Coolest MUD ever

Author (Your Name)

Kevin Radloff, Colby College

Date of Award

2003

Document Type

Honors Thesis (Open Access)

Department

Colby College. Computer Science Dept.

Advisor(s)

Clare Bates Congdon

Abstract

MUDs, or Multi-User Dungeons, are text-based online multiplayer roleplaying games. Players type commands that allow them to interact with other players in a virtual world, and also interact with the world itself, for example, picking up objects or casting spells. The goal of The Coolest MUD Ever (CME) was to build the basis of an event driven and completely extensible MUD engine with unheard of levels of environmental realism. Whereas other MUDs are organized as a set of distinct nodes in which gameplay occurs exclusively of each other node, my MUD will blur the lines between nodes. While players still navigate between set points, actions are not necessarily exclusive to a single node. Depending on environmental factors such as lighting, landscape and weather, players may be able to see and hear what is going on in the surrounding area. Additionally, in CME world, designers are able to easily add new elements to their creations via an embedded scripting language. Agents, minigames, and new commands are all possible without even delving into the base source code. To enable this, Ruby, an easy-to-use object-oriented scripting language with some very nice features, was selected as an implementation language.

Keywords

Computer games -- Programming, Fantasy games -- Programming, Role playing

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