[Delerak]

Anyone have any crazy idea's of what the future holds for text-based gaming?

Are we going to someday be able to walk around with a pair of glasses that scroll a MUD and be able to think what we want to input into the terminal?

What about fiber optics and the speed at which computers are responding to voice communicated commands. Perhaps the future is a slew of strategy-based MUDs will you command armies with your voice, and the fastest on the draw wins the battles.

What do you think the future is for text-based gaming?

-D

[Jazuela]

I wish I could remember the name of the movie. But the general idea was that you had a brain worm - a quasi-electronic device stuck in your head, that connected you to the computer. Of course it also kept track of your thoughts, and dreams, and could even control them or manipulate them, heh. But I still think the idea of using the power of your own mind to play a mud is intriguing.

Sounds more like generic future of computing, to me. When such technologies get developed, it'll probably be done by someone outside the MUD community as a generic keyboard-replacing tool, rather than by a MUD coder.

Artificial intelligence could be a big thing for MUDs eventually. Imagine if 20% of the playerbase consisted of AI, and it was so well done that the only way you could tell was that those players mysteriously refused to go to reunions or even talk on the phone.

While we're on the fantasy subject of mind control and so forth, I discussed one neat idea in another thread: imagine a multilingual MUD, accepting connections from players of every language, and interpreting everything appropriately. A Chinese player chats something, and it appears on a U.S. player's screen in English.

Not quite so space-agey, consider the following. With current hard drives, it wouldn't be unfeasible for a MUD to include goodies like email, usenet, etc. Imagine going to your guild's usenet board and browsing the latest posts to rec.games.mud.development. Imagine going to the town post office and seeing that your mom has sent you an email. Imagine replying to that email without opening any other windows. (On the spacey fantasy side, imagine the email has 100% perfect spam filters)

Another thing which is no longer so infeasible, is the idea of MUD video camera. Your best pal is absent on the day of the big mob run, so you tell it to start recording. Then when your friend comes the next day, you give him the recording. Instead of pulling it up as a static, noncoloured, big textfile in notepad, your friend watches it in real time (or fast forwarded realtime) through the MUD itself, from a 3rd person viewpoint. (So you don't accidentally compromise those sexy tells you sent to that elf chick! And imagine this is all limitless: you can record as much as you want and archive as many recordings as you want.

Speaking of that, a great way to get some spotlight for the MUD community would be this: actually record exciting MUD events (mob runs, RP, etc.) and post it to Youtube. Include a sweet soundtrack and make sure the viewers will learn what's going on and how to learn more about MUDs.

[Luvan]

Originally Posted by I wish I could remember the name of the movie. But the general idea was that you had a brain worm - a quasi-electronic device stuck in your head, that connected you to the computer. Of course it also kept track of your thoughts, and dreams, and could even control them or manipulate them, heh. But I still think the idea of using the power of your own mind to play a mud is intriguing.

The matrix, Ghost in the shell? hehe.

The future of mudding.. I don't know. Most people I know consider mudding a lower form of gaming than 3D games. So perhaps to satisfy all of them a perfect engine will be made that can seemlessly integrate a text based and 3D enviroment.

[Delerak]

Johnny Mnemonic was very well done. For the year it was made they were talking about all sorts of stuff that hadn't been created yet. Like 80 GB hard-drives, which was in Johnnys brain.

[Lanthum]

Originally Posted by (erdos @ Feb. 25 2007,10:59) Imagine going to the town post office and seeing that your mom has sent you an email.  ...  (On the spacey fantasy side, imagine the email has 100% perfect spam filters)

So if it has 100% spam filters, then I really won't be getting that email from mom!

Seriously though, I agree that AI should and will become the next big, huge step for MUDs. I think that if this area alone increased 10-25% over the next few years, we might see an increase in players again!

I also LOVE the idea of "recording" events in-game so that they can be replayed. And then posting those events on your game's webpages and maybe even YouTube like ergos said! I think if I were trolling on YouTube and found a cool video like that - I would come and check it out. Might even be cool to transform that text then into a cool video like through Machinima, etc. Though if using Machinima as your medium for expressing the event in a graphical form - you would have to be careful that it was done in a way that the viewers didn't think your game was just using that engine.

[the_logos]

Erdos wrote:
<i>
Sounds more like generic future of computing, to me. When such technologies get developed, it'll probably be done by someone outside the MUD community as a generic keyboard-replacing tool, rather than by a MUD coder.
</i>

Yeah, that seems likely.

