A text Myst Online project

[belford]

I have just linked from the surface to the Cavern, and then back to the surface, using linking books of my own design.

A few months ago I had a insight into the referential structure of the Descriptive Book vs the Linking Book -- a way to model the "pronouns" of Writing more efficiently. (See Barwise and Etchemendy, 1987.) The possibility of intra-Age linking fell right out. More: I am confident that I can produce a "travelling book", with linking pages for my home *and* the Cavern, and carry it with me as I link back and forth.

Never mind those "magic" tricks. They're not important.

I believe that, with these techniques, an Age might be Written in less time than we are used to. I mean *tremendously* less time -- days, rather than weeks or months. I realize this sounds absurd. But the math works so far, and I have some Ages-in-progress that may be usable after only *hours* of Writing work. (I have not yet tested them -- I wanted to finish the surface link first!)

I trust you all realize the potential implications. I do not want -- in *no way* do I want to lessen the Writing work you have been doing over the past years. My Writing techniques are not the same as yours; my Ages have an indefinably different quality; the one cannot be mistaken for the other.

But if people can produce and share Ages without the obstacles that have plagued us -- it could be the start of a new chapter for us all.

[belford]

...Please forgive me the in-character introduction.

A few months ago I had an insight (really!) about a multiplayer game model that's never been seriously tried. I think it's a good fit for the Myst Online idea. I want to try it. I hope some of you will help.

As some of you may know, I am a text adventure guy. I am now building a multiplayer online *text-only* server for an Uru game. I started it two weeks ago. I can now log in, walk around an area (a Cavern neighborhood), chat with another logged-in client, and link to another area ("the Surface"). That much works. Lots of other things don't work yet, and the server is not yet public, but the project is clearly doable.

(I've posted about this project a little on Google+. Not yet on the Uru forums.)

I say "text-only", you say "Oh, a MUD. MUDs aren't new." Yes and no. It's sort of a MUD, but it's much more like a wiki. (Or like Twine, if you're familiar with Twine.) You see a page of text, with underlined links. Click a link to walk somewhere, or open a book, or pull a lever -- whatever is built into the location. You don't type commands. (You do type to chat.)

The important part is that (once the system is done) you'll *edit locations* like a wiki. Type a paragraph of text into an edit box and hit "save" -- that's a room. Use simple markup for links to actions and other rooms.

Obviously, this is *a whole lot easier* than Blender modelling. (It's also a lot easier than classical text adventure programming, or classical MUD programming!) As a side benefit, it doesn't use any of Cyan's artwork (because it's all text!), nor any of Cyan's code. My project will be open source from the get-go. (And I intend to avoid Cyan's areas -- I'm not duplicating Aegura, or Relto, or the Cleft, or any of that.)

Again: I don't want to take away from the Plasma work that's going on now. A text adventure is not a graphical adventure. A MOUL Age will always be something special.

But... every time I go to the MOUL forums, people are talking about waiting. Waiting for Cyan to import updates, waiting for Blender work to progress, waiting for account creation to start working again... I am not good with any more waiting. I can do this project now. I can get a server running where anybody with a text editor can say "Here is my creation; explore it."

...That's the pitch. I realize I've left a lot unanswered; I will post more this week. Feel free to hammer me with questions or complaints or tell me that I'm ruining everything. :)

[belford]

Okay, not a big interest-grabber. Fair enough. :)

I am going to post my next chunk anyhow -- even if there's no discussion at this point, I'd like to get the notes into the forum.

(Also, I said earlier that I hadn't mention this on the Uru forums. Actually I did, briefly, a couple of months ago -- I just forgot about it! I am going to update that post, though not with this level of detail.)

[belford]

Some of my thoughts on this project come from my "Better Instancing" post from 2008. Some were sparked Alahmnat's recent (sporadic) blog posts, such as "A More Welcoming Beginning". Some are new.

I am not going to rehash those posts, just describe the key principles of what I am doing.

- We are here to write new Ages, explore them, share them, and enjoy them -- alone or together. All else follows from that.

