rpg - gaymes

>>2917
>make a MUD
What exactly does this mean? What is a MUD?

>>2918
Not him, but a MUD is a Multi-User Dungeon.

In short, this is a roleplay thread.

Only if the coffee machine only produces Soykaf.

if you pick python or lua i'd at least be able to contribute, however idk much about muds or even if they interest me

if you pick algol or bcpl i'd at least be able to contribute, however idk much about muds or even if they interest me

Hey, if you lead, I'll help you. As long as you pick something like C, python, ruby or so. I don't know so much if I could help in lisp, haskell or go.

>>2929
Main thing I could contribute is story/options and layout. Can be in any language you want

>>2922
MUD are old, and quite sophisticated. What OP needs is players/writers, explorers and describers.

Heh, I'm game.
Seeing as we're so hilariously early in development, we can probably afford to hold off on language selection and concentrate on gameplay/story explanations with some pseudocode as necessary...
We can move things over to pastebin or something if this actually goes anywhere.

Let's start brainstorming with a setting and premise. Who are we capable of being, where are we, and who or what are we fighting and why?

Assuming we're going typical cyb style, how far future should we go? Hella far with cybernetics being commonplace or would a closer to now timeframe be more enjoyable?
Going off the traditional class issues of cyb settings, how are the poor kept poor and the rich, richer?
How are world alliances arranged?

If we can get a setting relatively roughed out, classes and scenarios should come easier, right?

>>2956
I've got an idea, we could set it at the dawn of the cybernetic age, the working class need to go into huge debt to afford cybernetics to compete with the increasingly efficient automation that's replacing them. The implants that are affordable by the poor are poorly constructed and prone to failure, requiring expensive maintenance, keeping them from ever accumulating wealth.

>>2959
Sweet, I'm cool with it!
Provides a good us vs them, that, and forced expenses means there's a lovely black market and subsequent underground for us to play with: peeps jailbreaking body parts, punks looting corpses and fencing the parts, back alley doctors, obligatory gangs popping up, etc.

What'd be some methods the feds would use to counter this underground collection?
Moles and corrupt cop "partnerships" would be obvious choices, but what, besides that and flamboyant surveillance, would be some unusual/interesting strategies?

And what role would the net play in this future? Given that we're already getting to the point where most peeps can routinely get whatever products -be it food, electronics, weed- online, will it exist to obsolete the brick and mortar businesses, leaving those previously employed displaced and aggravated?
Will standard communications be pushed to a separate network(s)?

I am hella interested
>>2963
>us vs them narrative
don't forget the ridiculously convoluted alliances and factions that would no doubt come into play in this world as twisted evolutions of religious, political, and social institutions today, as well as the dawn of even stranger movements.

interesting strategy: tons of technology, including technology that we have today, is censored by the government / ruling class (ooh what if there were multiple governments or ruling institutions?) technology is kept under close wraps and certain important technologies are outlawed depending on where you are.

>role of the internet
is being used as a heavily restricted globalized control network - the elites communicate through the internet and its used to control the masses. underground mesh networks exist but cops are told to destroy all of them on site, like much other "contraband technology"

online businesses become heavily automated but set up local shops controlled from ~the cloud~. these shops are naturally vandalized to the extent of being completely ineffective however this would then deprive their region of resources and hurt the citizens in them (kind of a "don't bite the hand that feeds" thing). this also gives rise to populist anti-cyborg and AI sentiment that becomes so radical people who use prosthetics or drugs for illnesses become targeted as well. little do the neo-luddites realize that they're playing right into the hands of the ruling class. Or are they?

>>2965
oh another idea - different futuristic / retrofuturistic technologies compete as if they had come from alternate timelines and development went differently - because one particular tech is outlawed it doesn't mean a different tech that performs the same function isn't / different variations become harder to detect. this strange new technology becomes highly valued and targeted by a number of organizations

This sounds like a neat project.
I'm not such a fan of the 'fight the man' angle you guys seem to be going for, but it seems most people on the site are, so suit yourselves.

As for gameplay however it would be neat to see something sort of like the syndicate/satellite reign games where you have to work within in organization and such kidnapping people to work for your research and business teams.

As for gameplay general mechanics you could have players controlling small squads or the administrative aspects of a syndicate/revolutionary/political/bureaucrat/nationalist group that seeks to gain control over the state. Say the game has a birth rate and npcs are generated every so often in different areas upon which they can be used as resources for player and NPC factions. The major NPC faction could be the state and the players that receive benefits are able to make use of state resources like kickbacks, infrastructure development projects, and levying taxes on other syndicates/etcetera.
Human resources that you abduct/hire could work to develop technology and keep your syndicate on the cutting edge so that you can compete. Combat would probably be best as a turn based sort of thing, maybe a sort of xcom knockoff. I wasn't a fan of hellmoo's type fast to win gameplay. There are a whole lot of possibilities for this kind of game that I don't think have been explored very much in a very significat sense.

