Silly chat/game idea

[Orangy Tang]

A crazy idea I've had after watching peoples behaviour on Wurm - lots of people log in an end up spending as much time chatting as they do actually playing the game. Its already been mentioned that some kind of chat/IRC channel might be a good idea for the site, so how about combining the two together?

The idea is still pretty hazy, but the main gist of it is some kind of simple world (think marble madness) where people logged in would actually appear as avatars, able to wander around and talk to each other (via speach bubbles, automatically logged in a history pane hidden away somewhere).

Chuck in avatar customisation, some simple emoticons type actions and unleash on the general public.

Good idea? Something I should have a crack at doing if i get enough spare time?

[endolf]

Hi
 It's called the sims online isn't it? , I dunno what the sims online is like, but I heard that you chat in that sort of fashion with each other. Most multiplayer games end up with a certain amount of that (excluding FPS/RTS). Even going back to the old telnet mud days you could see people just hanging around in towns chatting.

Endolf

[Orangy Tang]

I've not played Sims Online, but now you mention it i see the similarities.

I suppose it depends on whether the interaction with the 'world' is actually interesting enough for people to hang around. I hadn't though out much beyond people being able to wander around a bit.

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[erikd]

Actually, I've had the *exact same idea*!


I also never got around making a start, but it's nice to see someone having the same idea.

Doing it in java could make it even a nice showcase of for example java's dynamic capabilities. For example maybe people could be able to upload their own java classes customizing their own online character at runtime if the interfaces are well defined. (just thinking out loud now :-))

Erik

[Orangy Tang]

Ok, assuming I'm going to give this a go, the biggest problem I can see is actually setting up some sort of server. Now that either involves me setting up one out of my house, or some sort of peer to peer thing without a centralised server. I'm thinking the traditional sever model would be a much easier way though.

What do you mean by customising themselves via uploading classes? Actually loading an external class wouldn't be too much hastle, but what would you actually let people do with this?

I'm not sure whether you'd need any kind of database behind things, or whether with a static world and no persistant players that would be overkill. Anyone any good links to designing a system like this?

[erikd]

What do you mean by customising themselves via uploading classes? Actually loading an external class wouldn't be too much hastle, but what would you actually let people do with this?

Well, I didn't think it through, but something in the lines of how being able to subclass the class which defines how you are presented on the client. Something limited enough to be safe but powerful enough to be fun. Sort of like an applet so to speak if you get my drift.
I'm sorry to be so vague, but like I said, I didn't think it through.  

Erik

[swpalmer]

Sierra tried something like this several years ago... I forget what the community was called.