- The minimum number of "special" Ages (those important for game-mechanical reasons). MOUL has too many: the Cleft (the start world), Relto (the home world), the Nexus (for link-access), Ae'gura (the global home base), the Neighborhood (a group home base), etc. All of these functions should come from *player-created* Ages.

- Anyhow, we don't want to replicate Relto, or the Cleft, or any other MOUL location. Respect Cyan's intentions for the areas they built; we can build our own.

- Everybody should have access to Age creation. (See point one.) Building must be easy. Building must be *incremental* -- you should be able to enter a room as soon as you create it, and then add details one at a time. If someone finds a bug, you should be able to fix it "in place".

- All text. Including illustrations in a text world is probably easy -- HTML can do that -- but I don't want that to be the norm. You shouldn't feel obligated to create nice graphics before other people take your Age seriously.

- Minimal gatekeeping. If you create an Age, you should be able to walk up to someone and share it -- no need for an administrator to install it or add a linking book somewhere official.

- Instancing is simple and transparent. It should be possible (and easy) to create a private Age, but it should also be easy for players to gather in (almost) any Age.

- "Time to D'ni" (for new players) should be a couple of minutes at worst.

I have several pages of notes on how this will all work (and I've built a large fraction of it). However, here's a quick overview:

You start, as a new player, in a "Surface" world, in a location called "Information Booth". The description notes that you found this booth in an obscure corner of a shopping mall, somewhere near where you live. (Technically it is a "solo world", meaning always private-instanced and unshareable.)

This "Surface" age has just two locations: the Information Booth, and a Changing Room (wardrobe, for customizing your textual appearance). We won't draw the player's attention to the Changing Room right away. Instead, we'll have a short intro sequence in which you pick up a linking booklet and a ki. (This acts as a micro-tutorial on the interface -- how to click on a link.)

Once you have those two items, your screen has the ki display, which includes the contents of your linking booklet. For a new player, that's one link: "Seltani District". The instructions say to click on that. Poof, you are in the Cavern.

Seltani District is a shared area on the edge of the Cavern lake. This would *initially* be the "hub" space -- it would have orientation information for new players, a location for players to hang out and chat, another location with a collection of linking books to other worlds.

I stress "initially" because I don't want the District to become a bottleneck. If it gets crowded, people will build more hanging-out areas -- could be in the Cavern or out of it. (The engine will not distinguish between "in Cavern", "on Earth", or "other Ages".)

Again, players can share links directly, so an Age doesn't have to be installed in Seltani in order to be "official". The Book Gallery in Seltani will be the easiest place to find links *at first* -- but I hope there will soon be groups of players building libraries and curating their own collections.

As I said, I don't intend to replicate the Nexus. Your collection of links is your linking booklet; you carry it everywhere. If that becomes unwieldy, create a private Age with a bookshelf and shift some of your links to that.

(I have already constructed the Info Booth and Seltani, to the point where you can walk around them, look at the scenery, and link back and forth. Seltani only has a couple of linking books so far; obviously this will grow as I make more progress.)

(The system is currently stable for walking around and chatting, but there's no scripting system. I have several Ages plotted out that require some level of scripting before I can start them.)

[dtierce]

I'm willing to give it a try! If the descriptions are rich enough, I can do without graphics.

David Tierce

[Christian Walther]

Sorry about the lack of response… must be disappointing . Rest assured that I’m following with interest! As a decidedly non-text-adventure guy, all I can say is that I’m curious to see where this is going. I’ll be sure to give it a try, and maybe I’ll end up liking it!

[Wamduskasapa]

I also am willing to give this a try

[belford]

Thanks! I think I can do description well enough to demonstrate the potential of the system.

(Text-game CV available upon request. :)

I hope to have it alpha-testable in early June.

[Chuckles58]

One of my favorite games from the 70's was "Adventure in Colossal Cave" which in my opinion had some of the best graphics, due to it being text only game.

[belford]

I have some familiarity with that scenario, I admit. :)

I am not using the same UI paradigm as Colossal Cave -- hyperlinks, not typed commands. This means the system will be good at different things. But, I hope, it will be shifted in a Myst-ward direction. Less suited to wide open "try to think what to do" puzzles, more suited to interesting machines and experimenting with combinations of provided actions.