Posts made by Jeshin

I had not, taking a look at it now. Project Redshift already has its core systems like movement, combat, space flight, and crafting all documented or in development. But since I think there are smarter people than me who have toyed with space text-based games in the last 20 years. I try and check out any scifi oriented ones I can see. Find out if they came up with an elegant solution to something we might be struggling with.

That and it's just fun to see what's out there already and what features haven't been supported prior to Project Redshift's development.

Well I appreciate it!

It appears Hspace 5 closed in 2010 and I can't find Tinker MUSH. Can you provide links to any existing examples as I've been looking at pretty much every text-based space game I can get my hands on.

Is there an eclipse phase game I'm missing? When I read the website it looks like an RPG tabletop book series or do you mean staff on Project Redshift?

http://eclipsephase.com/

You should also check out the Warhammer 40k setting released by FantasyFlightGames. The Dark Heresy 2.0 and Rogue Traders are especially fun to toy with in my opinion. I need to ask Hex if she wants to play this eclipse phase game, it looks interesting. Also love d100 percentile systems. Percentile for life baby.

I'm about to lay down for a brief nap but I'll give a quick rundown. I need the nap because we're reviewing our game pitch submissions today to prep for the results tomorrow. We got 9-10 submissions (can't remember off the top of my head) so it's pretty exciting.

1. The alien races will be proper alien races. I have someone who we call Science Guy. He and I consult heavily about scientific theory which we then put up against storytelling needs. Don't expect Star Trek or even Star Wars alien races were the majority are humanoids. For example one of my personal favorite races is a silicon-based lifeform.

2. Planets will be as realistic as we can make them without interfering with gameplay and story. As Project Redshift is a story and a game ahead of a science simulator there are some things we have to accept. That being said 99% of the worlds will not be habitable by humans thus exploration will be a very engaging and tense experience.

If you've ever seen the movie Europa Report, that is something which I consider to be a good example of tense space exploration. If you haven't seen it, it is on netflix streaming and I believe it is a quality scifi space movie.

3. Seedship and Warpships will be as realistic as possible. This includes stuff like habitation rings, rotation for gravity, alucbierre drives, semi-realistic interiors, and so on so forth. We really want to provide the freedom to explore and adventure in space but we want it to -feel- like space. So we're trying to get the tiny details accurate.

4. Technology will be semi-realistic. An example of this is that personal size forcefields (which are technically superheated plasma) wouldn't be possible. It'd either kill the user or prevent them from being able to shoot at someone else and a bunch of other things. So for combat design we instead turned to an existing technology which exists today such as regenerative armor. Basically the armor is designed with these capsules of material which are broken when the armor is damaged and then an electrical current causes it to basically re-seal the armor and excess material is re-capsulated.

5. Yes I am aware of what Redshift is and that is the reason the game is called Project Redshift while being about space exploration.

That's understandable. I think the biggest thing holding back the text-based gaming genre is normally unprofessional staffing. Not that the SOI staff are unprofessional or particularly guilty compared to other games. I just mean in general players expect a certain amount of consideration and impartiality and if they feel that it's not being provided things tend to go downhill very quickly.

Based on that ReachMUX thread I asked a question in, I can see that MUXs also have this concern.

Also yes I am aware that staff are 99.99% of the time volunteers and that it affects their ability to be impartial and professional, but it doesn't change my opinion that often time games fail not because of their setting, roleplay, or underlying game systems, but because of their staff.

I agree wholly. The next article that I'm doing (as in I am the author) will be about text-based gaming as a genre and how it's set to compete with video games like never before.

Ah you played ParallelRPI? You are aware that it was the codebase of AtonementRPI and a mirror setting of that game after it closed?

Crayon - Stewarded the closing of ParallelRPI
Jaunt - Owner of AtonementRPI
Apollo - Coder on AtonementRPI

are actually the devs on project Redshift under me and the community leads on Optional Realities. I don't think PRPI was the best example of a successful RPI which could explain your opinion towards it. I also think there is a difference between 100% IC all the time while within the gameworld and a level of openness and communication that occurs on the games forums.

I mean having minimal distractions from immersive gameplay is just like not using a cellphone in a movie theater. It makes sense and most of the time it's a good thing. Until you get an emergency phonecall right?

As someone who is more on the MUD side of things than MUSHes, I can tell you that a lot of MUD players & staff view MUSHes are drama villages. I used to believe this too but in reality I think it's just a common problem amongst text-based games in general when you have particularly abrasive players or staff.

It's basically the situation of "those guys over there suck and we're the coolest" which crops up in our genre which is why text-based gaming is so splintered and why I created OR. It's different strokes for different folks but at the end of the day most people are playing MU*s as a way to experience story or de-stress or because that is their preferred gaming choice. Some might enjoy MUDs, some MUX, or some MUSH, or whatever other text-based option with MU in front of it is out there.

EDIT - It is worth noting I actually like this forum a lot. Slick look, active community, and even though it's more MUSH centric you guys haven't shunned this advertisement or my opinions elsewhere. I think it's just as good as OR at being a place for text-based game lovers to come together and share ideas and games.

Orpheus the Head Staffer over at Burning Post II writes an editorial on player-killing and whether to restrict or not restrict.

Read the Article Here!

Project Redshift is the Evennia Project yes. It is a scifi MUD that will be released in 2016/2017 and is currently in development. The game will be an exploration based game with warpships traveling out from a Generational vessel (Seedship) to find planets both habitable and resource rich and possibly alien species. Built on the Evennia engine which means we're using a strong foundation but everything else will be original code so we don't have legacy issues that a lot of games (especially MUD games) have.

This is an article on combat design in text-based games and specifically a reveal of Project Redshift's combat systems.
http://optionalrealities.com/designing-immersive-combat-systems/

This is the sub-forum for Project Redshift on the OR community boards
http://optionalrealities.com/forums/index.php?board=1.0

PS - Kudos to Kushiel's Debut. I was checking our their google search presence and found this forum through them.

Hey everyone,

I'd like to announce the opening of Optional Realities, a design blog and community supporting roleplay-focused games.. We are committed to the following:

• We will publish regular articles every week, not only written by our own team of experienced MUD Designers, but the staff of prominent roleplaying games like Sindome, Evolution of Esos, Shadows of Isildur, Armageddon, Haven: Mists and Shadow, and others.

• We will moderate a community forum as a place for leaders in our genre to discuss roleplaying, writing, design, and upcoming events for their games.

• We will do everything that we can to help support designers looking to create their own games in our genre.

• We will host monthly contests with cash prizes, ranging from storytelling competitions, to game design proposals, to submission of quality roleplaying logs.

The Optional Realities team is also committed to our work with the Evennia engine, which we are using to create a new engine and sci-fi roleplay-centric MUD which has a sub-forum and an article out revealing our combat design.

Please join us at Optional Realities, in our effort to strengthen our 20+ year old community and build towards an ever-better future for text-based RPGs.

Jeshin
Founder of Optional Realities
optionalrealities.com/
optionalrealities.com/forums/

(Edit by Thenomain: Links now successfully lead to the sites.)