26 May, 2013, Jhypsy Shah wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
Idealiad said:
This makes me think of something. So you have your individual devs with their muds. Then you have people saying, why don't these devs band together and make one Super Mud ™ since then they could pool their efforts. And also plamzi has talked about devs banding together with a similar UI and so on, but their individual games.

What about individual devs with their games (with perhaps quite different mechanics and so on), agreeing on a shared world concept where the content all takes place in the same world. Then reusing a lot of the same art assets could make sense. Maybe one mud has one continent, another mud as a different continent, another mud is mostly in the Underworld, etcetera. Does that sound workable?


I just found this Idealiad quote interesting enough to spawn a new topic.

Just curious, what would it take to make such an idea workable? More importantly, I'd be more curious to know more about, why a dev would want such or what they'd utilize it for.

Bonus points if ya can make it sound fun. XD
26 May, 2013, quixadhal wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
It depends on how tightly coupled you want the worlds to be, and if you ever want to allow players to move between them.

If you never allow interaction between the worlds, then it's easy. The most you'd have to do is (perhaps) announce that a story arc on your game will be affecting certain places and/or main characters, so other worlds can adapt to them being changed if needed.

If you think your players WOULD want to travel between them, then you have to keep things pretty tightly coupled. Characters have to have compatible data, so they retain their relative power in the move. Items also need to have equivalents. The idea being, if I'm in a magic-heavy game, and am a well equipped and spec'd level 10 character, when I move to your magic-poor game, I still need to feel like I'm level 10 (or whatever the equivalent level is for that game). If I advance 2 levels worth of content and then return to my home world, I should be the appropriate strength for level 12 content there.
26 May, 2013, Idealiad wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
My thinking was that it's good to work together but many devs likeworking on their own on 'their' design. So maybe there's a place in between just working on your project in isolation and working on the big team with a lot of compromise. The obvious place to collaborate is content (well and marketing and user experience too, but just talking about the game creation side).

This isn't too unlike those shared world wikis and stuff you see sometimes.

In the original thread some people raised issues with the idea (like, players might want to switch between worlds carrying some of their stuff…how do you do that with different game mechanics? If you have to have a common entity model then are the benefits of the original idea lost…etcetera). How do you share events across games…I can see lots of issues you'd want to resolve. I think it'd still be worth it though. as content creation is a big obstacle.
26 May, 2013, plamzi wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
I already responded to that post in the original thread but I can add a few things. It seems that that the biggest benefit would be for devs who have/want a GUI and want to add graphical elements such as maybe a roguelike overhead map, visual inventory, character avatars, etc. Apart from sharing visual assets, devs can collaborate on a common web-based client and put it on a portal site that they can pool their resources to promote together.

The main obstacle in the way of a good idea like this one is how to ensure that everyone pulls their weight. Graphical assets and promotion will require some money, and developing those common GUI elements will require work. Some will obviously contribute more than others.

Another catch: the more you want to increase re-usability, the more constraints you'll be placing on the participating devs' projects. Given that these are folks who are used to being able to do as they please, they may not like even the tiniest hint of contstraint.
26 May, 2013, quixadhal wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
Just as a note to support the idea.. one of my favorite book series of all time was Thieves' World. All stores were set in city of Sanctuary (and the surrounding area), and each author was free to do whatever they wanted with one caveat… if they wanted to kill off someone else's character, they had to ask permission first. :)

Of course, books don't have mechanics to worry about, so it was easy for someone to read any or all of the short stories in them and be immersed in the world as a whole. With a game, the devs have to decide how integrated they want to be with each other game, and that will decide how much interaction you can have. It may be just setting, it could be a shared map, or it could be more.

Here's an interesting idea. Someone draw up a world map (scale of an entire world with several continents). Someone else (maybe several people), come up with some storylines for civilizations that exist or existed in the past and place them on the map. Once you have a rough history and a few distinct civilizations, a new MUD can simply request an area of land to start building in. If they're near an existing/previous civilization, they can adopt culture from them and evolve it into their own story. If they're isolated, they can do pretty much whatever they want.

Each mud can provide more detailed maps of their own part of the world and whatever lore is appropriate for them. The only gotcha here is that you can't have radically different systems. If one mud wants to have magic and middle-ages tech, and another wants steampunk.. that can work. But if somebody wants a year 5000 sci-fi game, it'd be hard to explain why they can't travel halfway around the continent… in that case, a whole different planet would be more appropriate.
27 May, 2013, Jhypsy Shah wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
Bonus Points! anthologies are awesome. XD

I'm not as familiar with the Thieves World but the guidelines sound familiar.

it sounds like ya guys could be on to something pretty cool.

