29 May, 2013, Idealiad wrote in the 21st comment:
Votes: 0
I think where plamzi's concern about players leaving comes into play is you have a group of devs who are all contributing content to the shared world. But if for some reason one mud becomes much more popular than the others, then to some extent those devs' efforts are wasted. This is self-correcting eventually, as the more popular mud will get more contributors, but in the short term it could be a disincentive to participate.

@plamzi, actually I think this does answer the question of audience in a certain sense. You'll have some players who might enjoy a more browser-based, RTS, Travian style game, and some who are more into heavy mud PVP, and then some RPers who haven't really tried muds…it can be difficult to reconcile all these different playstyles and mechanics in one game (though there have been some interesting ideas in this regard). Not to mention that such a 'mega-game' can take a long time to adequately develop, balance, and so on, even witha team. But if these games were separate, the whole concept could have a better chance of attracting players who might not normally try a mud. And then when the RTS player sees all the interesting things happening in the other games (maybe from reading forums, or seeing the website's newsfeed or what have you), since they're already 'in' the world it's a much smaller step to trying those other games.

You're doing it yourself with Bedlam where you're segmenting your playerbase with the different UXs. And aren't you working on a totally different, more casual game set in the same world (I could be mis-remembering that).

P.S. damn, re-reading that Ice Age Race War idea makes me totally want to play that mud!
30 May, 2013, Ssolvarain wrote in the 22nd comment:
Votes: 0
I've given some thought to this before.

The way I figure it, you could come up with a base character who has X base stats. You'd need to come up with some kind of standard pfile that would be able to exist on multiple servers, or perhaps be drawn from one central one that exists solely to hold character data. From there, you could go to SpaceMUD, and gear up with blasters and exo armor and blast aliens, getting to level 5. Then you might enter a rift in time and space and find yourself standing in FantasyMUD, where your blasters and exo armor no longer work. You'd have to gather new magical gear that works in this mud.

You could have multiple muds drawing from the same central pfile server. Some mud servers might be focused on PvP, while others are pure PvE. Some might require you to gather and tradeskill your equipment, or for level advancement, while another might require you to kill mobs for your gear. Others might be finance- based, where you could buy and sell, then travel among the other muds and peddle your wares, or just to grab that one rare component from Mud A to craft something interesting in Mud C.

This was all based off the world-building of the Starshield books, where different sections of space operated under different laws of physics(?). I read that series a long time ago, and I was heavily into muds at the time, so the two sort of worked together and I came up with this.
30 May, 2013, plamzi wrote in the 23rd comment:
Votes: 0
Ssolvarain said:
…some kind of standard pfile that would be able to exist on multiple servers, or perhaps be drawn from one central one that exists solely to hold character data

…travel among the other muds and peddle your wares, or just to grab that one rare component from Mud A to craft something interesting in Mud C.


Guys, we can't even agree on what a MUD is, let alone sync player files. And even a loose collaboration like the one Idealiad is talking about seems like it won't round up an excited throng of devs.

I'm going to go ahead and second quixadhal's comment that the only way anything like this will see the light of day is if someone steps up and implements it first. Then you might have some luck getting people to join, provided that you give away a lot right off the bat (and even then, most folks will scoff at it). But where do you even begin with a big idea like this one?
30 May, 2013, Ssolvarain wrote in the 24th comment:
Votes: 0
Why am I not surprised that you'd side with Quix and try to bash whatever it is I have to say?

Why can't we have a discussion of ideas without you or him coming in and telling everyone about how it can't be done?

This isn't a subject that has to do with pessimism. It has to do with optimism. You should attempt it some time.



And while we're at it, most of us have long ago agreed on what a mud is. It's the "clever" people that want to argue semantics endlessly. Except they're not really clever, merely obtuse.
30 May, 2013, plamzi wrote in the 25th comment:
Votes: 0
Ssolvarain said:
Why am I not surprised that you'd side with Quix and try to bash whatever it is I have to say?

Why can't we have a discussion of ideas without you or him coming in and telling everyone about how it can't be done?


I'm just going to assume that you wrote the post very late and that you were very tired :)

I'm surprised that you're not surprised, because this is probably the first time I've ever agreed with Quix on anything.

And I think you're confusing me with someone else because I've supported every single collaboration idea, including Idealiad's, and yours, if you read past my skepticism. Being a firm proponent of any form of collaboration, I've pitched several myself. I believe this would be a much better community if the kind of idea you had in mind had a chance of becoming a reality.

Ssolvarain said:
This isn't a subject that has to do with pessimism. It has to do with optimism. You should attempt it some time.


I am an optimist, which is why I'm still posting here, even after all the bickering, bashing, and e-peen contests. At the same time, we can't ignore certain realities. A lot of people here have their hands full with their own ideas, and will not look twice at someone else's even if it's a great idea, and comes loaded with freebies. Ideas are plentiful. Everything else they require isn't.

Ssolvarain said:
And while we're at it, most of us have long ago agreed on what a mud is. It's the "clever" people that want to argue semantics endlessly. Except they're not really clever, merely obtuse.


