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

Mon Feb 9 09:05:35 UTC 2015

No Redeem Invite Code for Gopher aficionados ?

Damien CAROL
gopher://dams.zapto.org/1/

2015-02-09 3:45 GMT+01:00 James Mills <prologic at shortcircuit.net.au>:

> 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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>
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