RPGs that have MUD style combat systems?

[Xenich]

I was thinking about combat systems and games I used to play of a certain style which I enjoyed and was wondering if anybody had ran across something with a similar system.

To be clear on what I am looking for (those who may not know).

MUDs combat systems are essentially a typical round based system that is matched to a time condition sequence. The most notable example if you are not familiar is EQ. When combat begins, the rounds start automatically and tick according to a given time allotment per round (think D&D, but this is attached to a real time sequence). Each character then automatically initiates (turns on combat) their attacks and each round is calculated according to the statistical requirements (ie weapon speed, attribute influence, class skill influence such as parry, riposte, double attack, etc..). This continues on until the battle ends with either you are the mob dying. Additional options are added to play to weight the outcomes based on class skills, spells, etc.. (immobilization, interrupts, slow, special damage, etc..)

The reason is because this style of play is more of a statistics game in play as you tweak your builds of your party or individual character to essentially compare results with each encounter. It is kind of like a spreadsheet style game in its most basic sense with some user interaction added.

So...
Has anyone ran across any games over the years (single player) that try to emulate this style of development and play?

[rusty_shackleford]

maybe viewtopic.php?p=38393-legends-of-old-a- ... est#p38393

[Xenich]

Checked it out, domain is dead, and a search on steam pulls up nothing.

Too bad. A lot of games have "similar" approaches (most pause and play isometrics, and some dungeon crawlers). BG/IWD/Arcanum are pretty good about this system, but I guess I was looking more for that MUDing feel. Thanks though!

[Norfleet]

I have occasionally toyed with the idea of slapping a graphical client onto some of my old MUD codes and turning that into a modern game. That you could probably still play using the underlying text interface.

Do you think there's actually a market for this?

[Xenich]

I have occasionally toyed with the idea of slapping a graphical client onto some of my old MUD codes and turning that into a modern game. That you could probably still play using the underlying text interface.

Do you think there's actually a market for this?

Hard to say. Different times, and most who played are much older now and that style of play interface might be off putting to some. May not be worth the effort, but then SanctuaryRPG: Black Edition seemed to have a small following, it could net you some throwback depending on how polished it looks.

How many people on this board used to MUD much @rusty_shackleford ?

Would be interesting to see if the forum wanted to do some MUDing though. Would be really cool to setup a MUD specifically for this forum and then start working out various systems to implement and test in it. Since we talk about game systems so much, only makes sense.

[rusty_shackleford]

How many people on this board used to MUD much @rusty_shackleford ?

@Kalarion has been looking for a MUD for a while.
If you count Everquest, a lot.

[Rigwort]

I like MUDs. Mostly because I like BBSes, but still.

[Xenich]

How many people on this board used to MUD much @rusty_shackleford ?

@Kalarion has been looking for a MUD for a while.
If you count Everquest, a lot.

Hmm... EQ could be adapted, but its really just regurgitating old settings and assets. Adding new stuff would be more development work to modify core engine systems to make it look and work right than a typical MUD setup would. If people were fine with a simple text interface, I am sure the engines over the years have developed nicely (I haven't looked into them much in the last 20 years and haven't played any much since the early 90's).

Could be interesting to completely adapt one to AD&D rulesets (or maybe even a Shadowrun), then start working in various ideas for systems. Would be hilarious to PvP in them.

https://www.evennia.com/




This at the start looks like it might be a nice engine setup to work with. Have to build the gaming systems, but it has a large library apparently to work from if you didn't want to build things from scratch.

Hmm.. to reduce creation content workload, could then start working all the worlds and modules from AD&D in. Create kind of generic tavern area and central town as a base, then expand modules from various 1st edition adapting them out completely by basic realm and geography, then connecting them all together. You could end up with the entire world to explore and PvP in. Could be a lot of fun.

I bet it wouldn't be too difficult to work something like Grid Cartographer into the mix as a 3rd party companion people could use to give them a bit of graphical representation for mapping if they wanted as well.

[Kalarion]

How many people on this board used to MUD much @rusty_shackleford ?

@Kalarion has been looking for a MUD for a while.
If you count Everquest, a lot.

Hmm... EQ could be adapted, but its really just regurgitating old settings and assets. Adding new stuff would be more development work to modify core engine systems to make it look and work right than a typical MUD setup would. If people were fine with a simple text interface, I am sure the engines over the years have developed nicely (I haven't looked into them much in the last 20 years and haven't played any much since the early 90's).

Could be interesting to completely adapt one to AD&D rulesets (or maybe even a Shadowrun), then start working in various ideas for systems. Would be hilarious to PvP in them.

https://www.evennia.com/




This at the start looks like it might be a nice engine setup to work with. Have to build the gaming systems, but it has a large library apparently to work from if you didn't want to build things from scratch.

Hmm.. to reduce creation content workload, could then start working all the worlds and modules from AD&D in. Create kind of generic tavern area and central town as a base, then expand modules from various 1st edition adapting them out completely by basic realm and geography, then connecting them all together. You could end up with the entire world to explore and PvP in. Could be a lot of fun.

I bet it wouldn't be too difficult to work something like Grid Cartographer into the mix as a 3rd party companion people could use to give them a bit of graphical representation for mapping if they wanted as well.

If you will commit to developing a forum MUD, I will gift you Grid Cartographer.

[Nooneatall]

There was an awesome ff mud I played back in the 00s.

[Xenich]

@Kalarion has been looking for a MUD for a while.
If you count Everquest, a lot.

Hmm... EQ could be adapted, but its really just regurgitating old settings and assets. Adding new stuff would be more development work to modify core engine systems to make it look and work right than a typical MUD setup would. If people were fine with a simple text interface, I am sure the engines over the years have developed nicely (I haven't looked into them much in the last 20 years and haven't played any much since the early 90's).

