BattleMUD

I was thinking up ideas for MUDs as I browsed old listings of MUDs, code bases, and other related material. In general, there is not a lot of upkeep (not for a simple mud) and it would be fun to work on a project with feedback from other people. Below is a spec for a small, albeit interesting MUD I’d like to design/play.

BattleMUD
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Genre: Science Fiction
Synopsis: Two enemy factions battle it out for control of space.

Ideas, Concepts, Features:
- Player Vs. Player will be key.
- Each player must be relatively equal to any other, thus relying more on skill then anything else.
- Most upgrades should pertain to the faction, not to the player.
- More factions may be added later as needed.
- If the game becomes overly decisive, a reset will occur to even everything.
- Space combat should be extremely interactive and real time.
- Spamming commands should never help a player.
- AI bots must be relatively challenging to keep the game interesting during off-peak hours.
- Exploration should be encouraged by game dynamics.
- Due to exploration being key, dynamic content should be able to be generated.
- Factions compete for control over foreign worlds for resources and technology.
- Accumulation of faction resources and technology must seriously affect game-play to make them desirable.
- Technology may never be lost once gained, but may only be gained once per take-over/exploration.
- NPCs should be able to explore and take-over too, but much more slowly
- Captures must be completed by venturing through a maze and activating the beacon at the end, or something similar.
- Use storyline to keep game interesting.
- All spacecraft must be templated for easy creation.
- Player upgrades would occur with stats or character modifications (upgraded AI chips, additional accelerated learning courses, etc)
- Player upgrades take time (and will count offline time too)
- Player death erases upgrades, nothing else.
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- At this point, I would assume there are two rival civilizations that exist.
- Each player should be either a clone or sophisticated robot. This ensures each player will be similar to any other.
- The civilizations are not clones or robots, they merely employ them (the PCs) as tools for war.
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- All data stored in database
- Interface database with web for interesting statistics, reports, etc.
- In-game and online development tracking.
- Script AI behavior with Lua or Ruby.
- Implement engine in C++.
- Establish good logging, timer, and other core software before programming game features.
- NPCs need to be able to interact heavily within the world.

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I have since started writing code for this. I use Subversion (svn) as a version control system, which lies http://www.xidus.net/repos/odis. It is, however, not currently set up for access. There is also a small interface for examining logs, tasks, and other database items at http://ew.xidus.net/battle/.