Just got an idea... ive had it before but not exactly in this form. Procedural textures ... MUDs ... Elite''s procedural stardata... what it all adds up to ?
FULLY PROCEDURAL graphics.
Im going to take one old small MUD source that i wrote looong time ago and see how it works out.
The good thing is, most MUDs have bunchload of various data to generate graphics from.

-kertropp

C:\Projects\rg_clue\ph_opt.c(185) : error C3142: 'PushAll' :bad idea
C:\Projects\rg_clue\ph_opt.c(207) : error C324: 'TryCnt': missing point

I think that the statments concerning the abillity to add new types of monsters is true for now. But in a few years, with the advent of broadband networking, this will no longer be an issue. When the developers (game master) wants to add a new character he does. When the player logs in to the game, in the background the new images/data for the beastie will be downloaded and patched into the data files of the game.
The same goes for new lands or dungeons...

I played mud''s for a while in the mid 80''s and had fun. I have been playing UO for over 2.5 years and find it to be just as fun today as when I first started (maybe more fun because of my direct connection to the net or just because I have several people that I have formed frinedships with)... I will agree that the text based muds left lots to the imagination. Just as in the late 70''s early 80''s I was playing Zork and being trapped in that game. Everyone I knew was trying to map the world... the entire experience was immersive!!!
The movement away from text based adventures to graphic adventures was the "map" for muds. Your seeing this move away from text based to full blow 3d worlds in games like EQ,UO,AC to name a few.



David "Dak Lozar" Loeser

quote: Original post by Kertropp

Just got an idea... ive had it before but not exactly in this form. Procedural textures ... MUDs ... Elite''s procedural stardata... what it all adds up to ?
FULLY PROCEDURAL graphics.
Im going to take one old small MUD source that i wrote looong time ago and see how it works out.
The good thing is, most MUDs have bunchload of various data to generate graphics from.

-kertropp

Procedural graphics can do wonders for your game and its ability to expand. For the most part you will find that there is a trade off in the number of passes over the texture versus the speed of your engine. On a related note, most graphics cards will not offload procedural manipulation of the textures so you are stuck doing this in CPU increasing the setup time per frame and hence slowing down your application.

The plus side is that in a few simple ways procedural textures can dramatically enhance your game. For instance, there is no real reason to draw and animate a projectile for an ice ball spell, fire ball spell, and a poison ball spell. Using this example you could greyscale the image and animate that, then use procedural texturing to alter the static greyscale texture and apply color to the projectile based upon the spell used. This technique could be used on swords to create shining swords and rusty swords from a single base sword.

Overall I think you will find procedural texturing to be of use to add effects to your game, versus wholesale rendering of your game. There will always be a tradeoff between speed and CPU time, video memory and rendering time, etc., etc. Procedural textures extend this envelope further and become just another weapon in a developers arsenal of tools.

Kressilac

Have there been any web-muds? Maybe a persistent world that can be accessed via Java applet? hmmm...


Mark Mengelt
Program Analyst
Phoenix, AZ

Those muds do exist. Most muds connect on a port >1024 so there has traditionally been issues regarding security and proxy servers. Since a mud is not a recognized server in IEEE terms a port south of 1024 has never been assigned to them. Java applets exist on many sites such as mudconnector.com that act as a wrapper around a telnet client. These do provide some relief to the above firewall/proxy issue but other sites still block the java port as well. Most dial up accounts can get to a site through telnet or som other more advanced "mud client"(ZMud comes to mind)

All this means is that muds are very accessible to the general public if you take some time to look for them. Thier staff mostly consists of hobbyists admin''ing it in their spare time, so with the exception of Medievia Mud they do not have huge EA styke advertising budgets. look at the mudconnector site for mor info. The world of MUDs has been around longer than windows has and is quite mature in what it has to offer gamers, even if it is only text based.

Kressilac