Alternatively if you don't like the multiplayer focus you could just have several factions and the player could get to control a number of units within that organization to carry out specific tasks created by something like a DM.
This is also the reason I suggested the player squad idea, it lets people retain some degree of autonomy if they're not usually team players like most multiplayer games require but still could punish you if you do something that harms your parent company, requiring at least some cooperation.

Anyway, those were my ideas. Obviously I aped pretty much everything from syndicate/hellmoo.

>>2982
Continuing on this.
Come to think of it a turn based gameplay type would have a couple of logistical difficulties in a realtime game. Say if someone enters combat, the area is locked down and a timer starts and depending on how long new players have taken to enter the area they enter so many turns after the start of the battle which is compared with how many turns the players have gone through to determine how many turns the new players will have to wait before entering the fray.

I can write quests and stories for days. Also can make loads of seemingly pointless lore, characters, businesses and soykaf . It's a huge passion of mine. Making fictional communities.

>>2984
Continued.

As far as combat, and moving, etc. goes, have you ever played Neo Scavenger? That would not be a hard play style to turn into multiplayer text-based.

Also I'd love to see the vatican have a role as a faction. New pope is really liked by poor people, especially southern Europeans and south american. I'd love to see a unified states of the vatican or something of the sort.

>>2986
Write me a 15-page report on Schopenhauer's aesthetic theory and how it might apply to our MUD and we may consider you a part of the team. This will be due in one week starting now.

>>2987
Anon, you shouldn't reject volunteers before you've even started working on the game.

>>2987
You know I actually looked over some of his stuff online, then started leafing through a textbook... then i realized I was being a fuarrrking retard.

Why not make a strategy game where you control an organization such as a corp/govt/syndicate

Cyberpunk MUDS have been done before and they get dry pretty quick. If you are too do one anyone hear from experience and keep the gameplay accessible and easy but make the storyline community driven. You will have a niche playerbase as it is so try and appease as many people as possible.

>>3013
>Why not make a strategy game where you control an organization such as a corp/govt/syndicate
That actually sounds like it could be pretty neat. It could make for a pretty decent mirror on the world too, if you want that.

>>3018
There are multiple ways this can be implemented without graphics. I feel text based games do give a more /cyberpunk/ aesthetic. Just like MUDs.

posting this to try and motivate discussion.
https://public.etherpad-mozilla.org/p/lainMUD

>>3026
>I feel text based games do give a more /cyberpunk/ aesthetic.
What are your feelings on ASCII/curses graphics?

>>3065
Its good if its done right. But trying to keep it as simple as possible will be the best option, always.

>>3066
Fair enough.

I'm talking out my ass here, but I really like the idea of a simple, turn-based, multiplayer "corp-vs-corp" strategy game. It'd keep the implementation nice and simple, with text based clients chatting via IRC.

So each player runs a big-ass moustache-twirling group, and they research and sell shit, get hit by mercs and throw mercs at the other players. Ideally you could even do an ultra-simplistic model of the local economy, and whoever has the biggest stacks of cash once everyone leaves the city wins.

>>3067
Personally I prefer a strategy game. There are enough cyberpunk MUDs already but none text/ascii strategy games.

As far as what the player would be. We could use the idea of cipher from Metal Gear Solid. A world without borders. The organizations players control could be anything, PMC, ISP or a fast food chain.

Some gameplay ideas:
>The game is turn based. A turn could be every 24 hours
>Budget: how much money the player has to spend on actions. Actions can increase growth or affect other organizations.
>Growth: how much the GDP is increasing every turn
>GDP(gross domestic product) Arbitrary total wealth. The budget is increased by 10% of the GDP every turn.

>>3068
>We could use the idea of cipher from Metal Gear Solid.
I've never played a Metal Gear game (other than a little of the first). Any chance you could give me a rough outline of what a cipher is?

>The game is turn based. A turn could be every 24 hours
That sounds nice and practical. If you want a larger scale or shorter games, a week could also work.

>Budget: how much money the player has to spend on actions. Actions can increase growth or affect other organizations.
Yeah. I'd love to put some basic economics into it, but that'd be more implement.

>Growth: how much the GDP is increasing every turn
>GDP(gross domestic product) Arbitrary total wealth. The budget is increased by 10% of the GDP every turn.
I'm not sure I follow. Why are you working from the GDP?

I'd have all the players competing over the same market, so they're necessarily in direct competition. That way you could add interesting shit, like too much midnight raiding and bombs driving people away from the area, shrinking the local market.

