Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs): What Are They? and How to Play

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 135 posts

Re: Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs): What Are They? and How to Play

#101

Post by wtetzner »

beders wrote: post #95
reaperducer wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you run the place, I'll state here that it would be nice if I could look at your web site and decide if I'm interested before being hit with a pop-up window asking me to sign up for a newsletter. How do I know if I want your newsletter, if I haven't figured out what your product is? Window closed. Sale lost.

What sale? If a newsletter popup prevents you from actually looking at the site, you really need that time machine back to 1995.

Newsletter popups are obnoxious and unnecessary. Why can’t they just be a link on the page instead of a popup?

Re: Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs): What Are They? and How to Play

#105

Post by em-bee »

pmiller2 wrote: post #97
em-bee wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i didn't realize that MudOS didn't have runtime compilation. i thought all LPmuds had that. it was the feature that i miss the most from newer programming languages, and it's a reason why i still prefer pike (which is based on LPC) and old languages like smalltalk and lisp which also offer that.

You can recompile an object in MudOS, but only new clones of that object get the recompiled code.

oh, i see. that was good enough for most cases though, but it doesn't help if players stay connected for long and keep objects from updating.

i agree, that's a good feature to have. smalltalk does it, and i think lisp too.

open-steam, a development platform written in pike solved that problem by implementing proxy objects which would point to the actually compiled object which can be replaced by pointing to a new version.

Re: Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs): What Are They? and How to Play

#106

Post by nvrspyx »

EamonnMR wrote: post #88
reaperducer wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you run the place, I'll state here that it would be nice if I could look at your web site and decide if I'm interested before being hit with a pop-up window asking me to sign up for a newsletter. How do I know if I want your newsletter, if I haven't figured out what your product is? Window closed. Sale lost.

This site is by no means unique in this practice.

And? Just because the practice is prevalent doesn't mean it's absolved of criticism.

Re: Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs): What Are They? and How to Play

#107

Post by em-bee »

sircastor wrote: post #99
em-bee wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i am interested in creating an audio-only MUD. (like what an audio-book is to books). keep the text, but get a narrator with a dramatic voice. add sound effects, different NPC voices, voice input.

There are a few audio games like this on Amazon’s Alexa platform. When I was looking at it a couple of years ago, there was a level a framework for building them with such narration. I don’t know how you’d work in the multi user angle though.

the framework would need to be designed for that. i'd separate audio handling from actual game logic, so that you can plug in any game logic you like.

you have voice input that gets parsed and interpreted (and also shared with other players, like any voice chat) and you have audio output, that can be called up like any text messages in a MUD: play this narration. play this sound, etc...

code wise i'd call narration and speech like language translation: say("hello traveller") would call up the audio file that contains "hello traveller". then have the audio team go through all text bits like a translation team does.

Re: Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs): What Are They? and How to Play

#108

Post by CodeMage »

Twisol wrote: post #32
lrem wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, so people not only still play, but also actually pay for MUDs? OTOH, I managed to find the price list and seems to be quite heavily pay to win...

(context: I played Achaea without access to a source of cash) Back when I played, you could buy "artefacts" with real money, but they were less "pay to win" and more "pay for convenience". They were definitely far more than mere cosmetic items, but it was more than possible to play without ever buying one. Though I was always, always jealous when I saw somebody using wings. Those things took you to a kind of cloud te…

I tried Achaea after I got too frustrated with MUME. What turned me off wasn't the way people could pay to avoid grind, but rather how you absolutely needed a client script for combat. If you didn't have some kind of script that provided automated reactions, PVE was really hard and you couldn't even consider PVP. And, of course, people who made the best scripts were charging for them.

Re: Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs): What Are They? and How to Play

#109

Post by wrwatson »

pantulis wrote: post #21

Anyone here played Ancient Anguish?

Yes and it was simultaneously a fantastic experience and a waste of time.

I say a fantastic experience because I played lots of people from around the world, some of whom I eventually visited in their home countries. I also improved as a developer. It was a great thrill one day to meet a friend-of-friend who loved some of the code I'd written.

I say waste of time because I spent endless hours in my early 20s glued to a telnet session. In retrospect I would have been better taking up a pass time that let me meet people in person. I've been better at avoiding addictive games since.

Re: Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs): What Are They? and How to Play

#110

Post by tracedddd »

DartMUD has made me much of who I am. I can’t point to a single other influence that has had such an impact. You should visit and see what beauty permadeath, unrestricted pk, and strict in-character only interaction can bring, if you’re interested in MUDs. But be warned, you may lose yourself in it.
Post reply on HN