Forums > Game Forums > Discworld MUD > How does this game entry work?
Pseudo_Intellectual (66362) on 4/16/2010 12:53 AM · Permalink · Report
I must preface my message by saying: I am thrilled to see it.
However: why DOS? Why Win 3.x? where is the dedicated client software for those platforms released on those dates? As best as I can tell, we can only currently document this as a browser game; at the time, it would have been essentially accessible only through telnet clients, no? (The other, BBS door, approach would be to document it under the host OS, which I presume would be some flavour of unix or something close enough for us to call "linux" 8)
Scaryfun (20370) on 4/16/2010 7:07 AM · Permalink · Report
In my investigation of this game, I gathered that any o/s with an internet connection and the appropriate MUD client could play the game. As DOS and Windows 3.x were around at the time of the games release, I added those (I'm not sure whether MAC had a MUD client at that time). Discworld MUD uses the LPMud engine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LPMud which creates a virtual machine to run the game. Here's some Windows 3.x clients - http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~joker/winclients.html and some for DOS as well - http://www.mudcentral.com/downloads/index.html Hope this helps.
formercontrib (157510) on 4/16/2010 10:18 PM · Permalink · Report
Works fine for me on XP SP2 .... now all we need - imo - are 1st release dates of additional platforms like Windows (should be not to hard and already as game ;) on file), LINUX and MACINTOSH - nothing for me, others can give their for sure better and preciser release details...
Pseudo_Intellectual (66362) on 4/16/2010 10:35 PM · Permalink · Report
Any OS with a MUD client can access the game: by that standard, it was also released for Amiga, Atari ST, and possibly platforms like C64 and Apple II. That doesn't precisely mean that the game was released for those platforms just because they had software that was capable of accessing the MUD. It's analogous to homebrew Z-code games being flagged as being released for all those platforms because all of those platforms have Z_code interpreters: well, yes and no, and generally we opt for no unless the games were released with the interpreters bundled.
I'm pretty sure that the LPMUD engine business concerns its local instance: how it is handled on the (presumably UNIX) machine running the game, serving the data up to the players.
This wouldn't be such a conundrum if we could get Unix adopted as a "software platform", because it's the backbone of almost everything in this problematic-to-document category of important multiplayer terminal games.
formercontrib (157510) on 4/16/2010 10:52 PM · edited · Permalink · Report
And this means exactly what ... for the complete layman ?
--> 1.) We should not have it in our database for now, or ? No matter, that it is a online-game still running after almost 20 years all over the planet...
2.) Or: Yes, it belongs here, but we should torture Rob to add UNIX til he don't know any longer if he is male or female ?
Hmmm, damn, perhaps i could enjoy the no. 2.) .... ;))==== so what now ?
Pseudo_Intellectual (66362) on 4/17/2010 3:28 AM · Permalink · Report
And this means exactly what ... for the complete layman ?
That under our conventional filing system, this kind of game falls outside our typical platform framework. I've tried to submit games like it that have been rejected for the reasons I'm bringing up; presumably my rejecting approver was not the same person as the approving approver, and since I'm unaware of any shift in policy between the two submissions, I'm taking the opportunity to talk through what would be required to proceed in this direction.
--> 1.) We should not have it in our database for now, or ? No matter, that it is a online-game still running after almost 20 years all over the planet...
It definitely belongs in the database, along with many of its ilk -- long-lived, important games that give us a view into living links to the prehistory of the MMORPG.
But it's definitely not a DOS game or a Windows game; it has no dedicated DOS or Windows client software. Filing it as belonging to any and all platforms with a telnet client is also problematic: this is why games supported by SCUMMVM aren't also filed as having been released for every platform SCUMMVM can run on: because those games were never "released for" those platforms.
2.) Or: Yes, it belongs here, but we should torture Rob to add UNIX til he don't know any longer if he is male or female ?
Because terminal games are most similar (platform-independent, online, generally hosted on some problematic unix system) to browser games really it might make the most sense to expand the scope of the Browser platform to Internet Games: encompassing web games, play-by-e-mail games, IRC games, instant messager games and telnet/MUD games. (I'm sitting on two Twitter games I haven't quite figured out how to submit yet.) I can't think of other internet services (FTP, newsgroups, P2P filesharing) providing game experiences yet.
I expect this to be a controversial move, but it makes the onetime proposal to make BBS door games a subset of the browser platform make more sense. (BBS doors, largely running on home computers, I think can still be more justly categorized as belonging on their host systems, already supported by us here. But UNIX servers may never be; that didn't get in the way of our documenting browser games and it shouldn't get in the way here.)
Havoc Crow (29859) on 4/17/2010 5:56 AM · Permalink · Report
Same problem is with IF (interactive fiction) games (text adventures).
For example, Galatea has the "Windows" platform solely because (as you can see from the screenshot) there are Windows interpreters that can play it. But it cannot be run on Windows as a standalone game.
My opinion has always been that we should to make a "pseudo-platform" for all Interactive Fiction games that require interpreters.
Pseudo_Intellectual (66362) on 4/17/2010 6:57 AM · Permalink · Report
The issue isn't text-adventure-specific: we need a way to handle platform-independent (interpreter-required) games, and the "browser" platform has already largely addressed them (the browser is the interpreter). The telnet or MUD client is also the interpreter.
Do please note while we're on the interactive fiction tangent that we do accept submissions of platform-independent games bundled with interpreters as being releases for the platform that interpreter works on (eg. Frotz for the iPhone). And I suppose a Windows MUD client distributed pre-loaded with login information for a MUD would constitute a Windows-platform release for that game also. This entry, however, has nothing WIndows-specific about it.
Pseudo_Intellectual (66362) on 4/18/2010 5:53 PM · Permalink · Report
If the end of this discussion means that we've collectively decided there's no problem filing such games this way, that's great. It really opens up the floodgates.