Working on a MUD engine

[hallsofvallhalla]

So i have picked back up my mud engine and have been making some strides on it. This engine is going to be a cross breed of a PBBG and a MUD. Very graphical but mud commands and such. Was wanting to make a post for any suggestions, good reads, pointers, ect.. on the full workings on a MUD and what MUD players love to see.

As a mud I have down a MASSIVE live of features, living breathing world that the players basically build and control. Also looking to make this the most unique style mud possible. It will be released as an engine as my game as a sample.

[Sharlenwar]

Hey Halls! Crazy! This is exactly the same idea that I had sitting here a few days ago. I've been milling on creating a game world again and so I'm looking to hop into something. So definitely would be interesting to see what we could do?

[hallsofvallhalla]

see here

http://indie-resource.com/forums/viewto ... =35&t=8843

[hallsofvallhalla]

Also hit me up if your interested in helping out or making a game with the engine. Would lI've to have something to model this after

[rockinliam]

What tech are you using?

[hallsofvallhalla]

it was

Tech
Web Based Front End(Javascript,HTML5)
.Net backend(do not let that scare you, i am using mono for any OS compatibility)
SignalR(for sockets)
MySQL mixed with a custom flat file database I have been building

but decided to switch to nodejs and mongo

[62896dude]

If you're using Mongo and JS, you should definitely look into Meteor.js. It's an incredible library that I think could make the process a lot easier if you wanted to take the time to learn it.

[hallsofvallhalla]

Yep I have used it before. I like the way it is moving development away from MVC so to speak.

[62896dude]

For sure, it's got some work to do still, but condensing MVC into one fluid process is kind of a dream come true haha.

[Jackolantern]

It is definitely something I have looked into multiple times, and I even worked for a while on that zombie MUD before petering out.

If you want my codebase that I worked-up Halls, you are welcome to it. However, the code is horrendous because I was just fooling around with Node when I started it, and I essentially ran into it while hardly understanding the platform and with no real plans. There is code duplication all over the place mostly relating to data access. I also did not know about Mongoose yet, so I keep opening MongoDB each time I needed to save something to the db, open the collection, etc. However, I did know that a MUD keeps its core data in memory and only backs-up to database every few minutes, so it isn't necessarily all over the place. I also think it uses a 3.x version of Express. The client is also a pile of event and jQuery callbacks because once again, I had no plan on how to structure the client-side JS.

It would not be useful as a starting point without serious refactoring. However, it could be useful for plundering logic from it. I had characters moving around the world, in-game world building, a preloader that loaded all game elements into memory on server start-up, player interactions, friend and ignore lists, player-to-player whispering, timed logouts, web-element chat boxes with colored text, graphical fair item trading, a quest engine with a quest-log that visibly tracks progress, web-based item and quest generation forms, health and energy regen over time, randomized instance items and much more.

I would not want to put it up publicly and insinuate that it is a working codebase to start from, so if you want to take a look, I can send it to you