Very Basic Items Done

Just a quick post tonight, need to get to sleep. I finished the very basic item stuff up tonight, just get drop exam and eq commands. Tomorrow I will start work on the data storage and retrieval system. If all goes well it will be a one day job and ill be able to get on to the rest of the preparations for testing soon. It could however take up to the rest of the week as well. Guess only tomorrow will tell.

I set up the testers group today. I will start filling it with basic info and posts this week and ill post a link to join it here soon. This group will be invite or approval only. My plan will be to only allow people I know are on the mailing list. I might only allow a limited number as well so keep checking often so you dont miss it. Anyway sleep time for me.

-Toraux

Holy Excitement

Got a lot done today, I really feel like im learning a lot of cool stuff now and im pushing the envelope. Highlighting on the map now works similar to how it did before with the added coolness of being able to see if the players in the room are friends or enemies. I also can now track the statisitics for all the commands, this should allow me to track down the problem areas and see what will need improvement. Tomorrow I will code up all the items functionality and then it will be time to get data sorted out. Once the data and login code is all set I will be ready to start some simple testing exercizes and maybe start work on the mini tag testing game. I will definately start accepting people for testing by the end of the week.

We had two more join the list today, if you have friends into muds or other similar games who you think might like the premise of dynamic then send them here so we can build up the potential tester base.

I really should get some sleep so I can get to work on the next set of code tomorrow. Later all.
-Toraux

Distractions

Everytime I turn around im distracted, seems like I could be much farther if I could focus myself and just sit down and code for like 6 or 8 hours a day but so far that seems hard to get done. Got the rest of global comms in, and I coded up some simple utility functions that will be needed for later. Tomorrow might be another busy day with rl but my primary goal is to complete the time class and the basic statistics stuff to show me a paged list of all commands and their usage stats. If I get that done in good time im moving on to the logger and system output but im not promising myself anything. Code is up to about 7200 lines. I have approx 45 classes as well. Cant wait to get to the data storage stuff and have that all done so I can move onto better things.

My long term forecast for the core code is shortening, I have a feeling that by the end of june it might be pretty much all functional. Tag should be ready by then and after a few weeks of good hard testing and tweaking I could be working towards content and real features. Once the data stuff is close to done I will create the tester group and extend an invitation to 5 - 10 people to help testing. Tell your friends if they might be interested, the more people we have the better things will go.

Thanks all for reading.
-Toraux

Code Moving

Code is definately moving again. Im trying to work it in around all the other stuff I need to get done now that im back from school. I got my sweet 3 monitor two comp setup again so coding will be three times easier then when at school. I added the first global comms channel tonight. Tomorrow morning ill add the other two and then lot of system utilities and behind the scene stuff to clear out.

If im lucky this will all snowball and by the end of next week ill have data storage stuff done and running pretty stable. Once thats done then the core is probably past halfway done and it will be mostly just cleanup and stability stuff to prepare for adding content.

Im tired but this is feeling good, ill be checking in more if I can get myself to do it. If I havent posted in a while IM me and get me to post!

Night all.
-Toraux

The System Works

It appears this design is pretty damn good... new features are coding up much faster then expected, the inherited nature of the design means I can add new commands in minutes. I added say, a basic prompt, and virtual rooms today. Tomorrow I will be coloring the prompt and moving onto global communications. I should get to sleep as I have two finals tomorrow morning. If I dont have time to code tomorrow I will for sure on thursday, and things will move fast. I will start recruiting testers soon. Anyway out.

-Toraux

Hell Yeah Dynamic Mud!

I would now consider dynamic coded enough to be considered a world.... People can log in, move in the four directions and look. Im up to 6200 lines including all the empty shell classes. As for testing im not sure when ill want people but maybe next weekend ill be asking some of the closer people to log on just to see if we can break anything yet. Next stuff to be coded is in room communications, virtual rooms, and the prompt. At some point I will be writting a team freeze tag game to run on the dynamic core. This will be followed by an eventual freeze tag based capture the flag. When these modules are ready ill be hitting up the forums and groups again to see if I can grow the reader base and get some more testers.

As for the mailing list we now have 10 people signed up, I consider this kind of a minor milestone. Now if everyone on that list can find one person they know who is into these kind of games and get them to sign up we'll double the viewer base!

Anyway tired and need to study some more tomorrow.
-Toraux

Running Out of Cool Titles

Well I wrote some more code today. The command parser is pretty much functional now and I have code for the 5 most basic commands: north, south, east, west, look. On Sunday I will be writting the next big chunk of code to handle player interaction with a being.

