Wanna help make a sub MUD?

[wetwarev7]

I've been kicking this idea around for a while now.

Just wondering if anyone was interested in helping me make a MUD based on the Silent Hunter series.

[Janus]

What is a MUD?

[FIREWALL]

It's that brown sticky stuff.:p

[NeonSamurai]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD

Simply its a multi user text based environment, effectivly they were the first type MMORPG (just no graphics of any kind). If any of you remember the very old text adventure games for pc, its pretty much the same idea/interface.

I would offer to help but i havent played around with such stuff for well over a decade (also I was more familiar with MOO programing). Plus I just don't have the time available.

[FIREWALL]

Got any pics ? ;)

[Janus]

Ah I see. I haven't heared this term before. It sounds interesting and I would like to help developing it but I don't really have time for such a complex project.

How do you want to realize it, some kind of forum?

[Captain Vlad]

MUD are usually 'real-time', not forum based.

Curious...exactly how are you wanting to set this up? Are you talking about a person in control of a submarine and her crew, or are you talking about several players crewing one submarine?

[wetwarev7]

MUD are usually 'real-time', not forum based.

Curious...exactly how are you wanting to set this up? Are you talking about a person in control of a submarine and her crew, or are you talking about several players crewing one submarine?

That's a good question.

At this point, I was only thinking of each player controlling thier own sub. I've been spending my time researching existing mud servers(circlemud, smaug, etc...) to see if one of them might be more easily converted to what I need than writing one from the ground up. And I've been focusing one how gameplay would actually work from a players' point of view, and what to do when someone logs off, how to navigate, detect contacts, etc.....

Now, your question brings up the topic of how would it handle grouping? :up:

I was kind of thinking people would just want to do the wolf pack type of grouping, but some might prefer to gather together in one single sub kinda like Dangerous Waters.

I think what it will all hinge around will be how to handle the subs themselves. I dont know of any existing muds that allow you to move around inside a moving vehicle......

[fatty]

Been mudding for 10 years, playing, administering, and developing. Let us know if this gets rolling.

[kiwi_2005]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD

Simply its a multi user text based environment, effectivly they were the first type MMORPG (just no graphics of any kind). If any of you remember the very old text adventure games for pc, its pretty much the same idea/interface.

I would offer to help but i havent played around with such stuff for well over a decade (also I was more familiar with MOO programing). Plus I just don't have the time available.

Yep i remeber them. The first three Zork rpg series were text base I use to love playing them. Then 4th of the series 'Return to Zork' went for the video interactive mouse clicking gameplay kinda like Mist which marked the end of text base games.

i think you can download Zork 1 to 3 for free now they came on floppydisks back then full game around 5mb.

[Blacklight]

Man does this bring me back..

I remember playing on Dragonmud back in the early 80's and up till maybe a few years ago, I was a regular in the Discworld Mud.:D

It's amazing that there are still skads of MUDs out there still just waiting to be explored. This is my favorite site for finding them.

http://www.mudconnect.com/

My favorite MUD client to use is gMUD. It's not pretty to look at, but it's free, full featured, and beats the hell out of playing in a Telnet client. :D

I never thought about doing a MUD based on subs. I'd love to help, but I know nothing of coding.

[wetwarev7]

Man does this bring me back..

I remember playing on Dragonmud back in the early 80's and up till maybe a few years ago, I was a regular in the Discworld Mud.:D

......

I never thought about doing a MUD based on subs. I'd love to help, but I know nothing of coding.

I'm still a regular on Discworld. Playing on it for a few years now, and every now and then I just get this jolt of an idea, thinking how great it would be if we were all in subs, working together to hunt down a convoy, not being able to communicate except via radio(and surfaced).

I've even gone sa far as to speculate how guild systems could be altered to resemble countries(USA, Germany, UK, Japanese, etc). The radio broadcasts would be heard by everyone on the surface, but could be encrypted and you never really know if the encryption of the day had been broken by another country.

My true dream would be for a 3D MMORPG based on Silent Hunter, but as I obviously don't have the money or know-how to pull that off, I'm thinking a MUD might be a bit more realistic goal at this point.

I have some experience programming C++ - just enough to know it aint no walk in the park. And I've never helped code or run a MUD, but I know enough to know that I would need help with that as well.

