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Old 02-18-2005, 11:47 PM   #1
Hyptosis
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Why is it so hard to build a team for a simple graphical mud? I've seen a couple that were half finished projects but never anything with any content. However, simple image displaying one's don't seem lik ethey'd be much more complicating then normal ones. I'm an artist, so I have no idea how difficult this might be to code.

examples would be like hallow, or karchan.
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Old 02-19-2005, 05:43 AM   #2
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If you are interested in drawing graphics for a mud, check out our project at

Screenshots at:


We are in need of talented people to help out with drawing graphics for the game.

Best wishes,
Emil
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Old 02-19-2005, 11:59 AM   #3
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Very cool, and very similar to what I was talking about. Might I ask how many people are on the team as of now?
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Old 02-19-2005, 12:44 PM   #4
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I'm not building a traditional "graphical" mud, but I am putting together an original, new mud that will use original artwork in it's custom client and on the web.

Althought I am probably 1-2 months away from putting together the final information for that part of the project and advertising for it (though I already have 1 artist and 1 musician), if you are looking to do original artwork of a medieval/fantasy nature, I would be happy to talk to you about it.

Feel free to send me an email at: and we can discuss it some more.
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Old 02-19-2005, 01:05 PM   #5
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For the last two years we have been ranging from 2-6 people. We have just recently set together a new staff, with our first meeting tomorrow (sunday). We will be around 8 people but are looking for more dedicated souls to join our merry crew. And most of all we need talented graphical artists. We might even be able to pay you some for graphics (the rest of the staff are volunteers btw).
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Old 02-19-2005, 01:52 PM   #6
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Well, there's your problem right there.

Most muds are built on existing code bases, and there aren't exactly all that many graphical mud code bases available. Writing a new codebase from scratch is not hard but certainly tedious, and adding a graphical client on top of that adds a whole extra piece of software that you have to develop. So really, it's a lot of work. On top of that you probably find that the people in the MUD community don't care all that much about graphics, and the people in the game development community often don't care much about MUDs, so recruitment is non-trivial.
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Old 02-19-2005, 02:04 PM   #7
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One of the largest problems I've had are over zealous coders who refuse do to something simple and functional, but rather want something flashing and ground breakiung. Which just isn't going to be happening.

check out for something similar to what I'm talking about, they don't even use a custom client, however it wouldn't take much to make theirt game relaly something,h owever it hasn't changed in five years from what it is
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Old 02-19-2005, 03:33 PM   #8
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I've always wanted to create a simple mud, small and let it grow out, with simple images as well. I've worked with a lot of coders in the past, and i'm guessing this isn't as easy and simple as it seems as every single one of them give up before we're done. One time we got far enough I thought it was a sure thing, and bought two servers and then they flaked out on me at the end. I'd done hundreds, maybe a thousand images for the game. What is the key to finding someone who would be interested in this, and what code base would you suggest we use?

I used to work on a mud called Karchan. It was very cool and I enjoyed it a lot. Games have come a long way since then, but I recently saw Karchan still had players! As simple, and as buggy as it is. It was still running! Pretty cool. I'd always wanted to make some kind of game similar. Makes me remember the days when a simple text mud and some goblins was all you needed to have fun.




That second link may make more sense to some of you than it did to me. In any event, it was cool of 'karn' to release it. I've been working with a group of programers, artists, and musicians, however they have been stumped on the whole network side of things.

Even if the game was very simple, there were ideas we had to keep interest and make it nice. I always thought a neat paperdoll system would be cool. Similar to the diablo games, or maybe how gaiaonline has theirs set up. Let me find some samples. You can see how simple, yet effective they are.





Granted I'm not into the anime thing. You can see what I mean, there is a lot of potential for greatness there. Gaia is incredibly popular because of this simple effect. course, they're not a game but a forum, but you know what I mean I hope.

I've done paperdoll art in the past, although I have no samples immediately available, but I have a ton of other samples of my work at my site.
- -

I don't really know where I'm going with this, just wondering if anyone out there has wanted to make a similar game. I like the idea of keeping it simple first. Then adding on eyecandy and complex battle plans and flashy blah blah blah. In any event, hope I made my point. =D I'd love to chat with some folks about this, so please let me know what you guys think. You know how these pipe dreams are.
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Old 03-05-2005, 02:08 PM   #9
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I started my game programming making a graphical mud. It was simple, using a tile based map such each point on an x,y coordinate system was linked to either grass, water, a tree, etc. Such as used in something like the GBA Zelda games. Everything was going well, I made the object-handling code, the server, and the client.... But then came the problems. For a while I couldn't figure out how to easily handle more than one user at a time. I thought I could make the main code, then do that later. It wasn't till it was too late that I realized I should have done that first.

Now that I have the core of my MUD to use, I plan to sometime in the future convert it into a Graphical MUD. It really wouldn't be too hard now(relatively speaking), but I just don't have the time to do all the converting. Also I'm not a very good graphical artist, so it takes me years to do things. That's just my experience making a graphical MUD. I really don't think it would be too hard, but I did make my MUD entirely on my own... so I know everything about it.
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Old 03-05-2005, 03:35 PM   #10
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Quick OT question...what is the difference between an MMORPG and the Graphical Mud?
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Old 03-05-2005, 03:45 PM   #11
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Old 03-06-2005, 12:30 AM   #12
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I have been playing/coding MUDs now for a good 10 years. I have also written a front end client to a BBS and database backend which is much like the system of a mud, you have a server and a client. Here are my thoughts and comments.

A graphical MUD is nothing more than a fancy client. The hardest part of a developing a good f/x MUD is to have a kickass client. You can take any existing mud codebase or write your own codebase and have it send the necessary commands to the client. So instead of sending the socket "You miss a bunnyhog", you send a code that the client interprets as 'load and display the missed swing weapon graphics'. So it's not really hard to code a f/x mud, it's just lengthy to code the client.

The most important part to me is security. You have to keep everything on the server and not allow the client to modiy any thing permanently. Treat it like a heads up display.

One good thing about a good client, is that it takes a big load off the server. No nasty color to parse, no having to do massive queries or load everything into memory, you get to use the player's memory and players processing power to do a lot of the mudane, and most used commands.

I wish there were more programmers out there interested in developing graphical clients for existing muds. It would be so painfully simple to convert a total text mud into one that has a Mode option of graphical, and all it would need to do is send codes in place of or even just before the existing text. If I wasn't so #### busy adding features to the mud I code on, I'd do it.

Tank
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Old 03-08-2005, 11:57 PM   #13
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A truly great client/server game would not just involve sending 'codes' to the client. It would involve the client sending codes back too... For example, in my game (which Hyptosis is doing the art for now, man is he fantastic...) when you want to edit a room, you send the command ROOM EDIT to the server. The server responds by sending a "Launch the room editor, existing name is Main Street, existing description is blah, existing image is blah, etc" This causes the client to launch a new window to allow editing of the room. The client is not blocked, however, and can continue to use the game from the main window.

When the client is done editing the room and clicks OK, the client sends a "ok i'm done editing the room, the new name is Broad Street' command back to the server, which then revalidates the clients access to make the change, the commits the change, then sends a notification back to the client's main window that the name was changed.

Anyway, I hope this description helps someone out there. Our game in progress is at if you want to see this stuff in action, log in and try the FACECHOOSER command, it works similarly to what I described here.
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Old 03-09-2005, 03:14 PM   #14
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I think what he meant was the accepted maxim that you can "Never trust the client," since it's out of your control once the players have it.

--matt
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Old 03-10-2005, 12:31 AM   #15
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