By the way I got the job with verizon, starting June 5th, should give me about 10 free days before I need to go work after I get out of school.... do I smell typing?

I also found out this week that there is at least ONE person who would be willing to give money and buy into what would potentially be Dynamic MUD inc. or whatever I name it. I hope there are more out there. I also want to remind people to tell their friends and get them to sign up for the mailing list.

Point your friends here: http://groups.google.com/group/Dynamic-MUD?lnk=lr

I hope to report in again soon, and the tester's group will be put together soon too, ill start inviting people for that possibly late next week at the earliest.

Out all.
-Toraux

Coding

Ok so im definately making progress. Items, Beings, Rooms, and World are coded and untested. Next I will implement the command parser, player controller, and some basic commands. When all of this is done I will write some test code to allow connections and maybe open it up for some quick testing some weekend. Ill see how long it takes but prosepectively ill be letting some people on to test on saturday. I will send a message out to a handful of people based on when they signed up and get them on to help test stuff. Core might be complete much sooner then expected.

I might be looking for artists soon if my current prospect turns up null. If your interested in doing some artwork let me know and ill take a look at your previous works. Excited as all hell about all this... as always.

-Toraux

I Broke Down

Well there goes my planning everything idea. Got frustrated it and started coding. Being and Room are pretty much coded but untested so far. I also decided against using JUnit as heavily as I originally planned. A lot of this stuff is just too hard to write tests for because of the complexity of it all. My next step is finishing these two classes. Then ill be moving on to coding up Items then the World. Ill hopefully have this stuff then tested soon after, which will be my goal for the week. Then after that I will be spiraling around the remaining classes until it all works well and the core is done. Towards the end of the core development ill put together a mini tag game package to give it some playability with the simple stuff that is coded.

On that note please send my cool ideas to make tag more interesting. Ill post again tomorrow.

-Toraux

Variables and Functions Done

I think im pretty much done adding variables and functions. Added the 30th class today: Virtual room. I did some thinking and basicly decided to redo how I was using rooms and mapping etc. Im well over 4k lines now. Been trying to get the CVS repository working tonight and back everything up but it seems like its a bit of a pain at the moment so looks like that will be tomorrow/sunday. Next on the list is pseudocoding, should go a bit faster then this last set of work : )

Anyway need sleep, test tomorrow.
-Toraux

Raising Capital

Im wondering how feasible it would be to try and raise capital by selling the inital shares of dynamic when and if I incorporate down the road. This would allow people who believe this game will take off to help us get off the ground with a chance of making some money off it in the future. Im starting to do the research into costs of forming and maintaining a business. I would appreciate comments... if anyone has input on what would influence their decision to get involved and purchase shares I would love to hear it.

Almost done with the vars/functions phase. Just some cleanup and finishing of a couple classes and then ill be moving onto pseudocode. So id expect Sunday to start the pseudocode process. I now have 3824 lines of code... all of them comments, function names, or variables. I expect this to expand to 6-7k lines at least by the end of the pseudocode process.

Anyway gotta sleep, give me input!
-Toraux

Class Definitions Almost Done

Almost finished the class definitions. Got two more to do and some cleanup and then ill be moving onto the pseudocode phase.

Verizon hasnt called yet, but it sounds like theyre just waiting on approval from human resources before they can send me an offer *fingers crossed*.

Ive been thinking about how to handle the financial side of things. Ideally I would like to launch the whole game at once with a server and all that fun stuff. Right now it seems like getting those resources might be hard, and even if I want till after graduation im not sure ill be ready to throw away a few thousand on a server and hosting before I know ill have players.

One option im considering is making a cut down derived version of dynamic called dynamic arena which would involve a much smaller map and a focus on fast paced action. Players would be placed into two teams and would battle each other until a team is eliminated. The teams would each have a base and territory as in dynamicmud, and the world will be deformable etc. This will allow players to seige each other for hours or even days before a victor is declared. Then the world will reset or be randomized and things will start again. This will allow us to test features and help build up the user base before the final release.

If anyone else has ideas feel free to comment or email me.

-Toraux

Getting Closer

Blog traffic is up these past few days, and the mailing list is starting to grow. If everyone on the list right now could get one or two of their friends who are into games to check out the site and join the list we'll be even closer to our goals. The more people we get now the easier life will be down the road when its time to test and launch. Also if anyone with a decently active website wants to swap links let me know.

