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

[Driedfruit]

Hi :)

I will definitely check this game out, as MUDs are my cup of tea.

However one thing immediately attracted my attention, and that is the
use of the word "hacker" in the same way Hollywood uses it.

I realize this is a petty complaint, and it's pretty late for you to
change the name of the whole thing even if you do agree with me, but
still I figured someone should say it sooner or later, so why not me?

I believe the word "cracker" is closer to what you mean.

On Sun, 8 Feb 2015 18:49:18 -0700
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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-- 
driedfruit