Wolfire Games Forums

...or something similar to one, would any of you play it?

Here's what I've been thinking so far. A huge open world. Mostly everything is player-created. There's a starter town for each race and that's it. Players have to colonize and war over the rest of it. Cities can be built, destroyed, rebuilt and so on.

It'll be set on a distant, uncolonized planet inhabited by hostile creatures, of which none are humanoid. Some can speak, but none can speak to each other.

There will be 5 factions, each a different race. One race will be humans, but a horrible mistake cut off communication with all outside forces and they've been relentlessly attacked by the other inhabitants of the planet, thus forcing them back into the realm of savages.

One feature I want to play with is PvE. I want to make a solid idea where the life forms themselves have to reproduce rather than respawn to actually survive and eventually, an entire PvE species could technically be wiped out. However, to counter this, I will make it so that each life form has something essential for survival and extinction could topple the balance of nature in the world, even to the point that overcrowding could throw things out of balance too.

I also want to make it so that NPC life forms feed on smaller life forms.

I also want to play with player advancement. I want it to be based all on skill. In this effect, you have a weapon, and practice makes perfect. You use the skill more, you become more skilled. You use a tool more, you become more skilled.

I also want to make combat turn-based, sort of like the VATs system so that you can really stick it to them.

You don't have to kill them. Just make it so that they can't chase you.

In this effect, I also want to make civilization advance as players choose. If they want to advance, they need to make the means to advance. You don't get anything the rest of your race can't have. You want anything past what you find lying around, you find a way to make it.

Just tossing ideas around.

Already from what I'm seeing here, the project would be massive. Not because of content, but because of all the skills and skill trees and advancement options I'd have to make. Nonetheless,
I want to try it. It could be good for the gaming community to see it happen.

Who thinks it's a good idea?

Sounds like a good idea, but it also sounds like a ridiculously massive project. How are you ever going to get it underway?

Armored Wolf wrote:Sounds like a good idea, but it also sounds like a ridiculously massive project. How are you ever going to get it underway?

I'm a good writer, an ambitious planner, I have all the time in the world that I don't do anything constructive with, and I don't need any art assets.

Learning a programming language and finding a good compiler can easily be free.

All I'd really have to do is go through a lot of tutorials and bear with server costs, once that was even applicable.

It could be "the last great MUD" by the time I'm finished, but it's supposed to be a long-term project to keep me occupied and finally get me back on the programming train after these past few years.

I would definitely play it, but I'd really love to have graphics. I'm not much of a MUD person myself. What you might think about doing (and might not really be much more work) would be doing something ala Dwarf Fortress with ascii graphics. The world would be the same, but you'd just display the tiles with ascii graphics instead of text.

It's a very big project though, probably take a few years at least to complete.

TheBigCheese wrote: It's a very big project though, probably take a few years at least to complete.

Yeah, I know it will take time. That's the point though: this is my learning experience.

I want to know how it feels to take on a project that people don't think you can complete. That's what I'm doing. The only difference is I'm making it so that it's insanely interesting at the same time.

In response to the it being a MUD: I'm pretty big on MUDs, simply for the reason that they're incredibly in-depth, descriptive and allow for so much more to be accomplished.

Comparing an MMORPG to a MUD is like comparing a movie and a book.

The movies has all the cool action and visual aspects, but ultimately, it fails to live up to the descriptive power of a book, which captures all the emotion and beauty in such a pure, raw form.

Made a makeshift site, mostly for the blog, but for other uses too. I want a lot of feedback, so I have a forum too.

Link

As of right now, on the site, I have 6 blogs of decent length, all very informative and mostly about what I've got on the drawing board so far, up.

Feedback is great.

I'm wondering what kind of graphics you would use, because quite simply, text-based adventures are difficult, and the Dwarf Fortress style was more annoying to me than helpful. All and all though, you have a nice plan laid out and it sounds like it would be a very interesting game.

As a side note,
I found it amusing how the name of the game is so close to my Username.
Reading it confuzzles me.

Endorgan wrote:I'm wondering what kind of graphics you would use, because quite simply, text-based adventures are difficult, and the Dwarf Fortress style was more annoying to me than helpful.

It's going to be text based. Good old Iron Realms and Zork style. It's just easiest for me, and as a writer, it's in my comfort zone.

Hmmm,
I'll have to warm up my typing fingers then hehe.
Just please, somehow, make it mac compatible while you're still starting.

Endorgan wrote:Hmmm,
I'll have to warm up my typing fingers then hehe.
Just please, somehow, make it mac compatible while you're still starting.

Lol, it'll be run like every other MUD, through a secondary MUD client. It'll be Mac compatible, so long as you find a Mac compatible MUD client.

I love it when people tell me things that go over my head.
So now i have to google that.....

aaand so pretty much any of the Mac OS MUD clients found here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_MUD_clients will make it work (I guess).

Now that that is done,
I am confused (again). How does one create a text-based game with so many people involved (Since I assume you will have more than 5 people playing at a time)?
I know I'm asking a lot of questions, but I am genuinely interested in what you are doing here.

The "how" of it, I'm not entirely sure of, myself. That's part of the learning process I'm putting myself through.

However, a MUD is essentially an MMORPG without graphics. So where as the objects in an MMORPG would be the textured models, the objects in a MUD would be descriptive text representations of those objects. All of the math and all of the connection specifics work the same way, though with much smaller packets.

Sounds cool, get to it!