> If I were to guess, I'd say that a graphical mud IS the next step. > There's only 2 major hurdles in our way; > > 1) We need someone to build one, and a client, that's not based on > a currently existing commercial system. Ie, something as simple and > direct as circle is. Don't forget multiplatform issues (SDL?) I've been hearing a lot about SDL lately, and most of it has been good. Loki Games, I believe it was, has been porting games with it for quite a while, with impressive results. Multi-platform is mission critical to me on the client end. I wonder if it's time to start recruiting people to work on the various aspects of design. > 2) We need tools to maniuplate the new data formats. > > I'd guess that someone could crank out a basic client (maybe not 3d, but > at least tile based) in a week or two. That leaves the the tools. I rate > the tools as a higher requirement, in the same way that people value > Oasis, or other online editors. After all, builders for a graphical mud > are going to be on the same technical level as those of a text mud - > perhaps just a bit more familiar with computer-based art. We need > something for them to fill the new worlds with. That would be awfully impressive. Of course, I've never touched SDL, or graphical programming in general. I'm going to start looking into it, however. > The question I wanted to ask was which SORT of graphical mud would > we be looking at? I think a simple 2-d/3-d environment would be the > easiest (ie, really 2-d tile based, like checkers, but you look at it from > a 60+ degree angle, so it appears that the people are interacting in 3-d > space. Think of simcity, or ?ultima online? This is basically what Diablo, Ultima Online (I played that for about 3 days), and Furcadia (probably the only consideration of a 'free' graphical MUD right now, that I know of) use. It's what I'd imagine using, because if you think about 3D games, a la Counter-Strike and Quake, it takes months of massive cooperation to get SMALL worlds available. I remember playing Ultima 7, turning on a hack, and building quite quickly by dragging resources around me and building stuff out of it. I'm sure we (meaning interested people in general) could establish a team that could do that. > I don't tend to enjoy, as much, a FPS-like interface, like > everquest. Aside from that - and you can correct me if I'm wrong - you > have to make actual 3-d models, pretty much ugly polygon based things, and > it looks horid and what do you get in the end? You get the ability to use > the terrain to show elevation... and ..bleh. everything still looks > crappy. EverCrack (as the game's addicts call it, I have not played it) looks disgusting, IMHO. An ex-co-worker of mine liked the game a lot and upgraded his GeForce up to one of the new GeForce 2 DDR cards along with a new computer system in general, dedicated mainly to playing that game. Having looked at the graphics on the back of the box, it definitely would not be worth all that, as the graphics are pitiful to say the best. Of course, said co-worker would also come in on Monday and tell us about the all-nighter he pulled waiting for X object to respawn on Y creature at Z location, just sitting there for hours. He quit his job, ditched his wife, and went to Arizona to be with some girl from EverQuest soon later. He was my boss; I now have his job. That all aside, the limitations of graphical MUDs can be isolated as follows: the world itself, being relatively static, lends itself well to graphics. However, spells (i.e., adding) would be more of a chore, and combat would have to be carefully worked out. Diablo-esque (which is similar to the Ultima system in general) is fun, but means that you're hack-and-slash forever. See the other popular thread on that for more info. It sounds like a lot of work to emulate one of the Free Ultima Online servers, which use the same client as UO. -k. -- +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | FAQ: http://qsilver.queensu.ca/~fletchra/Circle/list-faq.html | | Archives: http://post.queensu.ca/listserv/wwwarch/circle.html | +---------------------------------------------------------------+
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