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Graphical Dungeons
Nov. 14th, 2005 11:58 am(Crossposted to both ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jcfiala and fiala_tech, as it pertains to both.)
It's interesting, playing Final Fantasy Online recently. It reminds me of when I was back in college, and really getting into MUDs, particulary the TinyMUD variety, which had recently just been created.
For those of you who are scratching your head, let's go off into that for a moment. A 'MUD' is short for Multi User Dungeon - they started out as adventure games, where you'ld encounter monsters, fight them, kill them, gain experience and gold, and so forth. All in text, and after a while you'ld raise up in level to become a Wizard, which would then allow you to create an area of your own, which other people could come into and adventure. There's a variety of different types of this, but sooner or later James Aspnes created the first TinyMUD - so named because the theory was that you could put it up after a week of coding, leave it up for a month, and then dispose of it when everyone became bored of it. It became more of a social environment than a combative one, not having any integral combat mechanics. Anyone could build parts of the world, but only if they gathered up enough pennies - which you got by solving puzzles other people had constructed, retrieving treasure objects (which had a number of pennies invested in their creation), and then sacrificing the object to get the reward. Once you had enough pennies, you could use them to create puzzle areas and homes of your own.
Eventually the puzzle-building part of the MUD went away, and the socializing and roleplaying took over, and the next several years showed various expansions of MUDS into different types of programmable objects and systems. All text-based, and a lot of fun. (As is partially shown by my GPA at the time.) These days it's rare to need pennies to construct an area to live in on a MUD - instead, there's usually a quota system limiting the number of objects you can make.
Anyway, I remember sitting around with some fellow MUDding enthusiasts back then (1990?), and commenting about graphical MUDS - we agreed that it would be vary difficult - I think we were thinking of static rooms, with standard descriptions/pictures that would be stored locally and called up by text - this was way before the current wide open broadband rates. Back then, it was all modems and local networks.
And now we've got MMORPGs - basically, the original combat MUDs all over again. You create a character, outfit it, and then go out into dangerous areas to beat up monsters and solve puzzles to gain gold and xp. So far (as far as I know) you can't create your own areas inside of a MMORPG for other people to enjoy, but who knows? One part of FF Online is the home room, which you can buy furniture for, which both gives you more storage for items, but also can give you 'feng shui'-like benefits. You even organize the items in your room, including putting things on top of other things.
I think we might see a more social/intractive building environment game, and I think it really could take off. A combination of the adventure/questing background, as well as the ability to change the world, and move it in a different direction. It's really just a question of who does it.
jcfiala and fiala_tech, as it pertains to both.)It's interesting, playing Final Fantasy Online recently. It reminds me of when I was back in college, and really getting into MUDs, particulary the TinyMUD variety, which had recently just been created.
For those of you who are scratching your head, let's go off into that for a moment. A 'MUD' is short for Multi User Dungeon - they started out as adventure games, where you'ld encounter monsters, fight them, kill them, gain experience and gold, and so forth. All in text, and after a while you'ld raise up in level to become a Wizard, which would then allow you to create an area of your own, which other people could come into and adventure. There's a variety of different types of this, but sooner or later James Aspnes created the first TinyMUD - so named because the theory was that you could put it up after a week of coding, leave it up for a month, and then dispose of it when everyone became bored of it. It became more of a social environment than a combative one, not having any integral combat mechanics. Anyone could build parts of the world, but only if they gathered up enough pennies - which you got by solving puzzles other people had constructed, retrieving treasure objects (which had a number of pennies invested in their creation), and then sacrificing the object to get the reward. Once you had enough pennies, you could use them to create puzzle areas and homes of your own.
Eventually the puzzle-building part of the MUD went away, and the socializing and roleplaying took over, and the next several years showed various expansions of MUDS into different types of programmable objects and systems. All text-based, and a lot of fun. (As is partially shown by my GPA at the time.) These days it's rare to need pennies to construct an area to live in on a MUD - instead, there's usually a quota system limiting the number of objects you can make.
Anyway, I remember sitting around with some fellow MUDding enthusiasts back then (1990?), and commenting about graphical MUDS - we agreed that it would be vary difficult - I think we were thinking of static rooms, with standard descriptions/pictures that would be stored locally and called up by text - this was way before the current wide open broadband rates. Back then, it was all modems and local networks.
And now we've got MMORPGs - basically, the original combat MUDs all over again. You create a character, outfit it, and then go out into dangerous areas to beat up monsters and solve puzzles to gain gold and xp. So far (as far as I know) you can't create your own areas inside of a MMORPG for other people to enjoy, but who knows? One part of FF Online is the home room, which you can buy furniture for, which both gives you more storage for items, but also can give you 'feng shui'-like benefits. You even organize the items in your room, including putting things on top of other things.
I think we might see a more social/intractive building environment game, and I think it really could take off. A combination of the adventure/questing background, as well as the ability to change the world, and move it in a different direction. It's really just a question of who does it.