I just used it as a more recent example of having tired debates again and again rather than banding together on something meaningful that can take us out of a decade of lethargy.
30 May, 2013, duwnel wrote in the 26th comment:
Votes: 0
I'm wondering what the incentive is for the individual developer to support this collectivist SuperMud…

As I see it, let's say that I were conscripted (as I can't personally see any reason to join such a monstrosity of my own free will) to take part in this travesty of a SuperMud, and I created something exceptional that I want to implement into my portion of the MUD. By virtue of the nature of the SuperMud, my creation, to be implemented, must now become the property of the Collective, implemented across the entirety, or it must be tossed aside and ignored, despite its greatness.

The benefit quality open-source software is its ability to be adapted into a commercial product by way of a branch, from which further development can be supported. If not, then its development becomes stagnant as obligation dictates only the bare minimum of effort be applied since no decent compensation is to follow. In the world of hobbyist games, compensation comes in the form of Players. In the SuperMud, if you're Italy (for instance), great, then you've got all sorts of fascinating stuff going on for people to be part of. If, however, your assigned portion is hosting the Central African Republic (Voted the saddest place to live in Forbes, Dec. 2011), then no one wants to visit you and you're sadly stuck hosting the most unappreciated portion of the world.

I see no purpose in a SuperMud other than to make an inherently unequal group of developers equaled The strong propping up the weak in a blaze of mediocrity. I'm reminded of a quote:

Karl Marx said:
Jeder nach seinen Fhigkeiten, jedem nach seinen Bedrfnissen!
From each according to his capacity, to each according to his necessity.


No thank you.
31 May, 2013, quixadhal wrote in the 27th comment:
Votes: 0
duwnel said:
I'm wondering what the incentive is for the individual developer to support this collectivist SuperMud…

As I see it, let's say that I were conscripted (as I can't personally see any reason to join such a monstrosity of my own free will) to take part in this travesty of a SuperMud, and I created something exceptional that I want to implement into my portion of the MUD. By virtue of the nature of the SuperMud, my creation, to be implemented, must now become the property of the Collective, implemented across the entirety, or it must be tossed aside and ignored, despite its greatness.


The sheer level of GREED in this is amazing. I assume you've never worked on a team to make something, knowing you'll never get credit for it? I also have to assume you've never given out birthday/christmas/etc presents unless you make sure there's a tag on it with YOUR NAME in bold lettering, so you got all the credit you're due?

Well, be that as it may… You seem to be working under some kind of assumption that people wanting to take part in this would be TOLD what they could do, and ASSIGNED work to complete. I'm not sure where that came from… it's pretty much the opposite of what I was suggesting. If I establish a world map, general history, handful of civilizations and cultural interactions, I wouldn't expect to hand out assignments like a classroom. I'd, at most, keep a centralized map that showed which games were being implemented in which lands, and say each game can pick their area on a first-come-first-serve basis.

Since your game is your own, if you choose the Central African Republic, that's on YOU to develop an interesting story. If you can't do that, perhaps you aren't likely to be creating something all that exceptional on your own, either.

As for making money… if that's your motivation, you're really in the wrong place. There are PLENTY of more lucrative genres to put your time and effort into than the incredibly tiny fraction of text MUD players who will actually pay to play them. A thimble full of sand, in a shoebox full of sand, buried on a beach… that's the size of this market.
31 May, 2013, Tyche wrote in the 28th comment:
Votes: 0
All the mud walking heretofore has been done on like muds (i.e. Tiny to tiny. Unter to Unter, Cool to Cool).
The problem linking different muds together is not just character translation between game systems (and equipment),
but also players being able to learn other interfaces and managing accounts. You have to ensure that Bubba
from Tulsa gets associated to accounts on all the connected muds.
31 May, 2013, Idealiad wrote in the 29th comment:
Votes: 0
I didn't think of it before but this would actually be a good candidate for the service-oriented mud design I was kicking around before.
01 Jun, 2013, Tyche wrote in the 30th comment:
Votes: 0
Idealiad said:
I didn't think of it before but this would actually be a good candidate for the service-oriented mud design I was kicking around before.

Certainly for accounts you could either use a centralized service or each mud implements it's own account service.
I wonder though, if this is just about content sharing, it might be much easier to implement distributed content services.
Instead of mud walking, you'd walk content servers. Instead of translating characters and game systems, you translate content.
02 Jun, 2013, quixadhal wrote in the 31st comment:
Votes: 0
To do that, and keep the system a loose federation, you'd need to cache content in case somebody logs off while using "remote" data. In that case, you'd be pretty close to just having a peer-to-peer content sharing system, where each game involved would simply acquire content from other games, on demand… performing a translation as it's added to the local cache.
02 Jun, 2013, Tyche wrote in the 32nd comment:
Votes: 0
quixadhal said:
To do that, and keep the system a loose federation, you'd need to cache content in case somebody logs off while using "remote" data. In that case, you'd be pretty close to just having a peer-to-peer content sharing system, where each game involved would simply acquire content from other games, on demand… performing a translation as it's added to the local cache.