I'm still trying to decide between building it from the ground up or modifying an existing codebase. I've been looking into SMAUG, but mostly because it was the only one so far I was able to find some documentation for.

I really only need the multiplayer framework, as I could code everything else myself, having written a couple of text games allready(never released though), but most MUD codebases out there have all this other stuff allready coded into it that I would most likely have to rip out(which is never a good idea)

[M. Sarsfield]

I remember playing Jedi MUD and also on a friend's MUD that he copied from someone else and overhauled to his liking. This was back in 1994, though - my early years in college before I had a computer in my dorm room. Once I had my computer, games like Doom, X-Wing, Civilization, etc. ate up lots of gaming time.

I also tinkered with a space exploration MUD that was offered through a local dial-up internet service (around the same time). They limited you to a total of 80 "moves" (which was more like 80 commands) per day. They didn't want power gamers taking over the game. I thought it was lame.

[NeonSamurai]

My advice would be to plan out in detail exactly what you want this mud to be able to do, arange it in terms of what is needed most to least. Then try to find a pre existing core that most closely matches what you want to do. That will save a heck of alot of coding. But it can also make life more difficult by having to adapt the existing code, so you may want to plan on having use a generic/basic core (you probably will have to anyhow as I can't think of one off hand that would adapt well to a sub sim, other then maybe the battletech mu* core).

Before doing any major coding you will need to come up with a full rules set first, which may take a lot of time depending on how complex you want to make it (assuming you dont borrow it from a wargame or other source). You also need to determine stuff like if you want to be able to wander around inside the sub, multiplayer capability, etc

Explorable subs could be made into fixed multi chamber rooms, with a lockable connection to "home port" for when the sub is at dock (that or have the rooms dynamicly create connections to "home port" rooms), and with command positions in the room that switch or teleport the player avatar to command screens (navigation, sonar, radar, periscope, etc).

I wish I could help you out as I said before, I do have some expirence with converting cores (i did play around with the battlefield core a while back with some friends). But I'm super rusty, and I just don't have the time for such a project.

[wetwarev7]

OK, after a bit of research, I think I'm just gonna have to do this from scratch.

I've got a certification test coming up in about a month that I need to study for, then I'll probably start coding. If anyone knows of a good C++ tutorial regarding making a simple multiconnection telnet server, let me know.

Basically, I've decided to just go with telnet at this point so I don't have to write a client as well.

Features I'm wanting to put in:

Overall, a Silent Hunter feel to it. American, German, British, Japanese subs.

Subs should have all major compartments that you can walk around in and interact with all the gadgets. (remember, this is text based. I use the term 'walk' loosely :lol: )

Probably start off with a large but fictional area. Real world data can be possibly used at a later date.

Every player should have thier own sub. Players might be able to visit others' subs, but not untill I can think of something to prevent getting stuck inside someone's sub while they are logged off, or forced to be on someones' patrol with no way to get home.

You should only be able to communicate with others that are not in the same sub as you via the radio(and surfaced). Every nation will have it's own freqs, and will be encrypted. The server should allow enemies to 'break' the code every so often at random. You may or may not know that the enemy(other nations) can understand your transmissions. This should encourage wolfpacks and scanning all freqs.

Travel will be in real time. The area will be large enough to allow for patrols to last for days, but not so large that are forced to sit there with nothing to do for hours at a time.

NPCs(ships for us to sink) will probably be randomly generated just outside sensor range, and will need to have a heading that makes sense(so you can track them)

When in port, you can walk around and visit other peoples 'offices' (which may or may not replace housing)

Sounds should be possible, so we should be able to sit at the hydrophones( and get pinged).

Overall, I don't think it will be too much work. I allready have a good understanding of how to code everything but the server portion of it. Most time spent on making a modern game is the graphics, and being a text game, I won't have to worry about this. Comparitivly, I just need to write room descriptions for a handfull of compartments on the subs and some ports. If anyone would like to help code any of this(particularly the server portion), or help write room/sub descriptions, please let me know.

[Raptor1]

That sounds good, But I think that the players should be more involved in the codebreaking, how about having the game randomly generate a codebook for a given month or week, which will be shown to the players of the specific side, and having the players encode and decode their messeges, so a player of another side can view the encrypted messege, but not be able to read it (Ofcourse, Line-of-Sight messeges will be unencrypted and allow easier communications within a wolfpack), and then have the players try to break the other side's communications somehow?