Seven months ago, I embarked on an attempt to create a MMORPG using drupal as a platform.
I am to the point where I need people experienced with drupal to take a look and test and poke. So far, only the artists who contributed have been invited and for the most part they like it, but the main complaint seems to be, 'I KEEP GETTING KILLED'. That is easy to fix.
If you don't mind a limited world, with limited monsters, and items, I would love your opinion and testing.
Things to keep in mind.
1)Limit yourself to a few characters.. There is a build in restriction to one character at the moment, but anyone with a knowledge of Drupal can figure out a simple cheat to get around this.. I just have been lazy and have not put a restriction on the content type of 'character' to a role of 'authenticated' user. Just please don't create 20 players and go storming around.. It's just going to be spam city for you and anyone else in the rooms.
2)Feel free to look for cheats hacks and security holes.
3)It's supposed to be puzzling.
I am also looking for 1 or more long term professional partners who have a passion for this sort of thing, and are experts at jquery and PHP and who promise not to laugh at some of my coding to help develop. If you are interested, please let me know!
Lastly, the modules used to make the game are very customized to the site and would fail big time without a ton of documentation which I don't have time to write so I am not releasing them at the present time.
The site is http://www.in-seine.com
Comments
This is looking good.
This is looking good. Congratulations on the alpha and good luck! :)
checking it out. creating
checking it out. creating account. will see if I have time to test. cool concept.
Tweaked.
Just updating.. Toned down the monsters. Too hard to get started.. Always almost dead. Healing skills now get experience when you heal yourself or others. Doing more balance tweaking to make gameplay smoother and more exciting.
Site does not look like a
Site does not look like a game.
Visit my under-construction site. Let me know what you think. Thanks.
You haven't played enough
You haven't played enough games, bub. Sorry.
EDIT: Though, you get big bonus points for making a KISS.
heh
Good response, that.
I admit I've avoided checking this game out - partly because of time issues, partly because I have my own ideas when it comes to Drupal RPGs - but based on that one negative comment I finally went out today and read all the introductory material. I am pleasantly surprised and impressed with the imagination shown here. I think it's a great approach to crossing the player/character boundary. I'll be back to help test the system.
It's a living book I guess.
My goal was to sort of create a novel that you could climb into and become part of so no I wanted to avoid the standard front page you see for MMORPG's. That said, once inside, there is no denying the similarity to the old MUDS of the past. I add in a ton of extras such as stealth, real time distance travel etc. The way I set up the layering of content allows for massive variation in story and description. There is no "You see lots of passages all of which look alike". (I can't remember the exact quote)... So overtime, the thing will get more and more variable. Grill is hot.. got to run.
You are likely to be eaten by
You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Ah!
Personally.. the man with the bag was a lot more curious to me.. I never did find out what was in that bag... Lord knows I tried.
Adding in Market
I finished the story module that lends missions and stories.. This can be found in the asylum and also when you first start the 'game'. Now starting the market module and hopefully done soon. Will introduce currency to the 'game' and points of sale such as merchants and markets where you can sell and buy items. Working to figure out a way to have prices fluctuate based on item availability. Items are available based on the tech level of the market. So don't expect to fund power armor for sale at the roadside Sugar Shack.
After this, I'll finish the console module that will allow you to do a lot of commands from the 'command line' like /heal luther and /attack janice etc. Once that is done.. then system to allow users to create rooms, items and monsters without crazy results.. (ie Machine Gun +300) I think I'll start with letting users create apartments, clothing, etc.
So far no major bugs reported.. Few cheats out there I have to fix but they are minor.
Hrm...
I tried creating a user account but the captcha has rejected me a number of times. :\
http://shrthnd.tumblr.com/
same here
Captcha seems busted on user registration.
Is this project still being developed?
Don't give up!
I made it through the captcha. The issue seemed to have something to do with a popup I had to allow after the captcha failed once, and failed to load the second time.
Actually, I was surprised at the level of work that has gone into this so far.
http://shrthnd.tumblr.com/
I can't get past the Captcha
I can't get past the Captcha either - really wanted to check this out :(
Hong Kong Drupal Developer
...
Well, I made my first 'replicant,' and now I've died. I'll be playing some more later.
http://shrthnd.tumblr.com/
game modules
A Drupal MUD - what a great idea! Does it build on CCK?
Is there a project on drupal.org ?
Thanks!