I was curious if ya guys came up with a common theme? Maybe one that might make it easier to collaborate and share one? Maybe all of ya have a compatible zone? Maybe some varied ways of optional integration could spark some inspiration from those dev's like idealiad mentioned, who are less likely to collab'?

I would think that plamzi's GUI could be able to reach alot of new players and possibly appeal to them.

I dunno if anyone would find it interesting but I was just wondering if a large newbie area collaboration would be an easy way to keep it balanced, compatible and help promote itself? I was just thinking that a one way kind of exit (like some of the diku mudschools do) might be easier to translate, since you would know all the gear that might come through? I was also thinking that alot of lower level gear transferring over wouldn't be much of an issue?

Just a thought. Interesting stuff tho'. XD
27 May, 2013, Idealiad wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
For sure there are a lot of ways you could go with it. I think something like a newbie area collaboration would require a similar power formula though. Personally I think the interesting part is having games with wildly different mechanics share the same world.

Though I guess another way to look at it would be to have games of not different mechanics but different kinds of mechanics, so like a RP game, a H&S game, a strategy game, etcetera, run by different developers according to their interests. But then I guess you have to ask why this isn't just one game, but allowing players to choose their play style as they like…

I think it goes back to allowing developers total freedom design-wise. Mud developers especially seem to be really strong in their design goals but maybe not care so much about content. So I guess I would hold a hard line in allowing total design freedom in something like this. Who knows :).

P.S. loved Thieves World too! Have always wanted to make a TW inspired RP game…actually started some ideas for one once, http://wickedworldgame.tumblr.com/
27 May, 2013, plamzi wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
Idealiad said:
…Personally I think the interesting part is having games with wildly different mechanics share the same world.

I think it goes back to allowing developers total freedom design-wise. Mud developers especially seem to be really strong in their design goals but maybe not care so much about content. So I guess I would hold a hard line in allowing total design freedom in something like this. Who knows :).
/


Does "share the same world" mean share the same world data, or just have a common theme? That seems like a fundamental choice. The former will enable some asset-sharing, which you mentioned earlier, but will almost certainly place restrictions beyond what you can anticipate, most likely starting with a common codebase. The latter may enable the devs to promote their games as "a single brand" on MUD forums, but that can be a mixed blessing since the quality of those games is likely to vary.
27 May, 2013, Jhypsy Shah wrote in the 9th comment:
Votes: 0
I guess once ya get your geographical references and timelines in order, then it'll become more concrete?

A handful of people just writing some flash for an anthology, can get the word count up pretty quickly, in a short amount of time. If your content is original and written in the right format and edited well, then there would be options for epublishing, such as an ebook. It seems like 8-10k were good with some publishers. I'm not sure if ya find that interesting but I just thought it might be a way you could get some more promo, with a different medium, if nothing else.

I'd be curious to know what kind of mechanics ya find most appealing? Strategy could be different and interesting. I always felt that a watery world with boats could benifit from a graphic client, I would think that alot of older art (block prints, sketches and such) for old ships would be in public domain.

Whatever ya decide to do, best of luck with it. Hope whoever grabs the reins, gives it an official GO! XD
27 May, 2013, Idealiad wrote in the 10th comment:
Votes: 0
@plamzi, by sharing I mean any content that's independent of mechanics. Granted there isn't a hard line there and that might get tricky.

For example all the games could share the same pantheon of gods, but the mechanical effects of a character in one game praying to a god could be different than the effects in another game. Or take races. Games could share races, but if you stick with design freedom then the advantages of the different races from game to game could be different.

So it's evident that if you mandate design freedom you have a lot of issues.

If a group of devs wanted consistency then they're probably already 3/4 of the way to forming a team anyway. So let them do that.

The rest of this post is conjecture but based on my time in the mud community I think it holds true. There's a significant portion of developers who want to do things 'their way', whether you're talking about the implementation technology or the game design. However they're not so opinionated on the game content. Witness the many coders looking for head builders and theme writers "because I'm good with the code, but not the world building". Or they have time for one but not the other and they'd rather code and design.

Those are the people who would happily share content, and if there's some inconsistency from game to game, I don't think it would matter much to them. Would it matter to the players? Yeah, I suspect there'd be a few vocal critics of the setup, but for many players I don't think it would matter.
27 May, 2013, quixadhal wrote in the 11th comment:
Votes: 0
Idealiad said:
Those are the people who would happily share content, and if there's some inconsistency from game to game, I don't think it would matter much to them. Would it matter to the players? Yeah, I suspect there'd be a few vocal critics of the setup, but for many players I don't think it would matter.


