Looking For Vast Caches Of Information.

Good day everyone.

A friend and myself have been playing text-based games, maybe more commonly known as MUDs, such as DragonRealms and Gemstone (source: http://www.play.net/playdotnet/) - Over the years it is our personal opinions that the theme of these games has gone from Role Playing over to Grinding/Leveling. We have found ourselves enjoying the games less and less due to lack of a Role Playing base of players.

While looking around for other MUDs in an attempt to fill this void that has made itself present, we've come to a cross in the road. We are heavily leaning towards attempting to create our own little world away from reality. While this is a thrilling prospect and has us both very excited, it does mean we're going to need to learn a Lot of things. The Internet is a huge place with vast amounts of information, so I have decided to come here in hopes that there are some sources you fine people may be able to provide, which will get us set and going.

I will try to be a little more specific here in hopes of making it easier for you all to help me if you are able.


- We wish to make a text-based RPG. Not a browser game, but a MUD. (Example: http://www.play.net/dr/)
--- We will need to know what coding language(s) we will need to learn. (Please provide sources if you can.)
----- For coding the actual game. What people see, how their actions are done.
----- For making a client to run the game. (Unless there are free clients that can already be used.)

- We will need to know how to network the game for other players to be able to join.
--- We plan to set up a dedicated server for the game itself at my residence.

As right now we're simply trying to figure out what all we'll need to learn, I'm not sure if there's something I left out or not. Hopefully some of you have experience with this and can point us in the right direction, give us some heads-ups, and provide us with a wealth of knowledge.

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I'd like to move on to another question, or perhaps request. I realize everyone's time is valuable, and if I could attain help for the above questions alone, that would be perfectly fine AND appreciated! If there is anyone out there who would like to help us a little more personally, please feel free to offer. (I promise we would not reject.)

Also maybe there is someone out there who knows these things and was wanting to make something like this as well? Please feel free to get in touch with me and ask about our ideas for the game. If it's something you find interesting we'd love to have help with creating it.

Some methods of contacting if you so wish:
xfire: daviscod2
MSN: daniel_r_davis@hotmail.com
AiM: danielxrxdavis
Yahoo: daniel_r_davis@yahoo.com

For anyone who can give some great sources, or tips, or help us personally, we thank ALL of you.

Welcome to the wonderful world of programing! I am not real sure about what all you will need on the gaming side but I have a couple of resources you might be able to use in setting up your server.The first is a web-site called no-ip.com. They let you create a free subdomain for a personal server.The other is a ?program? called Abyss Web Server. This is the console and stuff for running the server.Disclaimers:1) I am not a programmer and cannot gaurantee that these resources would work for wha you need.2) It has been almost two years since I ran my server and am unsure if these products still work the way they did.3) My terminology s**ks so when other people explain what you need they may call these resources by a different term, probably more accurate.Anyhow, hope I helped a bit.Good luck.

Thank you very much sarajevl for the quick reply and information! I'm going to look into those two right now. Hopefully they'll work for me as they did for you, and if so then that's one issue out of the way!

After speaking with some Computer Science Majors over MSN (aka: old highschool friends) They've suggested that the language I will probably want to go with would be Python. So now I would like to add this onto my previous questions:- Are there any great recourses out there that I would be able to use to learn Python? (Noted: Really hoping to find a free source.)- How does compiling with Python work? Would a free compiler do the job for what I'm looking to achieve? (If so, any idea's where one may be found?)

Still looking for any information or help! Thank you.