Chronicles of Game Design (Sorrow)

I tend to drift from one obsession to another, many times not fully finishing the job. Making video games has been a hobby of mine since I was a kid. It started with little space invader like shooters and point-and-click adventures (a la Myst) , then in middle school I graduated to first person shooter modding - doing a total conversion of Bungie's Mac-only masterpiece Marathon Infinity. But what I've really been wanting to make my whole life it seams, in one form or another, is an RPG. I tooled around in RPGMaker 2K3 for a while, trying to make my own 8-bit looking RPG by modifying graphic tiles from other NES games. I had two fully animated characters, a complete overworld, a handful of dungeons, and even a few scripted scenario events.

It just didn't look good enough. In order to complete it I would've needed a team of artists and programmers to make it a reality. I'm simply not good enough of a 2D or pixel artist to make an entire RPG, end of story. So I took a step back and started working on an 'interactive fiction' (or text adventure') version of Chronicles of Sorrow (the RPG storyline that Tech and I developed). I built Simon Tril's house, and a little bit of the town he was from using the Inform 7 IF language/editor. Again, I was unsatisfied by the results, as this system was really built for non-violent puzzle based adventure games, and I knew I wanted serious goblin crushing in the game. So once again, I abandoned Chronicles of Sorrow.

That's when I got my hands on a 3D game engine, and set about building a 3D RPG from scratch. One zone map and a single 3D house later I realized the programming would be too difficult, and the overall results would again, look too poor to be worth while (even from an indie game standpoint). So I put my ambitions to rest again, and kept wasting more time playing FFXI and the like. But now, a new chapter is about to be written in the CoS's struggle to exist. I've begun scripting a MUD version of the CoS world. MUD stands for "multi user dungeon," and they were amongst the first online games to ever exist. It's basically a text adventure that multiple people can join in on, battle and level up in, and explore together.

The true beauty of a MUD is what an engaging and enriching single player experience they can be too. Yes, I'll have to pay a small fee to have it hosted on a server - but it'll be a fully expandable sprawling text-based RPG with PvE and PvP combat! Players from all over the world will be able to connect to the MUD, and access their character from anywhere there's internet access. Since all the player info is stored server-side, it will be playable even in a web browser across all platforms! This time I think I've finally found a fit for my aspirations of making Chronicles of Sorrow. It'll take a while before it's in a playable form, but i'll be sure to let you know when that day comes (if it ever does). Until then enjoy this ASCII logo I whipped up!



P.S. - If you want to try out a MUD for yourself follow these easy steps!
1) Download a MUD client - I recommend Atlantis for the Mac and SimpleMU for Windows
2) Set up a connection to the server eternalfantasy.org (IP: 66.150.225.61) and set the port to 3333
3) Make a character and start killing asps!

This is a MUD based upon every Final Fantasy game, I play it a lot in the background - it's pretty well written, and having been live for over 11 years now, it's pretty balanced as well.