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So between Dragon Con, issues at work, and my lack of development here lately I spent the last few days thinking on what the hell I am doing. Why am I in game development? What is keeping me from working on something? What am I missing? What do I want to build?

I spent some time playing some MUDS, browser games, ect.. and some were very impressive while most were let downs. The ones that did impress like Iron Realms were just amazing how rich the worlds were. How many players they had and how interactive they were. That is why I got into development. Bringing a living breathing world to the players. Regardless of graphics,text, ect... The immersive gameplay and the feeling of being a part of something bigger than you and felt real was always the real course.
I have spent years looking for this...or at least I thought. How long have I went from project to project, idea to idea, forum to forum searching and building something I thought I wanted. Sure it was all worth it as I have learned soooo much. Would not change it for the world. Teaching is what I like best, showing people how to build their own worlds can be just as refreshing.

It is time however to come out of hiding and get back to some development. Time to finish some things promised. I am a RPG fan at heart and still have the burning desire to build a breathing world so I have come up with some plans to build a HTML5 MUD. Not only for my own world but so other people can build their own. Once somewhat completed I will release the engine and some tutorials to the public. For now though I want to build Forsaken Sanctum on it. It will be semi text slightly graphical with some rogue-like elements. It will be simple yet usable and immersive.

For anyone looking for a project that wants to undertake this task with me I will need world builders and ideas. Not sure how much coding is required as I plan on writing 99% of it. I will be using HTML5, Javascript, and Node. Not sure what else to add here as of now. Will have more info shortly and a GDD along with a online project tracker.

I know I am new here and may not know the full story and all, but from what I have read and viewed from here, I personally think that you should not go with a MUD type of game, but rather use what you have done and finish a game of your own. And from it, provide the details of how it is being done (thus the teaching aspect). I'm not knocking you off, I have been doing the same... project to project, and so on with out getting to that last step for one reason or another. Given the technology available and seeing your skills, I believe you can finish one off, and rather a good one, with some graphical interaction so as to not be all that much of a MUD (or of the old MUD's I am thinking of).

Its what I am doing now anyways. Tried varies means of getting my story world out there, but I think finally I can get it out there now without the need of teams or a key person's knowledge (ie: networking or shaders, etc). Make your hobby into a nice side business to reward yourself for your effort, time and passion.

I actually have to go the other way and wholeheartedly suggest a MUD. In my own opinion (and we know how much those are worth) a MUD is pretty much the only way 99% of small hobbyist teams can ever make an all-original MMORPG outside of PBBGs. There are just so many art assets to make, and we all know how well hobbyist artist/hobbyist coder teams work out lol. Even making an original graphical MMO that looks weak and outdated is too much work for most teams.

And if you do end up making tutorials and sharing the code, I would be very interested. I would also love to see how you overcome the nature of Node to create a background processing loop for things like mob behavior and other server-pushed events that are not triggered by players. My best idea that was 100% in Node involved some clever logic involving a short-timered setInterval() method that does the updating as well as anti-starvation logic using flags in other event handlers and the process.nextTick() function.

Ah I should clarify, with MUD's, I am use to the text based only ones, with no graphics. But fortunately with mobile devices, the graphics do not need to be super (at this time), so just renderings with available models should be possible (ie: Poser/DAZ). Combat could go with real-time, which would use some other simple graphics.

Yes I am speaking of a semi graphical mud. Mainly having a somewhat graphical map to help the locations be a little less confusing.

@Jack - i have a different idea I am going to take on how to handle all the multiple processes going on. Will update when I get that far.

I personally feel that beyond a GUI interface and a mapping system like you mention, Halls, a MUD should probably stay away from most graphics. The more graphics you add, the more your game will be lined-up to compete with other fully-graphical MMOs. If it stays largely text-based, it distinguishes itself from graphical MMOs. Of course you will lose some potential players by being text-based, but I still believe an all-original MUD that leverages HTML5 interfaces and websockets while taking liberties with the MUD formula could be successful.

agreed, the only graphics I am having is a map system and am creating a quite neat system. Hope to have some screens very soon.

heres a quick shot of the map system. It is completely held on the server and handed to each client as needed and built by the client. There are 144 spots to visit per map, 144 maps per zone and an unlimited amount of zones possible. 5 zones is over 100,000 spots to visit in about a total of 300k filesize. The single map is only about 200 bytes total.

So far anyways. It will grow as features do no doubt.

Wow, very cool!

Nice!