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[freeformschooler]

Wait a minute, if a webpage/website/groups represent a room/dungeon, what's the role of a monster/enemy/NPC? They are just random collections of keywords meshup together? Shouldn't there be a method about how (constructor) and how often to generate a mob in MUD?

Ideally, yes. I think one of the easier ways is just constructing them from wikipedia articles, like the previously mentioned game did.

[darkrider2]

The Ad Charges!
The ad-blocker is surprised!
You strike the ad in the hyperlink with the mouse!
The Hyperlink flies of in a sailing arc!
Ad has been struck down.

[FunctionZero]

The final boss of the game:

[Soulwynd]

Wait a minute, if a webpage/website/groups represent a room/dungeon, what's the role of a monster/enemy/NPC? They are just random collections of keywords meshup together? Shouldn't there be a method about how (constructor) and how often to generate a mob in MUD?

Yup, I will have to create a constructor that will make 'relevant' npcs based on the webpage. Like I said, you do have to catalog which words can become npcs/monsters. Otherwise you get silly things as monsters... Like a rainbow laboratory building with goat legs... Altho... I think that would be kind of funny.

[darkrider2]

yeah unless the constructor can do it all coherently you'll end up with missingo's and whatnot all over the place.

[counting]

Hilarious insure, and it's so dorfy . Let's keep that a good feature. But what constituent an passive object or a NPC also needs to be classified. What about their properties? Moveable, get-able, eatable, etc. We need to not just think in MUD term, but think about how the element of keywords actually represent/function in a webpage. (Like a monster/item's role related to a room)

I've just though about using word cloud generator to identify the objects and which keywords should be monsters center should relevant with this process. Determine what is passive and active. (Anyone want to look into word cloud generator code to modify it?)

And just made a DF front page word cloud.
http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/3895904/DF_front_page
Looks like Toady is going to be the BOSS monster, fighting ONE and NOW.

And my Zen blog will look like
http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/3895913/Crazy_Zen_Hospital
So Zen Master Nagasena will fight you with questions of teachings to understand answer in everything Buddhism.

[Soulwynd]

A cloud generator was the first thing I thought of programming when starting this.

I mean, the first version of the MOO will only allow you to open pages and see what words are the most common.

Then I can go from there.


Further implementation ideas:

Areas will be hierarchical - Similar to how DNS records are kept in real life, areas will belong to domains. For example: com, org, edu, info are primary domains. br, cx, it, uk, fr are also primary domains. A place such as "theregister.co.uk" is in the "uk" primary domain and 2 subdomains of depth. The www subdomain will be ignored for the sake of sanity. As a further example, the domain "forum.theregister.co.uk" will be inside the "theregister.co.uk" area.

Primary & Subdomains that do not return webpages will be safe havens - With the "theregister.co.uk" example, co.uk doesn't return a webpage, so it's a domain in which you can group up with other players before going into theregister subdomain. Primary domains never turn pages and as suh, com, org, eu, info, br, cx, uk, etc will be the topmost primary areas which you can go from.

Domain Teleporter - Everyone will start with this device. It will allow you to teleport up and down a given domain. Teleportation will be free in safe-haven domains, but they will either have a cost or a timer once you go into a generated area. For example, teleporting down from "uk" to "co.uk" will be free. Teleporting into "theregister.co.uk" from "co.uk" will also be free. But teleporting out of "theregister.co.uk" back up to "co.uk" will either have a timer or a cost.

Size of a given area/dungeon will be based on the number of valid links it contains - Forums will be gargantuan and very dangerous places. Same with search engine pages.

Links will be doorways generated from the words they contain - If the link is the site name, or if the link has no words that can be used, it will be generated based on random words (not present in links) from the site. Preferably nearby words for it to make some sense.

Offsite links will work as fast teleporters - For example, in "theregister.co.uk" there is a link to "reghardware.com". If you manage to defeat monsters guarding it, you (And anyone else inside the dungeon) will be able to teleport to "reghardware.com" with no cost in the page which it was linked.

Areas/dungeons will be persistent with a 24 hours timeout - As in, monsters & other challenges like traps do not respawn. For example, once someone clears "theregister.co.uk" anyone else going into it will be able to follow any links without any fights or costs. If the "theregister.co.uk" dungeon isn't visited for 24 hours, it will be deleted from the system (along with all it's internal links -and- subdomains) to save space and give players an opportunity to refresh pages with new information, thus new links, monsters, drops, traps, etc.

Players will be able to bookmark links and domains - If they are present in the exact moment an area is cleared out of monsters, they can bookmark it. Bookmarked pages should allow you to use your Domain teleporter to go to it with a lesser cost/timer (or free if you're sitting at a haven/homepage). This allows you to quickly reach links and subdomains present inside an area while you're in another. Plus, your Domain Teleporter will beep and warn you when a bookmark has expired, allowing you to refresh and revisit a place with a lesser cost. The number of bookmarks you can have is something we have to determine later.

