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Old 02-28-2009, 04:19 PM   #6
noodles
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Re: Any interest in a MUD programming contest?

No, nowhere that extensive. If Physmud actually exists.. but let's not get on that horse.

The quote was from an interactive fiction context. Traditionally, I think there's an expectation that a interactive fiction game is a more or less linear path through a story. In that context, making a game where the player has the ability to go off the path and interact with the world in unexpected ways, is considered to be creating a simulation of sorts.

I see a contest like this as having a desired starting basis with the goal that ideally an entry would implement something resembling it and try and make it interesting. Participants would have the freedom to apply creativity in meeting that theme in their entry. In the Magnetic Scrolls games the quote references, a player could manipulate objects to get them to exhibit properties that they could then take advantage of.

Bags made out of soft material.
Rat corpses with a pointy tail.
Ability to freeze the rat, break off a part.
The pointy tail end can be used to scratch a hole in the bag material.
Bag contents can then be accessed.

Now, this is a specific example where something has been built on a generic system. Entrants wouldn't necessarily have to implement this system and build an interesting use of it. If they had a more interesting idea along the same theme of a game world that players could interact with in a non-linear dynamic way, they could go out on a limb and do that.

Perhaps this is too unspecific for a contest though.
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