ID:152314
 
An MMORPG is a tall order for anyone to fill by himself/herself. Since I'm not too good a pixel artist and I figure that no images would cut the work in half, should I try to create a text MUD? What exactly is a text MUD? Is it anything like an MMORPG? And would anyone want to play one, let alone pay for premium features.
Ulfhendar wrote:
An MMORPG is a tall order for anyone to fill by himself/herself. Since I'm not too good a pixel artist and I figure that no images would cut the work in half, should I try to create a text MUD? What exactly is a text MUD? Is it anything like an MMORPG? And would anyone want to play one, let alone pay for premium features.

Text MUDs are not dead, no. A few of us are even working on our own, when time is available. I believe Jmurph is, at least - And I am, as well.

As for text MUDs in general (and not just on BYOND), check out MUDConnector.com and MUDMagic.com. There are over a thousand active MUDs listed in each of those places.
In response to Alathon
So text MUDs are popular yes? What exactly makes a game a text Multi User Dungeon?
Im working on one at the moment, the obejct is actually to make the most money but there is player levels, enemies, shops, and more. But you can view what I have so far by going to the games hub, search MoneyMakingMadness and you can download it. The version out right now is just a basic release I have a much more implemented system in the next update which will be out soon(tonight if I dont go out) so hopefully tomorrow morning I will finish the updates.
In response to Ulfhendar
Can't really say they're 'popular'.
They were popular at one point, or atleast as popular as they could have possibly gotten.

In this day and age where most MMORPGs are a dime a dozen, you can usually find a new one to play every other day, most people would rather play those than the text based games.

Games like World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, and the like, drained the life right out of the MUDding era in a flash.

But there are a few games that have been around for awhile that are still flourishing.

For example, Aardwolf has been around for what, 8, 9, maybe 10 years now.
They used to average around 1000+ players daily back when they started.
Last time I played, which was a few months ago, it actually had around 800 players connected.

There are quite a few other ones that I have yet to play that have large amounts of players like:
Zombie Mud - played it for a few hours, can't say I got the hang of it
Materia Magica - been around for alot longer than Aardwolf.
Mozart MUD
Achaea
Aetolia
and Medievia.
Alot of those average 400 or so players a day.
And a few of those are pay to play.
(I wouldn't start with those. They're extremely complex engines made from scratch. If you've been in the mudding community for long, you'll see most of them work off of source codes like Merc, Diku, SMAUG, etc. Yes, BYOND people! More than 60% of muds use pre-created engines to make their games!)

I'd say, if you're making a MUD, don't make it with BYOND.
Make it with C or C++, and whatever language your ssh host supports.
That's where the real mudders are looking for games.
I can guaranatee if you spend alot of time, work real hard, and finally publish a MUD for BYOND, it won't get the attention it truly deserves.

Although there was one guy who made a text game for BYOND named Trenton. (it was a DBZ game)
But after he finished it, he made it so that if you connected to it with the BYOND client, it'd boot you off.
He made it specifically for the telnet client.
But it was really, really popular among mudders for a little while.
I got a chance to play a game that was using it's source, and it was quite nice.
In response to Keeth
Keeth wrote:
I'd say, if you're making a MUD, don't make it with BYOND.
Make it with C or C++, and whatever language your ssh host supports.
That's where the real mudders are looking for games.
I can guaranatee if you spend alot of time, work real hard, and finally publish a MUD for BYOND, it won't get the attention it truly deserves.

If you're going to give advice, please make sure its actually good advice. BYOND is perfectly capable of creating telnet-capable MUDs, that short of MSP (MUD Sound Protocol) and full VT102 support, can do absolutely everything a normal MUD can do. You don't need to interact with BYOND in *any* way to play a MUD made with BYOND.
In response to Alathon
Well, that is true huh?
I never had much luck getting the telnet library to work for myself, even though I didn't use anything visual in the creation of it.
But then again, I never did ask for assistance, so I'm sure there's someone out there who knows how to make it function correctly.

