I'd like to preemptively request that this doesn't turn into a "single player games suck" vs. "single player games don't suck" debate.

Thanks.

Umm, I was kind of kidding around, I love single player games, just not as much as multiplayer, don't take things to seriously

You guys disappoint me. I thought you knew Flash better than that. Syemon, you can do MMORPG with Flash! Here are some examples: Dofus and Adventure Quest Online. But I'm warning you - it's insanely difficult to make MMORPG with Flash, especially when you're alone.

killsquad92 Wrote:so can anyone here point me in the direction of a good place to strat making a MUD?

I wrote a multithreaded MUD server not too long ago in Java. Networking is very difficult, and so is proper software design (I ended up taking it offline because the NPC code I had made by hacking up the user class was pretty junky).

I'd still start out very simple, with maybe a text adventure or something, get a handle on how to deal with rooms, NPCs, items, parsing, etc, and then take that experience and apply it to a multiplayer game.

ravuya Wrote:I wrote a multithreaded MUD server not too long ago in Java. Networking is very difficult, and so is proper software design (I ended up taking it offline because the NPC code I had made by hacking up the user class was pretty junky).

Took me one day of beej's BSD tutorial to learn the basics... the same day I read a protocol article and learned about how packets are indepth and how to do RAW data packets... (checksum spoofing and the like)

Then one month of heavily looking at source code to an online game gave me the design idea.

Once you have the coding knowledge and how to design it you are done. Just gotta have that extra push to actually program it.

Quote:I'd still start out very simple, with maybe a text adventure or something, get a handle on how to deal with rooms, NPCs, items, parsing, etc, and then take that experience and apply it to a multiplayer game.

Rooms = portals?
what the monkey heck is an NPC?
and items!?!? if the guy is doing flash do you think he'll be able to learn OpenGL or DirectX quickly?

learn C++, C++ will allow you to do calculations, and file manipulation cross-platform for any computer without code change.

learn OpenGL, OpenGL is all portable except context creation (OpenGL is graphics...)

you just need an event system. windows, mac and linux all have dev sites on how to setup OpenGL contexts and event handling systems.

Put it in a good design model and you are ready to roll, just need to know some good algebra.

All that should take you around 3 years... after that you are ready to start on a project so big... so bold... that I forgot what it was again...

NPC = non-playable character

BinarySpike Wrote:Rooms = portals?
what the monkey heck is an NPC?
and items!?!? if the guy is doing flash do you think he'll be able to learn OpenGL or DirectX quickly?

learn C++, C++ will allow you to do calculations, and file manipulation cross-platform for any computer without code change.

learn OpenGL, OpenGL is all portable except context creation (OpenGL is graphics...)

you just need an event system. windows, mac and linux all have dev sites on how to setup OpenGL contexts and event handling systems.

Put it in a good design model and you are ready to roll, just need to know some good algebra.

All that should take you around 3 years... after that you are ready to start on a project so big... so bold... that I forgot what it was again...

Good grief you talk a whole lot of rubbish, and then don't know the meaning of standard game terms like "NPC". If you're not going to be helpful, don't post at all. I'll delete the next one.

For the person who posted here asking how to make a MUD:

This thread (http://www.idevgames.com/forum/showthread.php?t=12362) will give you some helpful hints.

Hrm. I wonder if I should bother writing a kind of "learning" game skeleton in Python using Twisted. Might be something useful, but it'll certainly take time, and would probably favour readability over fast and dirty gameland hacks.

Java's getting very nice with 1.5, but I do really appreciate Python because of the low amount of maintenance work required (no ant, compiler massaging, etc) and the easy scripting (though Jython is no slouch).

I do still highly recommend that the OP start by trying to build a text adventure and get the basics of handling the various types of data (items, NPCs) and functionality (parsers, game loop) that you need for a bigger game later on. The important thing is getting the fundamentals of how a game works inside, not necessarily a particular API or programming language.

Quote:I wonder if I should bother writing a kind of "learning" game skeleton in Python using Twisted.

I would definitly be interested in reading that.