<i>

Artificial intelligence could be a big thing for MUDs eventually. Imagine if 20% of the playerbase consisted of AI, and it was so well done that the only way you could tell was that those players mysteriously refused to go to reunions or even talk on the phone.
</i>

This is likely to go the same way (developed outside MUDs, used by MUDers), though the sort of Turing-capable AI you're talking about is not exactly around the corner. AI of that magnitude is also surely going to be frightfully expensive in terms of CPU cycles and memory, so even if we as a species do develop Turing AI, it's not going to run on your average mud server for a long time after it's first developed, much less run well enough to support whole populations of Turing AI-based NPCs.

Online Alchemy is one of the companies I'm aware of working in this space (http://www.onlinealchemy.com/), but they're not working to create "true" (Turing) AI, just a good enough simulation. They're also not really aiming at massively multiplayer platforms because of the server cost.

--matt

[Drealoth]

These are some of the things I'd like to see in the future:

I think that one of the biggest problems with MUDs is that they aren't that fun without the people. Imagine your favourite MUD without the goal of interacting with other people - no guilds, no PvP, no chat even. Most of them would be pretty boring, running over and over through the same rooms, fighting enemies with two modes: wander and fight to the death. And as you play through this single player MUD, you can't leave a single mark on the world. Early MUDs had a lot of reason for this - not a lot of processing power or memory. Now, it's completely doable and would be a wonderful thing for almost any MUD. The big guns like Aardwolf or Achaea might have some troubles with this due to the size of their playerbases, but even then I think it's doable.

Going back to the AI idea, I think that mobs should interact more with the environment, each other and the player. It would be amazing to have a forest where the deer run away when they see a player, wolves hunt rabbits and the local goblin tribe viciously fights off the occasional wayward (NPC) orc that wanders into their domain. If the player catches a goblin guard unawares, he sounds an alarm and runs back to his lair to get more help to come after the intruder.

Another thing that I think would be a nice direction for MUDs to go in would be to interface more with the web. Telnet is great for real time interaction, but for larger scale things a web interface could be a great compliment. I have this vision of a MUD where within the game you manage adventuring and the normal MUD stuff, and through the web you can manage clans and guilds as well as even managing cities and wars.

[Toraux]

Drealoth, a lot of your ideas seem like the were photocopied right out of my head. I think the future of MU* games is enhanced interaction with the world. Future MMO games of all types should have functionality to allow players to impact and change the game world. This future isn't too far away... if I ever get a break from all this school stuff. Maybe in a few years when I graduate I'll finish implementing it.

-Toraux

[Malifax]

Mobs/NPCs interacting with mobs/NPCs doesn't get you much, IMHO. If it doesn't involve the players it's a game playing itself.

The biggest problem for text-based games is a dwindling audience. The kids who used to play MUDS now play WoW. If it's not graphic it's a second citizen in the gaming world. And, really, MUD hobbyists can't compete with the mega gaming companies, their financial resources and armies of designers and programmers. Make no mistake. It is a competition. As sad as it is to say, the text genre of online games is slowly dying.  There will always be MUDs out there. A few of them may even flourish. But unless Blizzard or someone decides to devote significant resources to a text game, you'll never see another major text-based game. Just my opinion, of course.

Now, to stay on topic...

Online  games, and especially MUDs, are about the players. The people you meet and the friends you make are what keep you in games, not web-based bells and whistles. A game has to have well-designed and interesting mechanics, but in my opinion, if we want the text genre of online games to live, we need to design and build games with THE goal of player collaboration. As it is, players walk their characters out to some area where they perform an activity that advances their level and skills. It's a solitary grind that separates players instead of bringing them together. The future of text-based games has to be about making advancement and conquest a group activity.

I think we in the MUD development community need to step back and take a look at what makes MMORPGs popular other than their graphical interfaces. One thing that made EQ wildly successful was the group hunts it necessitated. Groups of friends would set up times to get their PCs together to go killing. There are lots of other ideas and concepts incorporated into MMORPGs that can also be applied to MUDS, and I think it's important that we recognize and embrace them.

So, what is the future of text-based games? In my mind, the next generation of MUDs incorporates goal-oriented mechanics that allow PCs to learn anything simply by doing it. None of the "repping" point-gain that you see in learn-by-doing systems these days, but layers of abilities learned by using what you know. Each advancement activity is a mini-quest all it's own, where success requires multiple characters possessed of varied abilities and talents. Every facet of the game is multi-layered, creating interdependence among the characters. I think most of these things already exist. They just need to be taken to another level.

The future MUD will be accessible through a client that, when launched, teleports you to a multi-room "club" (complete with bar and other amenities) where you can chat OOC with other players. There's one board listing the drinks you can order and another listing the characters in the game.  Several arches, portals and doorways lead out of the room: One to character creation. One to the game message boards. One to in-house mail. One to an interactive game manual. One to player-created and administrated guild/house/clan areas. One to a room full of player website links. And one to the game, of course. The object is communication.

