Killer Squeak App?

Kevin Fisher kgf at golden.net
Mon Aug 20 11:58:08 UTC 2001


On Mon, Aug 20, 2001 at 10:19:37AM +0200, Stefan Matthias Aust wrote:
> At 16:00 19.08.01 -0400, Kevin Fisher wrote:
> >There is a project that aims to create a free Ultima Online/Everquest-like 
> >server called World Forge (www.worldforge.org).
> 
> I just browsed though the provided documentation.  The screen shots look 
> great and it's interesting that there ATLAS protocol is a classless 
> SELF-like object system but I couldn't find enough details to guess the 
> current project state and/or the features.

Most of the real discussion goes on in their newsgroups...I occasionally
stick my head in there to see how the project is progressing.

They seem to move in experimental stages, releasing specialized test servers
to test some new concept or another.  I think they just finished with
a test server that had a small "economy" experiment where you would play
the role of a pig farmer. :)

> 
> IMHO, the real work isn't setting up a client/server protocol but to come 
> up with a flexible world object model, interesting, easy to learn rules 
> which still allow great flexibility and finally with a rich game world that 
> doesn't become boring after a few hours.
> 
> MUD - to answer the other email - is a Multi User Dungeon (often also 
> Dimension).  Something like a text adventure combined with a chat program 
> which can be played by multiple players simultaneous.  One unique feature 
> of MUDs is that players can help to create, extend and flesh out the world 
> buy using a simple (unfortunately often C-like) in-game language.
> 
> 
> >They have a number of clients written in a variety of languages...
> 
> Well, it looks like "variety" means C or C++ :-)

Oh?  I thought I saw a Python client there at one time...the clients seem
to live and die by the season though, so it could have been abandoned for
something else. :)  The "stock" client they do their tests on is an
isometric engine..I haven't tried the 3D clients.

> 
> >I think the "goal" is to have a server that can have it's world rendered 
> >isometric (UO style) or 3D (Everquest-style).
> 
> ...or even textual like in nethack.

Well, you can always use the AAlib if you want ascii graphics.  I still 
remember that demo of Quake using AAlib...fragging in ASCII is..um..unique. :)

> 
> >It might be an interesting project to create a client in Squeak...
> 
> But it look like to get at least some documentation, one has to read the 
> source and extract the information.  That's IMHO a large barrier to start...
> 

You may want to check their newsserver for documentation information.
I know at one time they did have the protocol written down..perhaps the web
site has fallen behind?







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