Complete solution of the development process of the first real-time online game

 "My interest is to create the world, not to live in a world created by others. I hope that the game world allows people to jump out of the limitations of the real world and try new identities...not to reinvent themselves, but to let them find their true identity. Attribution". So he created the first online world.

     The MUD1 developed by Trubshaw (in order to distinguish this game from the MUD game type, the name of the game is unified as MUD1 in the following text) is still a pure text world without any pictures, but players in front of different computers can play the game Take risks and communicate together.

  Compared with previous games with online functions, MUD1 is the first real-time multiplayer interactive online game in the true sense. Its biggest feature is that it can ensure the continuous development of the entire virtual world and player characters-no matter if the player quits After logging in again, or the server restarting, the scenes, treasure chests, monsters, and puzzles in the game remain unchanged, and the player's role is still the same as the last time.

  However, this change also makes the game need richer content to meet the needs of multi-user players. The MUD1 version originally designed by Trubshaw has only one area. After the user logs in, in addition to chatting with other users, the human-computer interaction function is very limited. Therefore, it is necessary to inject more content into the game to make the game more fun.

  Although Trubshaw is very good at programming, he has no experience in game planning. At this time, his friend Richard Bartle (Richard Bartle) helped him complete the work out of interest: adding more Areas, monsters, treasures, puzzles, etc. Later, the two also developed a special language for the game-MUDDL, and continued to repair and maintain the game.

  Batu's improvement and improvement work has increased the fun of MUD1, which is of great significance. On October 20, 1978, the improved MUD1 was launched on the campus network of the University of Essex. The number of players soon exceeded the expectations of Trubshaw and Batu and became the most popular game in the university. one. Adventures in the dangerous jungle, fighting monsters, and solving ancient puzzles have become some students' favorite pastimes in their spare time.

  Compared with early online games that only support a limited number of players, MUD1 theoretically supports an unlimited number of players, but in reality, due to problems such as system memory limitations, the game quickly reached the upper limit of support. Fortunately, at that time, only people in the University of Essex network were able to access - until 1980, the University of Essex joined the ARPA net (Advance Research Projects Agency Network, the world’s first package developed by the US Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). Switching network, its success directly contributed to the birth of the Internet and the transmission control protocol (TCP/IP).

  After joining ARPAnet, players outside the campus can also experience MUD through the Internet. Players from outside the campus network have increased significantly, occupying a lot of system resources. The University of Essex has to limit the user’s login time and only allow teaching Visits at night outside of scientific research hours to reduce the load, but this did not affect the popularity of this game on the nascent Internet. Soon after Trubshaw graduated and left the school, Batu, who stayed on to teach, took over all the maintenance work. Until 1987, MUD1 was licensed to CompuServe for commercial operation. Batu decided to leave his alma mater and devoted himself to the development of MUD games. The MUD server of the University of Essex was also shut down, but the MUD operated by CompuServe has continued for more than 20 years.

  During the university, Batu uploaded the source code of MUD to the Internet for scholars and developers to study for the purpose of sharing and communication. The direct consequence of this practice was that a series of derivative and clone works were born in a short period of time. . Although this is very harmful to the copyright of MUD, on the other hand, it has also accelerated the popularity of online text role-playing games. Since MUD is the origin of this type of work, this type of work is also called MUD. At the 2005 GDC Game Developers Conference, the organizing committee awarded Richard Batu the "Game Pioneer Award" in recognition of the contribution made by this pioneer in the online game industry.

  In addition to his contributions to the creation and dissemination of MUD, Batu’s greatest contribution is the study of the behavior of game players. During the operation of the MUD, Batu found that the needs and performance of the players in the game were different. After analyzing the player's behavior, he formed a set of his own theory, which later generations called the "Batu model." In 1996, Batu published an article titled "Hearts, Clubs, Cubes, Spades-Classification of MUD Game Players". In the article, he proposed four classification methods for MUD players, dividing MUD gamers into killers. The four different types, namely, achievement, social, and exploratory, not only established guiding theories for analyzing the sociological behavior of online game players, but also had a huge impact on later online game developers. For future online games, MUD’s greatest contribution is to make multiplayer online interaction possible, and it also makes it possible for game makers to create a virtual game world. At the same time, MUD also provides a template for future online games. For a long time, MMORPG has not been able to jump out of it. Batu has more insights about this:

  "For example, we introduced a level system in MUD1. It was just one of the several options we faced at the time. However, after becoming the benchmark for online games, people think before developing a game,'How many levels should our game have? 'Instead of'Do we need the setting of levels'. In people's minds, a virtual game world must have levels to make sense, which also means that the game must have an end or culmination."

  Batu has criticized the increasingly rigid game modes, including the level system, on many occasions, and hopes that the developers will be able to make a revolution. After doing commercial MUD development in the early years, Batu has now moved away from game development and returned to his alma mater to teach computer game design .

  "The work Roy and I did was like planting a tree. As the tree grows, it sows more new seeds. Now it has grown into a forest. No matter what I do now, these trees continue to grow. Although I can continue to plant trees today, it is more meaningful for me to do my best to maintain the healthy growth of the forest."

  Finally, when we look back to the University of Essex campus in 1978, we can’t help but wonder, what kind of original intention did the two teenagers who created a great virtual world for mankind have? Regarding this question, the two There was an answer in later times, and the answers of the two were not the same: At that time, the 19-year-old Trubshaw wanted to use technology to build a world better than reality, while the 18-year-old Batu wanted to build a world. Let people find themselves.

  "My interest is to create the world, not to live in a world created by others. I hope that the game world allows people to jump out of the limitations of the real world and try new identities...not to reinvent themselves, but to let them find their true identity. Attribution".

  Enlightenment: words and pictures

  In the early development of online games, due to the limitations of the network itself, online games have experienced a long-term MUD era. Text adventure games have occupied the mainstream for nearly 20 years, and the formation of very different types of branches will have a profound impact on the development of online games in the future, laying a solid foundation for online games.

  Compared with the graphic online games of later generations, the biggest difference of MUD is that it is just a text adventure without the intuitive feeling brought by the picture. This is also the main reason why MUD quickly disappeared in the dust of history after the popularity of graphic online games. First of all, games are a kind of entertainment. Although MUD can provide a more enjoyable interactive experience than book reading, when people can wander immersively in the game world, this kind of fun that only relies on text imagination is inferior. It is true that text can bring imagination, but the screen can bring a more intuitive look and feel, and the mass players do not seem to need much imagination.

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Origin blog.csdn.net/u013430094/article/details/113883667