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

Mon Feb 9 09:36:07 UTC 2015

I am not visually impaired, but I totally agree - reading this 'pseudo 
retro' font is a real pain for me as well.

Other than that, the project seems cool, and even quit advanced 
technically. Nice idea!

Mateusz

On 09/02/2015 03:45, James Mills wrote:
> 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 <mailto:prologic at shortcircuit.net.au>
> W: prologic.shortcircuit.net.au <http://prologic.shortcircuit.net.au>
>
> On Mon, Feb 9, 2015 at 11:49 AM, Kevin Veroneau <kevin at veroneau.net
> <mailto: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/ <http://gopher.veroneau.net/>
>        Telnet: veroneau.net:5199 <http://veroneau.net:5199>
>
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>
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