The last player standing when an area is cleared can set it as his homepage - A homepage is where a player will log in. Players without it will log into the last haven they visited. If you go as a group (or others pop in while you're playing in it) and defeat an area/dungeon, the area will go in pvp mode after a minute or so. This means you should either leave or be ready to fight for it, as the last player standing in there that was present during the clearance of the area will have dibs on homepaging it. The moment a place becomes a homepage, it will respawn every monster/traps/etc but they will not attack the homepage owner, but will attack any other player trying to visit or claim it. Players will be able to upgrade their homepage's defenses as well, for example, capturing a fish and then placing it in their homepage, or giving his fighting whales some rainbow axes. This should make some sites a huge advantage. For example, homepaging "google.com/search?q=fish" will give you a huge advantage in everything fishy. Homepages will also not expire (unless the player doesn't log for like a month) and will respawn monsters over time to keep the defenses up.



At least these are my initial ideas for the implementation. The PvP & homepage idea came up while I was writing the bookmark idea I had. I think it fits very well and gives some fun pvp elements.

[Poltifar]

I absolutely love all of these ideas. Though the PvP thing probably should have some other way of working. For one, I'm guessing people wanting to homepage a place are likely to go in alone anyways, and thus are unlikely to meet other players to contest the area once its cleared. This would make homepaging a bit too easy (assuming it isnt supposed to be easy). Solutions would be either to make all pages too hard to clear alone (a bad solution IMO), or have some intricate "homepage claiming" system that broadcasts a warning to all players online about the location of the homepage being claimed and gives them 10 minutes to head there and stop the process if they wish. Or something like that.

Anyways, we also need ideas about how the RPG elements would work on the MOO code-wise. The closest I saw we ever got on Wikifirmament (during the short time I was coding there) to an RPG system was a tick-based system where all rooms and objects that are part of an area are placed inside a master object. All the rooms and objects have a "tick" verb that includes whatever function they are supposed to have (NPC movement or actions, regaining of 'balance' or whatever that is needed to attack, etc) while activating the 'tick' verb in the objects they directly contain. Thus, the master object activates the 'tick' verb on its own direct contents, which in turn activate the 'tick' verb in their own contents, etc... until every object in every container in every room has been ticked.

As for whether the combat would be turn-based or real-time, I think either could work with the above tick system, depending on how long a tick is.

[Soulwynd]

No, I think search pages, forums, news pages should be hard enough to require groups or a very strong player. At least that's my idea. Plus we could add a 'friends' system. So if you're in a group, the group can be considered the last player standing and one of players can claim the homepage (with the others approving it) and he will own the home page, the rest will gain it as a bookmark and the respawned npcs will be friendly to them as well.

Which should be a bonus for wanting to play in groups.

Having a homepage also gives you some indirect PvP as people might try to fight through your homepage.

Programming the rpg elements is fairly easy. Back when I programmed for a PokeMOO (based on the GBA games, so it was very close to playing the GBA) I also made 3 rpgs inside of it. One was real time, the other was turn based with ascii rooms and the last was a spacetrader style of game.

Edit: Personally, I'd like a FF-Tactics/Disgaea style of combat.

[Poltifar]

Okay, so you have the RPG stuff handled. Cool. Now I just cant wait to actually get to play

[freeformschooler]

Oh my God, Soul, why are you asking us for design ideas? You're clearly the design genius here.

Oh, and final version of this product will be filled with "ITT we all go on a bay12forums.com raid"

Wait... we couldn't do that. It would be a safe haven, right? Or would it not because of the links? That presents a problem, because a lot of websites are just primary/subdomain and nothing else.

Maybe make it so that www.bay12forums.com is a safe haven containing essentially nothing (it's a redirect after all) whereas www.bay12forums.com/smf/ is not?

[Soulwynd]

If I have the patience to, I will see if I can get my old MOO running and erase the unneeded stuff before doing a simple crawler+cloud for testing.

Oh, thanks, but just throwing ideas out. Not really sure how good they are, just that they should be a bit easier to implement.

I think bay12forums.com would be an impossibly hard page... There are 177 links just for user profiles right now. Really might be raid material until someone claims it.

[freeformschooler]

4chan's /b/ would be a lot like a level 80 WoW raid I imagine. (disclaimer: I've only played WoW a little and didn't enjoy it so I quit)

Anyway, I've always loved MUDs. If finished, this has the potential to take a very niche section of the internet by storm!

[PsyberianHusky]

Guys, you realize exploring the web as a video game character is like the cyberpunk dream...

[qwertyuiopas]

I could see TvTropes and Wikipedia becoming the ultimate challenge. Whoever owns them would be nearly unbeatable.