Wrap Chains Around My Coffin
Posted: Fri Jul 05, 2013 1:02 am
So this is the node, Socket.io and MongoDb project I have been working on for a little over a month now. It is basically a MUD, in that it is a text-based MMORPG. However, this is fairly different from traditional MUDs. For one, it is played exclusively in the browser, not Telnet, and will have a number of enhancements, such as always-on-screen status screen, selectable color palette, etc.
As for the game itself, yes, it is going to be a zombie survival game. I know zombie games and zombies in general are quite trendy right now, but I have been obsessed with zombie movies and the genre since I was a kid. And even with all of the games, the zombie game I have always wanted to play still doesn't exist. I hope to get a bit closer to that with my project.
It will be level-based, but not in the traditional MMO sense. You will get experience and gain levels mostly to get new abilities and use better gear, but you will not actually get more health or attack more powerfully. This is to try to keep PvP (yes, there will be survivor versus survivor combat) closer to even, and there won't be any players who have 20x more health and hit 50x harder than you who can just bowl you over. A level 1 will have a decent chance of defeating a level 20 (the level cap). And I hope to avoid design problems with games like Day Z where PvP is permadeath (in Day Z, the average lifespan of a character is around 6 minutes now lol). There will be permadeath in my game (hence the lower level cap), but only if you are killed by the undead NPCs.
I hope to create a tense atmosphere that both encourages survivors to team up, but to also fight each other from time to time. Players can become infected, and if left to die of the infection, they will become very powerful NPC zombies, so hopefully that will create tension about killing infected people you are stuck with. You can create barricades, and put locks on doors to create safe rooms. The zombies will react to noise and will move about the world according to the AI.
There are 6 classes to choose from for now: Engineer, Athlete, Doctor, Drug Dealer, Martial Artist and Mall Security.
Quite a bit has been done already. You can login, create a new character, enter the game world, talk to others in your room, ignore problem users, send tells to specific players, open and close doors and a bit more. If you have rights (you are either an admin or have one of the 5 required 'Builder' levels), you can build game content in-game with special commands. There are also web-based builder forms for adding more complex data such as items. It sounds like quite a bit done, and it is, but I still have a long way to go.
As for the game itself, yes, it is going to be a zombie survival game. I know zombie games and zombies in general are quite trendy right now, but I have been obsessed with zombie movies and the genre since I was a kid. And even with all of the games, the zombie game I have always wanted to play still doesn't exist. I hope to get a bit closer to that with my project.
It will be level-based, but not in the traditional MMO sense. You will get experience and gain levels mostly to get new abilities and use better gear, but you will not actually get more health or attack more powerfully. This is to try to keep PvP (yes, there will be survivor versus survivor combat) closer to even, and there won't be any players who have 20x more health and hit 50x harder than you who can just bowl you over. A level 1 will have a decent chance of defeating a level 20 (the level cap). And I hope to avoid design problems with games like Day Z where PvP is permadeath (in Day Z, the average lifespan of a character is around 6 minutes now lol). There will be permadeath in my game (hence the lower level cap), but only if you are killed by the undead NPCs.
I hope to create a tense atmosphere that both encourages survivors to team up, but to also fight each other from time to time. Players can become infected, and if left to die of the infection, they will become very powerful NPC zombies, so hopefully that will create tension about killing infected people you are stuck with. You can create barricades, and put locks on doors to create safe rooms. The zombies will react to noise and will move about the world according to the AI.
There are 6 classes to choose from for now: Engineer, Athlete, Doctor, Drug Dealer, Martial Artist and Mall Security.
Quite a bit has been done already. You can login, create a new character, enter the game world, talk to others in your room, ignore problem users, send tells to specific players, open and close doors and a bit more. If you have rights (you are either an admin or have one of the 5 required 'Builder' levels), you can build game content in-game with special commands. There are also web-based builder forms for adding more complex data such as items. It sounds like quite a bit done, and it is, but I still have a long way to go.
Keep in mind there really isn't much design work at all on the game so far! It is just windows on a white page.
. The text box on the left is just essentially a chat room where you see what is happening in the world scrolling by as it happens. I am about 7k lines of code into it, and about 18 of those lines had to do with style lol. I am not a web designer, and am just focusing on the gameplay for now, since all of the game takes place on this one page and styling it later (or getting someone else to style it, that is) would not be an issue.
I am hoping through some of the enhancements to make it more accessible than a traditional MUD, since most people trying out MUDs for the first time today leave completely confused.