Another Turning Point (of Sorrow)

Few games have seen a development cycle as long and ridiculous as Chronicles of Sorrow. I'm kidding of course - Lord of the Rings Online (amazingly great game that I highly recommend) was in development for over a decade, Duke Nukem Forever was getting gaming mag cover stories over ten years ago and is still yet to come out, and of course there's Spore - Will Wright's vaporware masterpiece. And obviously I'm kidding, as all of those are 'real' games, and Chronicles of Sorrow is merely a hobbyist's fantasy of mine.

It started as a massive project involving most of the people who lived in the once-great-now-baron Van Buren Village. There were weakly meetings (maybe two of them total?) talking about style, characters, overall story, etc - but nothing ever really came of them. Then Tech, Keith, and I started writing an 8-bit soundtrack for an RPG that never was - the soundtrack of Chronicles of Sorrow. This project actually produced quality content, with full on overworld, town, ship, and several dungeon themes written and recorded (in the 3-note at a time NES style).

After all of that cooled off CoS began the cycle of failed game design experiments as detailed in this entry. And now it's turned a corner once again. This time it's truly for the best! I'm set on the idea of creating a MUD, and had been (since the writing of the 3/17 entry) working towards this goal via a website-based, subscription fee loaded "fill in the blanks" web application. It featured a world editor, in depth class/skill/spell controls, a quest system, a rudimentary system for communicating and interacting with NPCs, and so on. The only problem? A completely restrictive development environment.

Let's say I wanted to create a locked door that you needed to find a key for in order to get past. Using this web-software this would be impossible, as doors were something not built into the 'template' so to speak. Now I'm no master coder by any means, but i understand Java to a certain extent and have a fair grasp of object oriented programing. Basically, if I needed a locked door, I could figure out how to modify the MUD's code in order to make one. This 'fill in the blanks' site allowed users zero control on the fundamental code that ran the game mechanics.

As easy as it would've been to just continue making more rooms, more areas, more monsters, more NPCs, more spells, more levels, etc - they would've all been trapped inside of this restrictive environment with no hope of ever transcending the mold of a 'cookie-cutter' MUD. So I began searching for other options. There are basically two ways to start building a MUD - from scratch in a code editor, or using a 'codebase' (jargon for an open source uncompiled game engine the user can shape into an original design, and then build a game on top of). I straight up don't have the programming chops or networking knowhow necessary to build a internet based RPG from scratch. That would be ridiculous.

So I started browsing the different MUD codebases out there, looking for one that would be fairly easy to jump into. And boy oh boy, did I ever find that codebase! It's called CoffeeMud, and it will be the engine that runs Chronicles of Sorrow. What makes this codebase so much more appealing than just about every one I came across is the fact that it was written in Java - a language I'm already familiar with, and a language famous for its cross-platform compatibility. I was able to get the apache-based server up and running with my Mac booted in Windows and running DOS (and I hope to repeat the feat Mac-side using OS X's Unix foundation). This means that after a little editing I was able to actually connect to my own computer - acting as the MUD server - and interact with the first few rooms that I can added to the main codebase.

It was truly a wondrous site - one that I'll be sure to post a picture of once I find my way back home - to see the old "Chronicles of Sorrow" welcome screen pop up in a PuTTY telnet session KNOWING that that information was being delivered from my very own computer acting like a web server. This means that I'll be able to host the game (as it's an online game that requires a running web server to operate) on my own machine while I develop the game world, and one day it should all be easily transferable to a large scale MUD hosting site like mudmagic or the likes.

Most MUDs that are coming out today are merely interactive fan fictions, usually taking place inside of IPs like Star Wars, Kingdom Hearts, DBZ, X-Men, etc. It's really quite pathetic and quite sad. Hopefully the all original world and story-dependant progression of CoS will help to set it apart from this seemingly 'ultimate-nerd' sub culture. There are still great, original MUDs like Medievia floating around out there - and I hope to (some day) see Chronicles of Sorrow added to the list of original text-based adventure games worth playing (now that it's 20 or 30 years after the genre is outdated and irrelevant).