[shadowfyr]

I actually had a crazy idea myself. What does a text client need to do "really"?

1. Describe the general environment.
2. What you can see in the immediate area.
3. Let you interact with those things.
4. Tell you what directions you can move in.

Now.. Imagine a 3D text environment that figured, server side, what you could see in the near distance, which "generic" description to pull up for the terrain, etc., what was close enough to touch and which, as you approached walls, etc, changed the exit list to show that you can't pass through the wall. Someone on the mud I play at is working on just this idea. However... What makes that different than a MMO? Not much, since you could easilly drop a full CG system over top of it, replacing the generic text for the room, which tells you about the mountains, etc. with actual mountains, and so on. There is some suggestion that this is virtually what EQ did when they designed their system.

The future of text games might, if done right, be an environment that you could "choose" whether to use the text system, or the graphical system. Would be interesting to try it at least.

Nearly anything else you might do, is already in MMOs to one extent or another. With some exceptions. It would be a lot easier in text to burn down most of a city, then have it rebuilt, complete with new NPCs and stores, with a few specific types always appearing (an idea I am working on for an area, where actually solving one of the quests unleashes a major war, which then must have its perpetrators fought off, hopefully with the master behind it finally defeated and peace restored. Not going to make that easy though. lol) Doing that in a graphical system would require a lot of generic building designs, a much more limited number of possible shops, etc. Though, if you didn't mind it being somewhat generic... the items for sale wouldn't be as big a deal. Even things like EQ have names + a few basic icons, instead of one for every named item.

[Malifax]

Actually, I'm working on a "3D text" system for the game I'm designing. If you can build an engine to handle images based on the physics of position and spatial relation, why couldn't you do it in dynamic scrolling text? Instead of artists you need writers. There are no "obvious exits." You can walk/jog/run any cardinal direction (until you run into a wall or other barrier). Doors, paths and other go exits are in descriptions. It opens up all kinds of directional mechanical possibilities that you can't consider in a "roomed" environment. I'm working on a natural language parser as well. It, coupled with "3D text," means a demand for better hardware and a ton more memory, so I guess I'm definitely beginning to incorporate MMORPG stuff.

[Drealoth]

Malifax, I'd have to disagree with you on the game playing itself comment. Ambiance adds to the scene and increases immersion, and I think it's these details that really create a sense of depth. I can't think of a single video game outside of the racing genre where weather has any effect on the player, and yet it's included to create a sense of scene and paint a picture. Imagine what having a town where the NPCs went to work, went to stores to buy food and other things, went home and ate dinner with their families and went to sleep in their house at night. Although chances are this wouldn't have any effect on the players gameplay wise, I think that it would be incredible at getting the players interested in the world.

In the end, MUDs can't try to be graphical MMORPGs. Even the sum population of all of Iron Realm's very popular games combined isn't a drop in the bucket compared to major MMORPGs. Although this is a curse in terms of mainstream appeal, it's also a great opportunity. No longer are you making a game to appeal to 1 million people, you're creating one to appeal to 50. To do that you have to create something that these McMMO games can't offer. You can't have a million people trying to leave their mark on the game all at once, but you can sure as hell have 50.

[Malifax]

The thing I find  about the majority of players is that they don't pay a lot of attention to ambience. Heck, even room descriptions go unread a majority of the time. They MIGHT get read once, but after that they're pretty much ignored. I don't see how bots interacting with bots is different. It's cool to see the first time, but beyond that, if the bots don't offer players something to further their goals or SOME kind of interaction I don't think players will pay any attention. To me, the time it would take to implement interacting bots would be better spent adding a new class, skills, spells or other feature systems that directly involve the players.

MUDs will never equal MMORPG, but that doesn't mean we in the MUD community can't learn from MMORPGs and emulate some of their features in our text games. The text genre is dying. Second Life is the new "MUD." Unless a new text game offers something provokative and appealing, it's not going to attract a decent player base. Will any MUD ever attract 6 mil players? No. But I don't think an average in-game presence of 40 and daily peak of 100-150 is out of the question.

[shadowfyr]

Hmm. I can see the issue with NPC <> NPC interaction not meaning much. But I have a number of ideas I have been fiddling with that would make that more interesting. Imagine a city, broken off from the normal flow of time intentionally, so as to seperate it and a great evil from the world. The barrier is weakening though and portals are opening up. Now.. You have family factions, who own various shops, etc. in the city, you have the main temple, you have an underground secretly working for the evil that they tried to trap, the evil one himself, etc., all of it interconnected. Then imagine the quest system being more like EQ2, where you practically can't trip over a stick without a new quest being added to the list. Suddenly every NPC has something they would like you to do. Doing some of them hurts your status with the temple, others with specific factions, some might help hinder the interested of the evil one, inexplicably making NPCs that **seem** to be members of other factions more hostile too you, because even though they belong to a clan you "are" helping, they are also working for the main bad guy. Knowing whose bed someone is in, if you will, become very useful in such an environment, since if your intent is to hinder the return of the evil, you don't want to be accidentally helping it, and if you intend to help it, you might want to only help those people who are both members of useful faction *and* secretly working with the evil.