For proof, see the new Star Trek movies. You have people who enjoyed them. You have trekkies who enjoyed them. Then you have trek nerds who nitpicked them to death, not even really watching the movie to enjoy it as much as watching to see how many things were "wrong". Which group is the most vocal? :)
27 May, 2013, KaVir wrote in the 12th comment:
Votes: 0
Idealiad said:
There's a significant portion of developers who want to do things 'their way', whether you're talking about the implementation technology or the game design. However they're not so opinionated on the game content.

We already have shared content in the form of stock areas, and you do get a lot of opinionated views about those as well, to the point that some developers will switch to smaller worlds with barebones areas just to avoid the "stock world" label.

In fact I don't think I've ever seen the use of stock areas mentioned in a positive light until I read this thread. At best, they're usually viewed as a necessary evil.
27 May, 2013, Idealiad wrote in the 13th comment:
Votes: 0
This isn't just about stock areas though. You certainly could have stock in this scheme but it's really about sharing content across the board in a 'shared world'. Most muds with stock areas don't claim to share the same world at all.
27 May, 2013, KaVir wrote in the 14th comment:
Votes: 0
I don't see how this would differ from having stock areas, other than the areas following a consistent theme.
27 May, 2013, Idealiad wrote in the 15th comment:
Votes: 0
If the developers consciously are choosing to join a shared world, then avoiding the stock world label hardly applies. In any case, in the original proposal I wasn't talking about sharing stock areas, but devs taking different parts of the same world.
27 May, 2013, quixadhal wrote in the 16th comment:
Votes: 0
Yep, the way I would approach something like this is, as I said earlier, create an overall world map and let each MUD that's interested in your theme claim a chunk of terrain in it. If they build that area up and want to add another area further away, they can do so, but it has to be somewhere not already claimed by someone else. As a guideline, I'd suggest if people choose areas that are already near existing ones, they should make their cultures integrate the way you'd expect… either as rivals or allies, but with some visible signs of each influencing the other.

Of course, if you're allowing full freedom, they can ignore you… but as with the Thieves' World series of anthologies, you want to set out some loose rules and suggestions to make it easier for everyone to be on the same page, as it were.

This is totally different than "stock" areas, which are generally created to be a mish-mash of random ideas to demonstrate how the game system functions, and which people blindly kept or copied either because they didn't have much of their own content (and wanted to open before they were ready), or because they felt people needed a "familiar" map to learn their game in.
28 May, 2013, plamzi wrote in the 17th comment:
Votes: 0
This idea seems to target devs who don't have a game in production and don't have a world, and I'm not one of those, yet I think there's a reason we haven't heard from any of the intended audience in this thread.

First, the idea needs to have a lot more hard lines than soft lines for people to know if they want to hop on board or not. Each of the alternatives raises big questions that need clear answers. If participants get a full world at joining, where is this world going to come from? If each gets to say they are thematically part of a larger entity, or that their world is one continent in a larger world, that doesn't really help them build said continent. All it does, in practical terms, is provide their players with an occasion to leave their game to "explore other continents".

When I think of a "Super MUD", a very different beast comes to mind. One day, I may be able to pitch something to that effect.
28 May, 2013, quixadhal wrote in the 18th comment:
Votes: 0
There's really only so much you can do to borrow content from other muds, unless you're willing to make your game systems fit their data formats. I suggested a map, because it's fairly easy to generate (by hand or algorithm) a map at the continent level, and wouldn't be too hard to split it up into regions that muds could claim.

If you really want to swap room data, you have to set out a rigid room specification which all muds will have to accept or write scripts to transform that format into their own format (and visa-versa).

Consider even the limited set of Dikurivatives. Importing or Exporting Smaug area files (just the rooms!) to Merc requires transforms, and they're directly related. Even between SmaugFUSS and AFKMUD (very closely related!), there are differences in the sector types available, not even considering the various flags. So, if one mud has a room type for "tundra" which is different than "ice", does the master format need to add that type? If not, information will be lost in the translation. If so, it's a moving target and all the member muds will have to either add those types or lose data when they transform the download.

This doesn't even take into account people who think rooms don't need descriptions. If you're building on a grid-based ANSI map, when you upload your room data to share, every other mud that uses traditional descriptions gets either empty strings, or ANSI maps… neither of which is going to make them very happy.