Could be interesting to completely adapt one to AD&D rulesets (or maybe even a Shadowrun), then start working in various ideas for systems. Would be hilarious to PvP in them.

https://www.evennia.com/




This at the start looks like it might be a nice engine setup to work with. Have to build the gaming systems, but it has a large library apparently to work from if you didn't want to build things from scratch.

Hmm.. to reduce creation content workload, could then start working all the worlds and modules from AD&D in. Create kind of generic tavern area and central town as a base, then expand modules from various 1st edition adapting them out completely by basic realm and geography, then connecting them all together. You could end up with the entire world to explore and PvP in. Could be a lot of fun.

I bet it wouldn't be too difficult to work something like Grid Cartographer into the mix as a 3rd party companion people could use to give them a bit of graphical representation for mapping if they wanted as well.

If you will commit to developing a forum MUD, I will gift you Grid Cartographer.

Thanks, but I already have it (got it years ago before Walters put it on Steam, and I upgraded it as he improved). As for commit, I am seriously thinking about it. Need to look heavily into the options it has, also need to go over Python (never used it much, but seen it over the years. Shouldn't be too hard to pick up) and see if it will hold my interest. If it does, I will let you guys know. No promises though.

edit:

What I am thinking is basically just using all the AD&D ruleset and modules (so I don't have to get too creative while trying to learn a bunch of systems and code). The idea would be to modularize by realms working the modules into the various towns located in the realm and then connect the realms over time. Initially after systems are input, I would for the most part cut and paste a lot of the module descriptions and info in, then work in some basic response systems to deal with NPC interaction to story progression.

I don't have a lot of experience working with the AI's, but dialogue with non-combat NPCs, I was hoping there might be an implementation I could use to help with it such as being able to feed an AI NPC info, stats, role, etc... and then give it lore/knowledge equal to what the NPC would have in that role and directing it to interact with players accordingly for text dialogue. This I think would remedy the issues we had in previous text games where exact phrase, spelling, etc.. were always an issue. The AI would be able to adapt more easily and understand and react more realistic in the conversations. If that worked out well, I could then maybe see about using it to control basic combat responses of various encounters as well.

I had a long chat with Gab AI a while back on design and its capabilities as an AI if provided the source code and reference material on various topics in terms of leveraging it as a developing aid that could handle all of the busy work on various tasks and it appeared to indicate it could handle many such things (not holding my breath at this point), even complex research of engine code and adapting it to various described goals (I even asked if Gabby AI's animation tool would be capable of producing the assets if I were interested in making a graphical game and it indicated that this is possible). Now I am certainly not going for that in this project ( if I decide to do it and this would be a much later implementation after most things are implemented), that is a lofty goal, but with that knowledge, I may be able to use an AI for limited use as I described earlier. This would certainly reduce time on developing dialogue (I would only have to task it with a theme and outline its parameters for each role after I fed it all AD&D lore, ruleset, and source material to pull from) and it would provide a more responsive interaction feel when talking with the NPCs.

Past that, if this is possible, the idea would be to expand the worlds out encompassing AD&D and then maybe even using various transitional systems like palladium to cross over into other systems (Space Frontiers, Traveler, Shadowrun, etc...) to create a massive world of exploration for both single and multiplayer encompassing PVE and PVP play.

The interesting thing is that the tool I linked up there advertises this as a good tool for prototyping games (more proof of concept) and I think some more powerful tools like Unity (not sure about unreal) actually have the ability's to import projects from other code sources. I remember Cleve talking about this years ago when he was polishing up Grimoire. So my original idea of I spit balled in the Foundry might be aided by this endeavor.

This is all spit balling at this point and I have a lot of reading and learning to do to see this as a reasonable possibility, but it has intrigued me. Besides, for some reason I can not focus on playing a game and find myself working on various computer related projects anyway. So, there may be some realization of it if I can grab on to something ( I am weird like that, I used to study and test IT certs for fun).

If AI is possible as I described, that will only interest me more as I would love to see AI become the means to which we could break free from the industry. Sort of like a revolution that indie gaming brought, but spreading out to people who have great ideas, but maybe not the time or ability to learn the needed skillsets to produce a game. Anyway, this is all "pie in the sky", I will let you know if I make any headway on it.

[Kalarion]

Thanks, but I already have it (got it years ago before Walters put it on Steam, and I upgraded it as he improved). As for commit, I am seriously thinking about it. Need to look heavily into the options it has, also need to go over Python (never used it much, but seen it over the years. Shouldn't be too hard to pick up) and see if it will hold my interest. If it does, I will let you guys know. No promises though.

If you decide to go for it, I volunteer to help. I only know the very basics of Python, but I can probably do scut-work, and I'll learn on the job if I need to.

[Xenich]

Thanks, but I already have it (got it years ago before Walters put it on Steam, and I upgraded it as he improved). As for commit, I am seriously thinking about it. Need to look heavily into the options it has, also need to go over Python (never used it much, but seen it over the years. Shouldn't be too hard to pick up) and see if it will hold my interest. If it does, I will let you guys know. No promises though.

If you decide to go for it, I volunteer to help. I only know the very basics of Python, but I can probably do scut-work, and I'll learn on the job if I need to.

Then you know more than I. I have some background and education in some of the more structured languages, but it has been decades since I used them, so its somewhat like starting over again. I will keep that in mind though.

[Xenich]

I was just talking to Gab AI, asked it about "Based chatbot AI" to use in a project like this.




Gab AI can't be used as it at the moment does not provide a downloadable and trainable engine like the other chatbots. So, going to have to work with the others in my idea I guess. Though if its completely trainable to my liking, that should work.