Yes each mud would necessarily instance the content obtained from content services. It would be quite ambitious and technically difficult to implement any global state.
While it supports the idea of simply sharing content, for whatever that's worth, it gets away from the interesting notion of actually walking into different games and participating in a sort of "super" mud.
02 Jun, 2013, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 33rd comment:
Votes: 0
I do not see how it could work except on mud with same mechanics. As an example some game you level fast, some other very slowy, some other you dont have any leveling whatsoever.
And that is just a start. Not even looking in stats/skills/inventory/pet/army/etc.
The only thing that can be common is your name. And that would require all the mud to be depedent on another service for logging in.
I just don't see it happening.
02 Jun, 2013, quixadhal wrote in the 34th comment:
Votes: 0
Rarva, think content, not mechanics.

Sure, it's difficult to map stats and combat systems from one to another, but it's much easier to map world data. I would say any room-based mud would see a gain by having (potentially) shared areas as soon as they launch. Not dead stock areas, but areas being worked on by others. As always, you may not WANT them, but it should be fairly simple to block access to them on your game.

If my idea of claiming land on an overall world map were used, blocked areas would show up as some barrier, probably defined in your own game so as to fit your theme. Maybe auto-generated impassible mountains, or a giant wall, or a force field…. however you want to say "You can't go there, you'll have to go around".

I actually think a peer-to-peer area sharing system might not be a bad idea. Sure, you can do this by pushing areas onto a web site and letting people download them, but then you get no auto-updating as new content is added, and then YOU have to write import code for all the various formats out there. Obviously, you'll miss out on some features that the original game has, but it would mean each game only has to have an export and import function to the common subset.
03 Jun, 2013, Runter wrote in the 35th comment:
Votes: 0
I think the only way the idea really works well (as in people would join in) is if it was an ala carte API of some kind to access the data and use it however they want. Then you can decouple it from game mechanics completely. But then it's not really a supermud, it's just stock areas.

Also, my other thought is that making changes to the areas locally could be challenging if you want to maintain the ability to update the content as the original author wishes.
03 Jun, 2013, quixadhal wrote in the 36th comment:
Votes: 0
I would expect it to work the way git does. Anyone can clone local copies and change them however they want. They can then submit changes or additions back, but the origin would have to accept or reject them.
03 Jun, 2013, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 37th comment:
Votes: 0
quixadhal said:
Rarva, think content, not mechanics.

Problem is even contents depends on mechanics sometimes. (pickable or bashable doors, as an example, water you wan swim in) The only really thing you can share easily are descriptions. What would be interesting is to have more area considered 'stock' stored in the same place, like a git repository like you suggest. Stored in XML JSon or whatever easily parsable format. Kinda like Runter say.
But not a "supermud".

Though I don't see that happening as well. Muds compete on their mechanics first, but ultimately they retain their players with contents. A new mud will have even more difficulties to raise from nothing.
05 Jun, 2013, Runter wrote in the 38th comment:
Votes: 0
Wrt super mud topic,

I think a problem undiscussed would be unfair meta competition among games. If you were sharing any persistent data like level, or equipment from game to game it would build a market for "power level" realms that make it easiest to game the system in. Afterwards, just go back to the legit realm. It would need curation rather quickly I think.
08 Jun, 2013, plamzi wrote in the 39th comment:
Votes: 0
What I imagine would work is if a couple of really serious people built a super-platform/engine in the cloud that makes it super-easy to spin off a game server instance, develop your own logic, and eventually publish the game to a web-based portal.

Ideally, this platform would come with a full set of tools to make all aspects of customization and management easier. Ideally, the platform would support logic written in several languages, but starting with one is probably the only realistic option. Ideally, it would also give participants the option to develop commercial games, perhaps charging some modest fees for commercial servers that end up needing over 100 simultaneous connections.

For a score of amateurs, the attraction would be that they can have a game server up within an hour (even if they have no idea how to manage a server), and can start tinkering/learning with a guaranteed community support. If part of the enterprise turns a profit, enthusiasts can receive some professional support and guidance, as well as some free exposure, while "riding on the coat-tails" of commercial games.

A common codebase, key parts of which may be sealed off from anyone but the core developers, guarantees that a number of tools and assets, and even some features like automappers, can be universal (assuming the world design is fixed, which I think it should be). It should also enable a common web-based client that instantly turns your idea/instance into a sleek-looking browser-based game (just upload your game banner). In fact, if I was looking to start a MUD right now, a browser UI would be the main attraction for me. Because it's time to move beyond the terminal window, and it's time to move beyond the desktop app.

The reason I think something like this could work is because it's a model that has worked for other types of online games. That said, the usual motivation for a team to build and support an engine agile enough to turn out dozens of games, is the promise of a potentially long-lasting revenue stream. That's clearly far-fetched in the case of text-based games. So what we lack in a solid business plan we would have to make up for in enthusiasm.
09 Jun, 2013, Idealiad wrote in the 40th comment:
Votes: 0
@plamzi, the basic idea is something I've been kicking around for a while (see https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TS-m... ), sans the commercial part though I don't have a problem with that. However I seem to remember someone doing this exact thing (for graphical muds) but I don't remember it really taking off…does anyone remember the name of that project?
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