Benjamin
No, it does not use CCK for
No, it does not use CCK for much. (I asked this a long time ago.)
AFAIK, there is not a project page for this project, and the site appears to be offline.
You could make your own MUD using PHP and just use Drupal for the login portion and the database tables. That seems to be the best option IMHO.
Visit my under-construction site. Let me know what you think. Thanks.
Interesting Option...
Hi,
I am a Java Jockey by trade who continues to be intrigued by the strides PHP is making as a language, not to mention Drupal 7, which I have adopted as my default CMS now for sites I am too lazy to code from scratch.
Anyway, enough about me, I checked out the demo and I like it too! It reminds me a little of a MUD style game I wrote in college. As a Drupal and PHP enthusiast however, I am actually more interested in Tapskill's suggestion of using PHP to "tap" the Drupal database and to build something from that. This seems very doable and I have purchased several books on the subject, but I keep getting distracted from this goal. I guess what I need is either (1) A class and/or (2) a Web Tutorial in Drupal hacking for this purpose so that I can motivate myself to take the plunge into PHP.
Any takers?
There is already a framework
There is already a framework in Drupal 6 core (and most likely 5 and 7) that lets you call functions to check things like whether or not the user is signed in, what the username is, and so on. A lot of Drupal's code is so modular you can easily rip it from the system or call it directly without much worry about dependencies.
I have not used D7 much, but the code seems very similar to D6 when it comes to the bootstrap functions. You should look into how all of that works. Look at how the index.php file works and try making pages which use custom php files, like the path "game" could redirect to game.php and any subsections could be sent as the path argument in the arg() function. Just a quick example to get you started..
Visit my under-construction site. Let me know what you think. Thanks.
It's much easier to use "Back
It's much easier to use "Back Reference" module if you want MUD-like system than using PHP as a MUD base.
Than the only thing you have to do is a port of functions to make actions, as with "Back reference" you have good and stable navigation through the world.
Cookie data may be more
Cookie data may be more efficient for some of the navigation issues.
I also think I see a use for the module you mentioned, but it would not be easier IMO, because it seems a bit more complex than just coding in PHP files themselves. Also, it seems like, if you were worried about security, you would store the location of the player in the database and load that location every time you need to check it.
Visit my under-construction site. Let me know what you think. Thanks.
You have right, but just for
You have right, but just for building complex world with many "doors" it's nearly perfect... - it eliminates problem of "empty links".
Without data in external tables and additional php code you can't build any game in such style - because of just lack of action... ok, maybe just simple "paragraph book" game, without any random events.
Open to either approach...
I'm not sure I really want to create a MUD - I am looking to create a game which is a little more social / mobile in nature, capable of bursting to millions of users for a few hours, and then back to low burn 0 to 100 users for normal mode. I figure a cheap (as in cheap to host) Drupal front end for off-peak presence might work, with links into a higher performance back-end cloud based game system might work. The trick would be to hook the high perf back-end beast system into the lower perf (albeit far cheaper) Drupal front end. This is where I would want to look into the idea of "Tapping" the Drupal database with some front end hooks that would interface to a higher perf scalable back-end.
services
look at the services module. http://drupal.org/project/services
Aaron Winborn
Drupal Multimedia (my book, available now!)
AaronWinborn.com
Advomatic
Hi, sorry for delay...
I have been on vacation and had no wifi available. The project uses CCK but only as way to add fields to objects..
I have stalled out on this website.. It just doesn't have enough traffic to keep me interested.
I am totally about getting the code onto a project page at this point. Presently it is highly customized to the website but I think it would be awesome to get it 'drupalized' to work on any drupal installation.. For example, presently, it requires theme and templates to make it work. Easy enough, but it would be great to be able to drop into any theme...
I just come from the era when running a MUD required some high priviledge and just think it would be really cool to let anyone with a web server account, run one..
That all said, the code would probably crash a typical webserver running with 50+ people. In order to have real time chat and combat, I used a polling system whereby jquery polls the server every 5 secs looking for updates.. it was the only way I could figure out how to do it..
I'll look into starting a project page and placing the project onto it as a sandbox.. Would love to see some of you who really know PHP well, take it to the next level.
separating content from structure
Yeah! It sounds like the next iteration is to separate the content (the apocalypse-related stuff) from the structure (places, portals, items, money). I'd love to help out with this process. Let us know when you have the code in a repository somewhere. :)
Benjamin