I got seven more classes specified today: Command, CommandParser, PlayerController, AIController, Prompt, Faction, and FactionManager. This leaves 9 left to do and some other fixes and idea development before I can move onto pseudocoding the classes. Were up to 3195 lines of code now in the files that have been written. Thats all comments and function/variable definitions by the way... none of it actually does anything yet.

Storms, Weather, and Maps are on the docket for tomorrow, given I can get it all done in time. Also supposed to hear from Verizon Wireless tomorrow on a possible job offer for the summer wooo.

Ok im sleepy, out.
-Toraux

Dynamic Concept

I decided to copy and paste the general description from my spec almost word for word. I want people who come to the site to know what dynamic is all about. This game is going to rock but we'll need your support. I hope people can use the search bar on this site to replace their direct use of google. I also am hoping people will sign up for our mailing list. Anyone registered for the mailing list will be first in line for our closed and open testing when the time comes. So sign up soon and tell your friends!

http://groups.google.com/group/Dynamic-MUD?lnk=lr

Dynamic Mud is my attempt at a better MUD. I realized that static zones could get quite boring. Game politics in MUDs I have played in the past became a big issue and the worst part was loosing friends and getting in fights. My intention is to create a game where player politics are part of the game. Where people will enjoy interacting with each other both cooperatively and competitively to change the world in their favor. In MUDs and MMORPGs for example it is hard to detach yourself from the game. It becomes a career and players ‘retire’ when they want to stop playing.

Dynamic’s Real Death System will allow players a more fluid connection to the game. It will become easier to come and go, and players will be able to learn not to become overly attached to their characters as they would in a game where characters last forever. This will also give players a chance to fade in and out, and become someone new.

Dynamic will be entirely free, it will pay for itself in various means such as advertisements on it’s game generated website and various merchandise sales online.

Everything in Dynamic will change from day to day, and even hour by hour. If one watches the map they will see the rise and fall of empires, battlefields, villages and other various changing features. The ability of players to change their landscape adds a whole new dimension of fun. Players will also interact with the occasional planned scripted event. Attacks from the underworld and afar as well as various player driven wars and campaigns. Creatures will also help dictate the landscape as players fight to protect their homes from monsters and dragons.

The game will include no levels, all skills and attributes will grow as they are used. The complete lack of visibly scoring of players will make it hard to judge who is stronger then you and who is not.

The mapping system will provide for much more interesting engagements. Many MUDs have maps but none that I know of have player highlighting on the maps. This system will display player locations in your vicinity, even representing battle lines in large engagements.

The combat system will be innovative with its lack of a combat locking mechanism, allowing for larger swirling melee environments. Ranged weapons and heavy weapons will also add an entirely new strategic element. AI driven beings will add to the scale of conflicts and the scale of the world as well.

The ships system will provide a means for players to travel far and wide across oceans and to battle in a completely different environment. Dynamic will also include player grown and harvested foods, player created items and a limited resource model.

Thanks all for the support. Tell your friends and register for the mailing list!

-Toraux

Tiresome

This definition stuff takes a lot out of you. Good thing to do just before bed to settle down :P I now have 12 of the 29 classes defined. Lot of work left to be done, but I believe I should be able to get all this done before finals start. There should also be a lot of free time in finals week... my two worst finals are on the opposite ends of the week so lot of downtime to take the studying slow and get this stuff worked on. My line count for the whole project now exceeds 2000 lines. Remeber all of those lines are just comments or function/variable declarations. Not a single line of actually functioning code.

The mailing list system seems to work, and at least one person has signed up on their own. I definately recommend telling people you know about this site so we can get our user base up there. When it is time for testing I will be inviting testers based on who signed up for the mailing list, and in many cases will post the testing opportunities first on the mailing list seperate from the blog itself. Thanks for showing up, hopefully I can get this stuff functional before too long.

-Toraux

Mailing List Up

Ok, just got the mailing list available to the public. Visit: http://groups.google.com/group/Dynamic-MUD?lnk=lr and sign up and you will recieve these posts directly to your email. Tell everyone you know who is interested and help spread the word!

-Toraux

There needs to be more time in the day

I seem to be making progress, but I could use a lot more time. Got about 6 classes taken care of today, including most of the basic Room class. Im also almost done setting up the mailing list, should be available for subscription tomorrow sometime. Anyway, dont want to spend too much time on this tonight, I should try and finish up room quicklike and get to sleep.

-Toraux

Testing Mailing List

Im testing out a mailing list system so people can basicly ignore this post, ill have another one once I get it all working with the details.

-Toraux