Of course, I am crazier than that, since I plan to have the evil, if awakened, burn down most of the city, then have it re-popped with something like 80% new NPCs, from templates, with new faction association, so you can't just learn whose who and have the grumpy guy selling Fish N Noodles on the corner "always" be a member of clan Okamora, but also a secret member of the cult of the big bad guy. It might turn out instead to be the nice lady down the street selling hats.

Fact is, MMOs don't generally have a lot of "we don't do anything at all" type NPCs in them. Nearly 90% of everything in most muds is stage props, including the NPCs. Mud coders are lazy in that respect, and so where the people making the first EQ, which seriously irritated me when looking for things to do in it. Stuff like Second Life... Its almost 100% player interaction, with the only exception being the RPG "area" some people built in part of it. Its a MUSH, rather than a MUD, including the capacity that a lot of MU types have to generate all your own areas. And at heart, I think people are looking for something in between. Heck, the place I play at, a true hack and slash, started out allowing houses as an alternate to lockers you had to pay for each day (or up to 7 in advance). They already had multiple rooms, which you could put exits and basic descriptions in. Soon after they aquired "guest" slots for up to 5 people. Now.. We have "look" items for things in the description and a open visitor list, for while you are logged in, that has no limit. About once a month someone posts things along the lines of controllable lighting. The latest where:

1. Ways to ties houses together, possibly with specific types of rooms you have to buy together and pay upkeep on.
2. Expansion of the "residential" section of the city, so that specific streets open up and your house it located in there according to how big it is.
3. Better control of weather, with some seperation from the mud's cycle, since you don't necessarilly want them to exactly mirror what the mud is doing.
4. NPCs you can "pay" to be maids, guards, etc.
5. Lighting again.

We like that its hack and slash, but a fairly good segment of the player base have houses that are 50, 100, 200+ rooms in size, with entire areas made up in them and would love to use them as a kind of seperate "MUSH" for when we are bored with the H&S stuff.

Even the MMOs get this and have elaborate guilds and housing, where items you collect all over the game world or craft with skills can be placed in them. MUDs... Have a real bad habit of saying, "We are an X, don't ask for any crap that isn't X." Real pain in the rear for anyone that isn't fixated 100% on only doing one kind of playing. Sure, you might have 50 players, but I will give odds that 25 of them **would** take advantage of other elements "if" they existed and didn't interfere directly with the rest of the game.

We have about that many active players and I would say at least 40 of them have detailed houses and do sometimes just hang around and chat, even if only 3-4 of them are vocal about new ideas to help them. The only time most are not idle or chatting is when new areas are opened or someone decides to kill a super mob somewhere. And imho, I would tend to think you would rather have them chatting than idle and thinking, "Why am I even here, since I don't do anything?"

[Malifax]

I agree wholeheartedly with the idea of interactive bots. We have them in Inferno and they're great for imparting information and spinning off large auto-quests. As I said, player interaction with gaming worlds is the key. MMO developers have gotten this concept. I'm not sure if it's a case that MUD developers haven't or they just haven't moved into that space. I don't think it's an issue of laziness. MUD developers just don't have the resources and manpower available to the big companies that dev MMOs. If you had a team 20 desigigners and a couple dozen full-time coders, you could build a MUD where every object in the game spawned an auto-quest. As it is, and the same goes with most MUD builders, it's just not possible. In this vein, I'm more than willing to help form/join a team of designers and coders aimed at building a REAL next generation MUD. I have lots of time to put into it. f a bunch of us collaborated we could do something big.I just don't think there's much interest.

[shadowfyr]

Yeah. For muds that have fixed staff and no volunteer coders, that is likely the case. The problem is, its not just there that you see generic stuff with some mobs glued onto them. I admit that since better quality control and new staff took over where I play things have gotten better, but there is **still** too many cases of, "Here are a bunch of rooms. I put monsters in them. One has a key you need to open the locked boxes in the other room. Go kill stuff. You will win a quest point if you find the key and open the box." Yawn!!

Mind you, part of the problem is that complex interaction wasn't built in to start with, so examples are lacking in how to do it, but still, some people are managing to make the rest look silly already and they are barely doing anything more interesting than the previous bunch. A lot of them get in, start coding, find out it is harder than they thought and just decide to finish without doing any of the interesting stuff they planned too, which is hardly helpful either.