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Tell HN: 17 years on the same game

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Re: Tell HN: 17 years on the same game

#91

Post by fouc »

ramblerman wrote: post #63

MUDs are why I am a programmer today. I had tried some programming in BASIC and I just didn't know what to write, or the things I did write seemed trivial and pointless. I was trying to become a max level on Medievia at about the same time, and the grinding (killing 1000 bunnies) was getting very boring. When I found out my ZMUD client offered some basic scripting and trigger capabilities, I set out to create my firs…

My first encounter with Forth was through the TinyMUCK codebase, the language was called MUF, and it blew my mind at the time that it was possible to code within the MUD game itself and use it right away.

Re: Tell HN: 17 years on the same game

#92

Post by fouc »

It's amazing how much can be done through plain old text over a simple telnet protocol.

Not all MUDs are limited to descriptive rooms. The BattleTech MUD switched modes when you got into a mecha. You could see what was around you for miles unless blocked by buildings, buildings had different altitudes and you could jet pack jump from building to building, while firing homing missiles at the enemy and flanking with your teammates.

Another really cool telnet-based game that I really enjoyed was mTrek. You controlled a space ship, flew around at warp speed, you could see multiple objects in space near you, and their relative speed and angle. Fighting in 3 dimensional space in plain text is just mind boggling. It's like you're flying in a submarine when there's no graphics. It was adrenaline packed.

EDIT:

You can see battletech mud screen here: http://i.imgur.com/Mk2zg.jpg (ignore the GUI part on the right, that's probably a custom client)

You can see mtrek tactical screen here: http://randsinrepose.com/archives/hacking-on-mtrek/

Re: Tell HN: 17 years on the same game

#93

Post by fouc »

gwbas1c wrote: post #77

That's approximately 3.2 hours a day. (20000 / 17 / 52 / 7) Yikes! I wish I had 3.2 hours a day to spend on hobbies.

Yet the average American apparently watches 5 hours of TV a day according to popular media. 3.2 hours is doable in that sense :)

Re: Tell HN: 17 years on the same game

#94

Post by lucb1e »

kaybe wrote: post #57
c22 wrote: post #50

In 1997 I saw "For a good time telnet://moongate.net:4000" scribbled on a bathroom wall and it changed my life.

I got laughed at once people realized I was using telnet in the windows console to talk to them.

My dad still laughs at me for using that old MS DOS window. "Are you a computer expert or what?"

I use Linux.

Re: Tell HN: 17 years on the same game

#96

Post by hazeii »

dlhavema wrote: post #37

a question on maintenance and all that. what kind of machines are required to maintain these? the client talks about flash and or websockets, so some sort of servers have to be maintained... I know servers are fairly cheap now.. that would be a cool story too.. If its been running for 30 years, how much memory/storage does the world take? I had a Java programming examples book and it had a simple MUD implemented in a…

Shades (a commercial successful MUD that ran on British Telecom from the mid 80's) happy ran with 64 users on a Z80 with 256K RAM, 2Mb RAM disk and 10Mb HDD. It's actually still running (telnet://games.world.co.uk) though these days it's running on a Z80 emulator. Makes it a bit over 30 years old, and some of the old players still log in (just to see who's still around).

Disclaimer: I'm the author.

Re: Tell HN: 17 years on the same game

#97

Post by Arubis »

fouc wrote: post #91
ramblerman wrote: post #63

MUDs are why I am a programmer today. I had tried some programming in BASIC and I just didn't know what to write, or the things I did write seemed trivial and pointless. I was trying to become a max level on Medievia at about the same time, and the grinding (killing 1000 bunnies) was getting very boring. When I found out my ZMUD client offered some basic scripting and trigger capabilities, I set out to create my firs…

My first encounter with Forth was through the TinyMUCK codebase, the language was called MUF, and it blew my mind at the time that it was possible to code within the MUD game itself and use it right away.

Wow, memories! MUF taught me stack architecture. I remember printing out reams of its documentation (diagrams in ASCII art, IIRC) on paper and reading through it for fun, just trying to wrap my head around how this crazy thing was supposed to work.

Re: Tell HN: 17 years on the same game

#98

Post by d357r0y3r »

maxk42 wrote: post #26
d357r0y3r wrote: post #2

Hey, I still play MUDs too! It's an underappreciated kind of game, but I understand why it's not accessible to most. I play over at Dead of Night (deadofnight.org) - pop in, the multiclassing system is ridiculous and awesome. I think MUDs vs. Visual Games is analogous to Books vs. Movies. Yes, movies will always be able to achieve a level of graphical impressiveness that a book can't. What a movie can't do is give a…

Wow. Blast from the past. I played Dead of Night 20 years ago. Are psionists still useless at night?

Pure psis are, but no one plays pure psis - usually you combo it with shifter, warrior, or some other fighting class. Drain mana alone makes psi worth taking in a multi-class.

Re: Tell HN: 17 years on the same game

#99

Post by mywittyname »

nsb1 wrote: post #66
Falkon1313 wrote: post #58

In the mid-90s, I took my bored then-girlfriend to the local University library computer lab and introduced her to MUDs. When they shut off the building lights late that night I had to pry her away from the computer terminal. (Neither of us were students, so getting caught there after closing might not have been good.) A few years later, I would play up to 16 hours straight with a lady who lived 1000 miles away (and…

I, too, met my now-wife on a MUD back in the mid 90s. It's a great story to tell, especially now in the age of Match.com and the like. "How did you know she wasn't some 300lb neck-beard named Jerry?" "I didn't. But Jerry would have had to be one hell of an actor." We clocked in a lot of hours in that place before I packed my life up and drove 2500 miles to be together.

It's strange to look back on peoples' perceptions of people online 15+ years ago compared to now. Today, it's totally normal to meet other people online, but back then, most people (who weren't part of online communities) though everyone online was catfishing.
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