Using MUD Code to Make Games

[Davaris]

Hi Everyone,
Before I try it, I was wondering of anyone could tell me if it is possible to modify one of the MUD engines on the net, so it could be used as a server for different types of games of the 2D or 3D variety? Or would it be easier to start from scratch?

What I'd like to do is create a server that controls different multiplayer games I've built. So a person can go into the first room and play game A, or he can go into the second room and play game B. I would also like the player to be able to control who is allowed to enter his game room and play that game with him.

[Backov]

So, you'd like to know whether unspecified code base A can support an unspecified number of unspecified multiplayer games.

You're in luck, the answer is YES. Go make your fortune.

To edit and not be such a dick:

I'm not sure your skill level from this post, but in a decent language (such as Java) I've had no problems at all making a very good lobby/game server for a turn based multiplayer game. Throw real time in the mix and it gets a little more demanding - but I'd say there's no chance you can use a mud server.

[MiceHead]

Back in the day, at Worlds Apart (http://www.worlds-apart.com/) (now Sony Online Denver), we used ColdMUD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ColdMUD) and a thin 2D TCP client to do something along those lines. That approach worked fine for strategy/puzzle games (a multiplayer Chess, for example) and RPGs. If we needed to do something really speedy (action minigame?), we'd probably spawn a new process, and have the client talk to that via UDP.

I'm not sure what's out there these days (this was coming on 10 years ago -- AFAIK, ColdMUD's descendant, Genesis is no longer being maintained), but using that system cut down on time-to-market by taking care of much of the ugly stuff. I'd at least take a look and see what's current before rolling your own.

[Davaris]

I'm not sure your skill level from this post, but in a decent language (such as Java) I've had no problems at all making a very good lobby/game server for a turn based multiplayer game. Throw real time in the mix and it gets a little more demanding -

I've already made (and given up on selling) my own single player RPG. So I can make single player games, but I'm clueless when it comes to networking. What I remember from playing MUDs years ago, is they were laggy, so I didn't know if that is still a problem.


but I'd say there's no chance you can use a mud server.

Bummer... Well that will save me exploring MUD engines.

What I want most is the game room idea, so players can play with their close friends. Many people complain about idiots ruining the massively multiplayer experience, so I thought I'd try something on a smaller scale; like playing table top D&D, or a board game with your friends.

Also I want to be able to make people pay to play, or pay in other ways (like the buying doubloons idea I saw in another thread), so single player games are out.

I think what I need to be able to do is use a single server to run more than one copy of the game and in each game there would be a maximum of ~6 players. So if there were 5 copies of the game running, you could have up to 30 people playing on one server at any time.

What I remember of MUDs, is you would have lots of people online in the same game, but you could only see the players who were in the same room as you. I want to do something similar, except each room would have its own copy of the game running. I have no idea if something like this is possible though.


EDIT:
Back in the day, at Worlds Apart (now Sony Online Denver), we used ColdMUD and a thin 2D TCP client to do something along those lines. That approach worked fine for strategy/puzzle games (a multiplayer Chess, for example) and RPGs. If we needed to do something really speedy (action minigame?), we'd probably spawn a new process, and have the client talk to that via UDP.

Interesting. Thanks for the link. :)

[vjvj]

Already been done a million times. Everquest, DaoC, World of Warcraft, and even the oldies like Meridian 59 are all just MUDs. Don't let the 3D graphics fool you.

[WickedEwok]

yeah, they're all very similar underneath. A few years ago, I did a continuum(subspace) game from some MUD network code that I had written up many years before that. Worked pretty good. In retrospect I was not experienced enough to handle all of the latency and synchronization issues that plagued the multiplayer aspect of the game. It ran fine through LAN though, and was basically subspace with quake2 weapons.

Before you do that though, try to understand how the MUD network code works. I wrote a skeletal network server/client wrapper first by looking at some MUD network code. The original intent was to write a MUD from scratch so I can learn how it all worked(which I did end up doing), but then I also realized how universal it was.

[whisperstorm]

You sound like a good candidate for Metaplace.
http://www.metaplace.com

So, if you can wait around for a few months you'll get an out of the box mmo system that you can adapt to your own needs via LUA.