive, but to figure out what happened you have to sift through hundreds or thousands of posts…

Back in 2003 when IRE published the specifications on the "Rapture engine", I thought it was a joke.
A joke compared to what was currently available.