I've been brainstorming once again, and I think a MUD codebase could be used to create a very good single-player game. It would be similar to the Adventure-type games that came out long ago, but possibly more familiar to some of us. Besides that, there could still be multiplayer, only much more focused on group play, where a single group plays longer than a few minutes to level, similar I think to Baldur's Gate or Diablo.

There would have to be a path for the player to optionally follow, of course, but I think you could make many more things for the player to do. Most codebases have some sort of MProgs implimented, and it's much more easy to build in a MUD enviroment, IMO, because you can get more involved in the world than the person who slowly places that pond, some trees, a road from here to there, a few monsters to combat the player's boredom and call it an area.

I think I could enjoy playing a single-player MUD. What does everyone else think?

Hmm so that would make it a SUD? Maybe have some offshoots like SUX and MSORPG?

Anyways...

I think the most interesting aspect of your thought is the linear story for people to follow. I have often tried to come up with ways to add various forms of this into my game, I am assuming that "story-arc" games are set-up in a similar fashion but just allow for the players to take the game in different directions.

Players run through storyline A, when things wind down and the scenario is complete change up a bunch of the areas and have at it again.

Eagleon, if you will consider that in single player adventure RPGs, there is one (long) storyline and one adventurer (or a group of adventurers) playing against a world filled with challenging puzzles and graduated mobs.

If you try to express this idea in MUDs, you can have single players and/or groups of players play (shorter) area storylines in parallel at their own pace - not in competition with each other (ie. no pk, no psteal) - then you come very close to understanding the basic design philosophy of our own humble mud, which is an attempt to bring back respectability to the genre of games where you kill mobs and solve puzzles, rather than defend against some kid who has no life and no job who spends 10 times the amount of time you can power levelling who pkills you and steals all your best eq just to watch you squirm.

Yes, I think it is a good idea for a game.

Actually I was once thinking of doing something similar, just because it makes a nice (and simple) mud concept. The idea was that there would be a central "town" where players could meet up, buy equipment and form groups, before selecting a pre-generated "adventure module" to play together. As is usually the case, it never got beyond a basic design, but I always thought it would be interesting to see in action - the real problem being that you'd need a lot of adventure modules to keep people interested.

In fact I ended up copying some of the ideas across to the mud I'm currently developing, although it's not part of the main game. The idea is that there are a number of quests which can be accessed at certain points in the game, and each player (or group) gets their own version of the quest to complete - so they don't have to worry about other people wandering up and killing them (or otherwise ruining the quest) while they're trying to complete it.

Interestingly enough, I also recently read an interview with one of the World of Warcraft developers in which they described doing pretty much the same thing - they call it "instanced areas". The link I had to the interview no longer works, but here's the relevent portion:

RBridenbecker: How will you avoid player camping and kill stealing?

WoWDevTeam: This is one of the big problems of MMORPGs today. Here's our plan: Many of the areas of our world are instanced meaning that you and your friends can enter an instance that is essential a private copy of a section of the world. That being said, this is a social game, and too much instancing can be a bad thing. So large portions of the world are not instanced. Some player collision is good. It gives people an opportunity to make new friends. The key is that if you get to a location and find it 'camped' that you always have somewhere to go. Private instances guarantees there will always be somewhere for you to hunt in peace.

The article in question:

I suppose if you have advanced AIs, you could have whatever story arc the player goes through determined by the first quest AI a player talks to, and have variations of that same story arc based on the character's race and class. That way a person could experience the same story from several vantage points, but could initiate an entirely different story arc if they choose.

Not bad only took me 4 months to remember to post a link to this.



There are quite a variety of games on there, and of course that doesnt even begin to represent all of them that have been created. But definitely a good place to kill some time when the creative juices are not flowing.

Either that or, my personal preference, take an open-building approach to allow player's to construct their own "adventures". open building works well enough for many MUSHes, and I imagine such a situation (perhaps with rewards for completed "adventures"?) would probably work out. Has its own problems, of course, but it is an alternative to a building staff of 10 billion.

I think you could get by with a small number of missions, if they weren't linear.

People play quake 3 all day because the ending is never the same.

So rather then having one mission (get X from Y and bring it to Z) you could break it into the player groups deciding which role they would like to play.

Player Group 1: The team of adventurers
Player Group 2: The wizard king and his minions
Player Group 3: The gnomes that work in the tunnels

Each group has their own goal, so the story is not always the same.

People read books, you have to read to play a mud. If you think about it, a mud could actually become a well-written book if you knew what you were doing. You could actually take a mud, and with a lot of building, coding, and very good writers, re-create what happens in a book in a mud world. Or create your own and then write the book, heh.

Go online and look up IFC (or interactive fiction) basically, what they are is just that. Its an adventure game using text as muds do, and (depending on the game) incorporated combat, puzzles, story lines or other mudly aspects. There are some pretty fun and challenging ones out there, actually.

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