indyMUD, Worldforge tools review

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Verdict:

Review Date: 18 Feb 2005

Price when reviewed:

Our Rating 4 stars out of 5

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Online worlds have changed from text-based environments into vast, highly detailed graphical lands populated in real time by individuals keen to escape their nine-to-five lives (see page 211).

For some, however, the joy is in creating strange lands for others to explore, and Linux is not short of ways to enable you to do this. If you're stuck for a resolution, why not become a god and create an online world of your own?

Some people still prefer old-style text-based virtual worlds, and there are plenty of text-driven multi-user dungeon (MUD) systems for Linux. These rely on the player's imagination and don't require the latest graphics cards to run. One such MUD is indyMUD (Industrial MUD). This allows multiple players to interact in real time, and has the ability to plug in user-written, artificially intelligent creatures to make the game more interesting. For others, though, graphics are key, and this is where Worldforge comes in.

Worldforge is a community of developers creating open-source tools to build interactive online worlds. You can download and modify their software freely. Already, four fully fledged virtual worlds (Dural, Eonia, Chronos and Shamato) are online. As these are open-source projects, you can legally download everything you need to re-create them on your own servers and then create your own versions or modify the existing places. If another of your resolutions is to learn to program, you could really let your imagination run riot.

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