[gopher] This game I have been working on might be of interest to Gopherites...

[James Mills]

Holy hell Kevin you can write!
(PS: I don't enjoy reading looong articles/messages!)

One thing; please pick a better/different front on the Web UI.
(Being visually impaired reading that font it quite hard!)

Not really sure what the "goal of the game" is as such
perhaps you can give a quick run-down of what to expect?

Look forward to BETA codes.

cheers
James


James Mills / prologic

E: prologic at shortcircuit.net.au
W: prologic.shortcircuit.net.au

On Mon, Feb 9, 2015 at 11:49 AM, Kevin Veroneau <kevin at veroneau.net> wrote:

> Hello fellow Gopherlings!
>
>   I believe you might have recalled that I brought up and we all briefly
> discussed the possible development of a MUD made by us Gopherians.  Well,
> long
> before I even had such an ill conceived idea that would ultimately never
> come
> into fruition.  I was working on a Massively Multiplayer Online Hacking
> Universe Game, or shortened to just MMOHUG.  You won't find this MMO genre
> type anywhere yet, as I am hoping that mine will be the first to market!
> Although I have been working on it since 2012, and it has gone through a
> couple complete redesigns, I feel that now the game is taking the right
> direction.  Originally, it was going to be a web-based game, but I noticed
> that this market was already crowded and noticed the vast inferiority of
> web-
> based games in general.  In order to build real-time apps and games on a
> website, you needed some rather complex code, both in the front-end and the
> back-end...  This led me to rewrite the game completely using standard
> stdin/stdout terminal programming in Python.  This version of the game
> actually came along ways until I realized how it wouldn't scale very well.
> You see, each user would log in via a standard telnet connection, and
> telnetd
> forks the actual application I wrote.  For each connected player, the
> amount
> of resources grow!  If I really wanted to take the game into the MMO type
> category, I needed to slim down the server component alot!
>
>   Now the server side is entirely written and listens on a TCP port
> directly,
> no forking needed.  I wrote a couple threads to manage some in-game stuff,
> but
> that's about it.  The game currently is about 10MB of RAM when idle, which
> is
> pretty good.  Each new connection doesn't increase the total size by much,
> as
> each player's persistent state doesn't take very much memory or resources.
> This also has the benefit of me being able to write a custom telnet client
> to
> make the game more appealing to those who don't want to use telnet, or my
> web-
> based terminal app.
>
>   Anyways, the point of this message is that, I believe this type of
> MMO/MUD
> game would appeal to most users of this mailing list.  It's a very
> technical
> game overall, and mostly fiction, but with some real-world elements to
> make it
> feel real enough for people who haven't hacked before.  By far, it feels
> way
> more realistic then that crap Ubisoft released last year, what's what game
> called again....
>
>   I personally like a hacking type game with a nice barrier between fiction
> and reality.  This is the type of atmosphere I am building with Hacker's
> Edge.
> The game feels real, and makes you actually feel like your hacking into
> computer systems, but is purely fiction.  It uses real-world elements, like
> IPv4, DNS, SMTP, and other popular Internet technologies.  Many commands
> which
> are used by real hackers are also used, but watered down to make it easy
> enough to pick up and play without feeling tedious.  Most commands like
> "nmap"
> and "nslookup" require a good amount of research to understand their many
> options.  Hacker's Edge uses such commands, but they aren't as complex, so
> the
> player doesn't need to enter in a dozen options everytime they want to map
> ports on a remote host.
>
>   The game is going into closed beta soon, so that I can get people to test
> out the commands and the general feel of the game to give me their
> feedback.
>
>   One of the games highlights will be user created content in the forms of
> real functioning binary applications that run within the game world.  The
> game
> will include a compiler for a somewhat simple to use and understand dialect
> that gives players the ability to hook directly into the game's engine to
> create new types of servers and hacking programs that can be sold to other
> players using the in-game economy.  In my last implementation of the
> in-game
> coding, the dialect was very close to assembly language, while this felt
> really realistic, it was too complex to just jump into for most players. I
> first attempted to build a high-level language on top of that, which
> compiled
> into the in-game assembly, but that was too limiting.  This new and final
> version of the game will include a programming dialect that is easy to use
> and
> understand, yet powerful.  Using this, it should be technically possible to
> build in-game Gopher servers and clients.  While no in-game apps will have
> access to the real Internet, apps can communicate using the in-game
> simulated
> network.
>
>   Anyways, for more information, you can visit the game's homepage in the
> HTTP
> space here: http://www.hackers-edge.com/  If there is enough interest
> from the
> Gopher community here, I may consider setting up a Gopherhole for the game
> as
> well, so that all the same information from the HTTP version can be
> accessed
> from Gopher as well.  However, you can currently view and post into the
> forums
> from within the game using the +bboard, +thread, and +reply commands.
> Hooks
> into the HelpCenter will also be added soon too.
>
>   I am planning on distributing Beta invite codes very soon, so do let me
> know
> if your interested and I will send out a few codes onto this mailing list.
> Each code is a one use code, so take them before somebody else does.  I am
> limiting initial access to consider performance and overall server load.
>
> Best Regards,
>   Kevin Veroneau
>   gopher://gopher.veroneau.net/
>   Telnet: veroneau.net:5199
>
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