Whatever floats your boat.
In response to Keeth
Keeth wrote:
Well, that is true huh?
I never had much luck getting the telnet library to work for myself, even though I didn't use anything visual in the creation of it.
But then again, I never did ask for assistance, so I'm sure there's someone out there who knows how to make it function correctly.

Theres no library for it - Simply defining client/Command() will allow people to connect to your game using Telnet.
In response to Alathon
There was some telnet library made by Dan or Tom, can't remember which, but I guess it allowed telnet clients to connect to your BYOND hosted games.

Didn't know anything about client/Command(), or most of the things related to BYOND for that matter, at the time anyway.
I had just got into it.
In response to Keeth
Keeth wrote:
There was some telnet library made by Dan or Tom, can't remember which, but I guess it allowed telnet clients to connect to your BYOND hosted games.

I've been with BYOND since 2001, and I don't have a clue what you're talking about. The only criteria for a telnet client to connect to a BYOND hosted game is to define client/Command() - It has, to the best of my knowledge, always been that way.
In response to Alathon
Like I said, when I experimented on the BYOND MUD, I was just beginning.
I'm not sure where I got most of the stuff I did.
I just remember seeing Dantom somewhere in the file.
In response to Keeth
So, back to the point, is the text MUD more practical for the lone developer to attempt?
In response to Ulfhendar
If you really don't like working with the visual aspects of BYOND, don't know anyone who would be willing to assist you in that department, or just really want to make a MUD, it's probably not a bad idea.

I actually made a ROT emulator for BYOND when I first started because I didn't want to worry about the graphics part.
In response to Ulfhendar
Yes. BYOND is actually much easier than working from scratch because the connectivity stuff is already done- you start straight on the game.

To give you a better idea of what a MUD usually is, it consists of a text parser that acts as the command interpreter for game interaction often in a nodal environment ala Zork. There are no graphics as such- everything is described in text. From there, the actual games vary widely. Some are very hack'n slash (most DIKU derivatives, for example) others are very RPI (usually called MUSHes/MOOs/etc.). The degree of interactivity varies from pure social (MUXes/Talkers/etc.) to dynamic code manipulation (LPC).

MUDs continue to enjoy popularity and many have playerbases in the hundreds. Speaking from experience as a player and admin, this is not always a good thing ;-)

While I whole heartedly endorse BYOND for MUD dev (I have my own MUD project), I don't know if I would recommend developing a MUD without some understanding of what one is or could be. This will influence everything from parser choices (in syntax, for example), to combat systems (and whether to even have them!).
In response to Keeth
Keeth wrote:
and Medievia.

Medievia is a DIKU rip, just so you know. They claim that they've changed enough of the code that it no longer applies as a DIKU MUD, but that is in stark contrast to the DIKU MUD licence.
In response to Keeth
BTW Keeth, Trenton actually made that Dragonball Z game on a engine, not BYOND. That new Dragonball Z mud, which is hosted with BYOND but does not allow BYOND clients to host, is a new copycat version.
In response to Revenant Jesus
Revenant Jesus wrote:
BTW Keeth, Trenton actually made that Dragonball Z game on a engine, not BYOND. That new Dragonball Z mud, which is hosted with BYOND but does not allow BYOND clients to host, is a new copycat version.

I believe the game he is referring to was written in Java, to be exact.
In response to Jtgibson
Jtgibson wrote:
Medievia is a DIKU rip, just so you know. They claim that they've changed enough of the code that it no longer applies as a DIKU MUD, but that is in stark contrast to the DIKU MUD licence.

Yup. They should've been ripped apart as soon as they stopped claiming it wasn't even DIKU to begin with.,
In response to Jtgibson
Yeah, Merctheivia is a bunch of donkey-hats who think they are clever by skirting the DIKU liscence.

Much hate for them I have.