[permalink]2016-12-08 23:15
amud
[permalink]
I wanted to make an extra demonstration of WebSockets from/on/with an xxm project. What I also have dreamed about is making a multi-user game where players would navigate a virtual realm and manipulate the objects in it. Problem is that I don't have too much experience with playing existing multi-player online games, and that animated graphics design is not one of my strong points. But still, I wondered if combining the two would lead to something that somehow works.
So I started a project and set out to get something working, without losing too much effort on anything non-essential. Not even on a name for it, so I called it "Another Multi-User Dungeon". I've put the source up on github and host a running version on this computer at home I use to run my xxm projects (so don't shoot me if it's not available, it's not an always-on full-fledged web-server, but it also shows xxm projects don't ask much of a machine to run stabily). Feel free to have a try:
yoy.be/play/amud
The view shows, from top to bottom:
Anything you type into the entry box, when you press enter, is passed on to your in-game persona to speak into the room it is in. Click on items or people to get a list of actions you can do with it or them. Some actions use the last statement that was spoken by your in-game persona, for example 'make a note' from the NoteBloc object (ask for a NoteBloc from the hotel's receptionist). Click on an item again to select it, and in some cases extra actions are available on other items, for example the 'give' action to pass something from your inventory to someone else in the room. Most 'door' objects have a 'go' action that will move your in-game persona to a different room, unless you don't have the key to its lock or the room is fully occupied.
For now I haven't put too much up into the virtual realm. By default you enter the world in the first free room of the Sunburst Hotel, and apart of a welcome leaflet there's not much there. I thought a decent virtual realm would have computer-operated agents you could interact with, so I remembered ELIZA. A lot has changed in the world of chat-bots since then, but I thought it would be nice to have just that in there. It turns out the syntax of the bot-script at its base serves nicely for other roles as well, so I fashioned a receptionist for the hotel that answers back to some questions (and for now can provide you with a NoteBloc if you ask politely). At the city hall, there's a registry office where you can change your display name, and perhaps leave your e-mail address into the internal database, I might make it required for some operations later or if someone wants system support. There's also money you can pick-up and drop, but nothing else you can do with it (yet!).
Under the hood, it's heavily based on a single WebSocket, your 'feed' through which you get information about the virtual realm, and through which you can send commands back. The set of commands is limited and any extra requests lauched by the client-side script use a personalized single-use key based on your personal authentication key stored in LocalStorage. (I could have gone with a cookie, but if the WebSocket were hosted over TLS, LocalStorage offers slightly better security.)
I'm not sure where to take it from here. I've been thinking about creating a shop you could use money to buy things, but then you'd need something you can earn money with... And transporters that could move you to locations further away. But I guess designing more of a city will take some effort already... Perhaps I've got what I wanted: to create a platform that has the basics to build a game on. Only the idea for a specific game isn't there yet. And thinking up a thrilling plot of an exploratory adventure isn't one of my strong points either. If you have ideas please let me know in an issue on GitHub. Perhaps I could hand out a few RoomMaker objects to people and see what they do with it...