>>3069
During the 70s(and later 2014 lol) cipher were an organization which challenged the very idea of nationstates. They had a paramilitary, intelligence agency and government but no land or borders to call their own.

No point really discussing gameplay mechanics too much just yet until a few people come along who actually want to develop the thing, there is nothing worse than giving somebody a massive document about a game and not letting the developer have any say. I know C and python but not enough to build a game. Plus for an online game you need somebody with knowledge of networking.

>>3071
I have good grasp of Python and am okay at gamedev. Plus I've built IRC bots before.

>>3074
the la-li-lu-le-lo?

>>3073
I dont really see no reason why lainchan could not do this. We have a vague idea of what to do, what's next.

I have never done a collaborative project like this before. usually do solo stuff, sorry for my autism.

Unfortunately it looks this has sortof spit up into two different games: an RPG/MUD and a turn-based stratagy game. Should we make a new thread, or just see what happens?

>>3076
>I dont really see no reason why lainchan could not do this.
Sure.
I'm lazy and unfocused as hell, but I definitely have the technical skills to do something like this. If I was on my own it'd take forever and I'd give up halfway, but in a group this could definitely work.

>I have never done a collaborative project like this before. usually do solo stuff, sorry for my autism.
Exactly the same for me. Sorry if this is coming off as bravado - I'm not as confident as I sound.

>We have a vague idea of what to do, what's next.
Make the idea less vague. With a turn-based game like this, none of the planning really NEEDS an implementation for testing at all. - We could pretty much mock it up with text files and an IRC channel.
We should figure out what the key elements of the game are, then set up some mechanics to use them. The we should see how it plays. After that, we can worry about implementation.

So uh, should we just do this?

Sounds good. I made an IRC on irc.freenode.net

#laingame

Even if this is a strategy game. IT would be great to see some lore being written to fill the game out with more fluff.

New to the thread but I really like the idea of an IRC based strategy game about running a megacorp. I've spent a few hours thinking about it and I'd be happy to help with coding. Organisation wise we all need to get on the same page. Right now we all kinda have our own idea of what this game should look like and they're probably quite different so we just need to throw our ideas at the wall and see what sticks. Here goes.

Games like this live or die on their depth of strategy and balance and having both is difficult for obvious reasons. It's often best to start with something simple and then slowly add and tweak elements while constantly testing in order to deepen your knowledge of the game as you go. This has the nice upside that it's actually legitimately the best idea for us to sit around and play the prototype of our game.

As for core concept, money seems appropriate for megacorps and I think there's a lot of room for good strategic play within a simulated economy. We've all seen from MMOs that it's possible to exploit these systems and break the market and having that be part of the goal of the game could be quite fun. However, I also think a game like this needs to be reset every so often. Eventually one group is going to take over and nobody else (especially not a newcomer) is going to be able to challenge them. I think it's better if there's just a win condition at which point we start again. It gets rid of the bad feeling of an arbitrary reset and means that all of the economic trickery has a purpose past inflating your bank account and messing with other peoples bank accounts.

I like the idea of there being multiple win conditions along the lines of successfully merging with Helios or other world dominating actions. The multiple win conditions leaves a lot of room for interesting play. It means there's doubt as to what players are aiming for so there's room for bluffing. Also when you have this first past the post kind of system players will gang up on clear leaders meaning you have to work to hide your power level and that diplomacy is often the deciding factor. Unfortunately this often leads to stalemates where nobody can get ahead without being shot down. In order to prevent this there should be some mechanic via which you can slowly and expensively make an untouchable investment into somehow winning the game. The fact that it's so slow means that doing nothing else is unlikely to actually win you the game but it means that players will be forced into making moves before someone does.

I think the economy should be run by the players as much as possible. The game should provide markets for raw resources, finished goods and nothing else. This leaves the players a lot of room to do interesting things (like totally break the economy) and means that you can deduce things about your opponents actions and motivations. For instance, if your spies tell you that somebody is buying all the raw materials for computer chips but they only sell fast food you can guess that they're building Helios and try to stop them.

On the technical side I think it's a good idea to just get started. As much as we need to get on the same page about game design we need to do it on technical decisions as well. We're going to want a working prototype for faster testing purposes as soon as possible anyway and also deciding now actually saves us trouble down the line. Right now there's only a handful of us and it shouldn't be too hard to agree on basic things like language (python seems good) and libraries (any suggestions for an IRC library?). It only gets harder as more people join and your coders being unable to agree on something like a language can kill a project and momentum is always good so it's often best to just get the ball rolling.

moving discussion to a dedicated thread.
https://lainchan.org/rpg/res/3092.html

>>3065
do want