As I also said earlier, if you're going to have that tight a level of integration, you might as well just merge your projects into a single game. I don't envision this as a way for new muds to dodge having to build their own worlds, but rather as a way to collaborate ideas and storylines, so people don't have a rich set of lore and overall data to draw from when making their own games.

If you made up a fictional place called Earth, and provided a map of the globe, showing 7 continents along with information about their climates, mountain ranges, rivers, and what kinds of cultures occupied various parts of the world. Somebody wanting to make a new game set in the area we now know as Italy would be able to build whatever kind of game they wanted, but they'd know there was a large island to the south, a mountain range to the north, and across the mediterranean, they'd expect desert cultures to exist.

You still have to make your own game, but you have the basic outlines of the map you're building in. If other games take up residence nearby, you can (if you choose) ask them what kinds of things they're doing so perhaps you can make references to one another's content. To me, that seems kind of neat.
28 May, 2013, plamzi wrote in the 19th comment:
Votes: 0
quixadhal said:
You still have to make your own game, but you have the basic outlines of the map you're building in. If other games take up residence nearby, you can (if you choose) ask them what kinds of things they're doing so perhaps you can make references to one another's content. To me, that seems kind of neat.


That may be neat for some players to experience but as a dev you can't ignore the fact that it generates desire to leave the game. Unless all participating devs have common economic interest, I see no logical reason why they would want to riddle their game with exits to other games.

Incidentally, one thing I think of when I hear 'Super MUD' is a game that is capable of taking what we know and love about MUDs to a wider audience. The gist of the idea, as I understand it, doesn't answer the question where the audience(s) will come from. For a new MUD, it is almost impossible to draw people from the mud vet pool that everyone else is fishing in. If the idea was to join forces on one MUD, then you could say that at least you're controlling for the endless audience and staff fragmentation problem this community suffers from. Or if the idea was to build a set of very similar games, you could market them as a whole and encourage people who love one of them to also experience the others. But at the moment, the idea seems to be just to add some cross-references to other games that may be vastly different from yours.
28 May, 2013, quixadhal wrote in the 20th comment:
Votes: 0
Well, consider the cases where this has already happened.

How many Star Wars MUD's are there? They all share a common theme and a more-or-less common history and set of lore. Since there's zero cooperation between them, they have almost nothing else in common at all. Yet there seems to be enough interest for them to keep popping up, and indeed for several codebases to be distributed, specifically for that genre.

The other advantage this kind of loose federation of games would have it cross-pollination of ideas. If there's some central arbiter for world maps and lore, odds are good a forum or other discussion medium will spring up with it. In that case, perhaps the devs of muds involved (and potential devs who might be interested) could toss ideas around that fit within the framework provided. Not all muds would implement them, of course, but some ideas that would otherwise be lost might be implemented on other games.

For example, let's say you have a mud set in a given (shared) theme. One of your builders/devs has an idea, but the admin decides it isn't quite right for his vision of the game. In many cases, this means the idea disappears entirely, or if the dev feels strongly enough, the codebase gets forked and splits the playerbase. With a group of muds in the same theme, perhaps the idea might take root on a different game, and the dev could toss the idea and even code to another mud. Maybe the dev in question would even remain with their original game, and just spend a little of their time helping implement it elsewhere.

While I understand the desire to approach it from a monetization angle, I also think that's not the way to make this kind of thing work. Collaboration tends to work well when people are doing things they enjoy doing, not when they're trying to pay the bills. I'll also say that people won't pay money for a theme… but they will pay money for quality content. There should be no reason to fear others writing in the same theme you've chosen, unless you believe your content is of poorer quality.

Minor correction… there's no LONG TERM money in a theme without quality content. Star Wars games have also shown that to be true. Taking two MMO's as examples, Star Wars Galaxies did extremely well for the time it ran, and continued to grow until Lucas Arts forced SOE to make fundamental changes to the game's systems (the infamous Combat Upgrade, and New Game Experience). By contrast, Star Wars The Old Republic did quite well for a year, and then faded away. They shifted to a free-to-play model with microtransactions and are profitable, but nowhere near as popular as a Star Wars MMO really could be… mostly due to lack of quality content. And by THAT, I mean it didn't feel as much like a Star Wars game, as it felt like World of Warcraft with light saber skins.

Unfortunately, history has shown us that the only way this might get off the ground is to have someone step up and implement it. Basically, nobody is willing to spend the time to be an early adopter unless they feel it's likely for others to also jump in and join them.
0.0/48