I can not get this to work. Tried with both Firefox and Chrome, and turning of the add blocker. I just get the "Entering world..." popup that just stays there. Occasionally I get the red popup with cryptic "World is clean" message. I tried registering, I tried different worlds, even tried it on my phone, but it just doesn't start.... :(
Show HN: WrittenRealms – a modern platform for text-based games
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Re: Show HN: WrittenRealms – a modern platform for text-based games
#62I can not get this to work. Tried with both Firefox and Chrome, and turning of the add blocker. I just get the "Entering world..." popup that just stays there. Occasionally I get the red popup with cryptic "World is clean" message. I tried registering, I tried different worlds, even tried it on my phone, but it just doesn't start.... :(
Sorry about that. If you try again now you might have better luck...
Re: Show HN: WrittenRealms – a modern platform for text-based games
#63If I click anywhere after play I get back to the screen where I can press play.
Turns out the system wasn't quite able to handle the traffic that came through yesterday. It should be working better now!
Re: Show HN: WrittenRealms – a modern platform for text-based games
#64Genuine question - what is the appeal of a text-based game? Is it that you can play async? Something else? Like why not just play a regular video game with regular controller and graphics?
Not a text-based gamer so maybe others can respond better, but this is probably similar to reading a book and watching a movie. Imagination has no limit.
The keyword / genre here is "Interactive Fiction"; MUDs fall in the same league as text based adventures of old (which later on started to add some graphics until they eventually evolved into e.g. the Monkey Island games), or even the choose-your-own-adventure (comic) books.
It's an older style of games, but honestly, I could have seen myself getting into this back when. It's tech that predates MMO's like WoW or Ultima Online. It's stuff that works everywhere.
And of course it's a different way to experience a game and its story. Dwarf Fortress also comes to mind, weirdly.
Re: Show HN: WrittenRealms – a modern platform for text-based games
#65Genuine question - what is the appeal of a text-based game? Is it that you can play async? Something else? Like why not just play a regular video game with regular controller and graphics?
It is a different genre with different strengths and weaknesses. I think it is best to illustrate through concrete titles: Counterfeit Monkey by Emily Short [1]: It is a parser based puzzle game. (Parser based means that there is a "command line" where you type in what you want to do.) In the game you play a smuggler who wants to steal some high tech plans from the island of Atlantis. You see, the Atlantans developed…
Another hybrid is Fallen London, whose graphics are mainly interactive cards with text, an image and some buttons, but the majority of the game is text. In it, they tell a number of stories set in the worldbuilding efforts done by the creators. This worldbuilding has also been used in other games by the studio, Sunless Seas/Skies.
Re: Show HN: WrittenRealms – a modern platform for text-based games
#66Re: Show HN: WrittenRealms – a modern platform for text-based games
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Should be better now. Sorry about that.
HN hug of death maybe? I have just tried and am not able to get in, stuck on "Entering World"
Definitely HN hug of death... Seems to be stabilizing now if you'd like to try again. Apologies for the instability.
Re: Show HN: WrittenRealms – a modern platform for text-based games
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
The same thing! Imagine getting new features, new content, and new systems at a far more rapid rate from a far smaller developer. And most MU*s are free. The paid ones, like GemStone, are even better... though the subscription price might be hard to swallow for people who are used to AAA graphical games not costing anything (at least on the surface).
This seems like a fair enough value proposition i guess. But, how do people get interested in the first place? Is it just one of those things you see your friends doing and do it for social reasons and then a few weeks later you actually enjoy it for it's own sake and the cycle continues?
I don't know how people discover MUDs these days. I discovered them in the mid 90s because I was bored and happened to find out about them on a Usenet feed.
Re: Show HN: WrittenRealms – a modern platform for text-based games
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Lack of telnet connection on multiplayer worlds is a big hurdle. I believe that MUD developers' fixation on telnet support has been a major contributor[0] to the ongoing decline in popularity of MUDs over the last decade. It's a terrible protocol on which to build a multiplayer game. Supporting it as an option requires some kind of server-side content rendering layer which can be inherently restrictive to your othe…
It's not really the fault of MUD developers, more the obsessive nature of the players, who each have their own favourite client that is set-up exactly how they like it, and full of huge macros and plug-ins that only they understand. These players will not even try out your new MU* if it doesn't support their client.
I think it is the fault of the MUD developers, because they feel like they must support those players.
The group of people who play MUDs "traditionally" (with a dedicated, telnet-based MUD client) is small and shrinking every year.
The group of people who play lo-fi, retro-style games is large and growing every year.
Why give special treatment to the former group if it hinders your ability to appeal to the latter group?