Topic: A different approach for creating a mud (Read 2230 times)

The big problem with trying to equate in-game currency directly with a cryptocoin is that games do not have reliable accounting.

There is almost always some bug or glitch or race-condition or suchlike that eventually ends up making two copies of something.

Like maybe a player carries stuff, drops it in a room, leaves the room, the system crashes and not all those changes got to disk so you end up with the things being both in the room and on the player.

For this reason it is much wiser to have conversion back and forth between the in game currencies and actual cryptocoins be via markets. That way if some glitch does suddenly drop some huge amount of game currency in the game all that happens is it inflates the game currency making it worth less cryptocoins, instead of placing the game operator in the untenable position of having twice as many game currency units to cash out as they have cryptocoins to match.

I had considered making for example tickets players could carry that had serial numbers, like actual bitcoin addresses printed on them. But even then, when suddenly one gets cloned there will be ill will among players and maybe admins too as who-ever moves the real coins from the address listed on the ticket first leaves all the other copies of the ticket un-backed by real coins.

I have been using not just MUDs but also the two-dimensional Crossfire RPG and, for whole world at a time scale stuff, FreeCiv, with various civilisations favouring and using various cryptocurrencies, but have deliberately avoided trying to directly pin any of the game-currencies to any of the cryptocoins. Games just do not do the kind of absolutely reliable accounting you need for real life financial applications.

Heck even normal accounting software has a trial balance before the month-end because they do not expect to actually balance without some human messing around correcting all the expected errors! It is standard business practice to run a trial balance then manually make corrections, over and over again until it actually balances! So do not expect game code to do reliable accounting!

(The stuff I have been doing all falls into the overall project known as the Galactic Milieu.)

(The MUD codebase I have been using is CoffeeMUD, I had a hard time finding MUD code that permits itself to be used for anything that could conceivably make money, so many all derive from old code whose author(s) specifically forbade using it for commercial/profit type uses.)

-MarkM-

A different approach for creating a mud

Hello everyone!

I would first like to say thank you to all who have helped to create Evennia. Great job!

I have been thinking for a while, over how to build a mud using real money in the game. In other words if you want to buy, for example, a sword which has required a lot of raw materials and high-level weapons forged, and don't have that much gold coins. You can buy gold coins with real money and likewise you can exchange the coins.

For this to work out, I had thought that all items must be made by the players and all sales are made between players. And that the raw materials have to be somewhat limited and controlled.

To be able to buy and sell currency in the game as smooth as possible, I had intended to use iCash a crypto currency like Bitcoin. The reason I don't use bitcoin instead is that iCash is much less worth per unit and therefore makes it much easier for me to just bring the exchange rate to 1 gold = 1 iCash. You can then switch them to Bitcoins or some common currency so it is only for convenience.

This is broadly how I thought that the mud to work.

At first I thought of locating any good mudlib and build on it, tried even Coffeemud and although it is a mudlib who seems to have everything and then some. I felt like I would quickly lose control of the game. Found since Evennia and thought I would build everything from scratch. But felt that it will take a very long time to build something that is at all possible to play, and without the constant fedback from players, I would probably build things that seem good in theory but does not work when playing the game.

So now to the point, if you managed to read this far .

Then I came up with the idea that why not let players, coders, games builders etc come up with suggestions on what they want for new features, enhanced, removed, etc. Then I put up a iCash address to the most popular proposals, where I (and others if someone feels generous ) send iCash equal to lets say $20. Then those who want to post suggestions, code, etc. that would should be implemented, whenever we had enough solutions the players may select one winner who gets the iCash available on the address.

So what do you say? Is this an approach you think would work?

Sorry for all the text and if it's messy, but hope you understand. And do not be afraid to ask questions

Do you have to create a account on another platform {website} before you use the client to login?

I normally just connect with the client and then take over with the text .... I never use the auto login option, to protect my username & password.

Well, Let me know.. if I am doing something wrong.. I want to see what this is like. 

Are you the only person running the mud? It is a huge job.... when it gets bigger.....

It's weird, I tried to log in from home and from the cell phone and came in without any problems?

No, I tried for two days at different times to connect to your mud, with no success.

I am going to try to connect with another mud client, to see if it's not Mudlet causing this. It's a pity, because I would have really liked to see what the game was like and if it was in any way like Batmud.

I can connect to Batmud through Mudlet, so it should not be the client.   {This is bad, because I now started playing Batmud again} 

Definitely a game I should explore ty for bringing this to the Bitcoin community.

Interesting. I'll check this one out.

I was playing just a few minutes ago.

It IS pretty addictive indeed, but honestly if you die in the early levels like me, it'll be EXTREMELY hard to get back in the game

I used to play one of the biggest and the oldest MUD's out there .... Batmud. { https://www.bat.org/ }

It is very addictive, even if it's only text and you will clock up time on them within no time. I cannot see why you went for the iCash option with this.

Why not go directly with Bitcoin? {Batmud also had it's own built in financial currency... Mithril/Silver/Bronze etc etc}

I will check it out, and if the iCash is not a lot of extra effort, I can possibly start playing again.. I did not get any real income from Batmud back then, so it would be a fresh new start, with something new.

My family will not like it... I spend way too much time on Batmud, back in the day.

Edit : Is this server only online during certain hours .... I connected to the address and port, with the client and it just hangs?

You should try changing the intro and giving it a better name?
I'm a very active MUD person you see ((:

Whats your player name and iCash address? Go online on IcashMud and wait for me (Wonko), then give me the gold coins and i'll send that you amount of iCash.

How to exchange gold into iCash>

I have sent 20000 iCash  .
Tx: 7d0641ce6bf576ae2a2161d6a4f1b262d9e1981ef043592bc2a788d92c396a09
Player name: Amnu

* Thanks got them now. Away and shopping then  .

Nice  , type get all from body.

I killed a monster, but apparently I don't know how to loot it

Glad you like it  . Type help and the command list will show.

I like this

I just wanna know how to know your stats by the way? there should be a command list

Of course you can. But i wouldn't recommend to have a lot of gold on you if you are low level.

Send the amount of iCash that you want in gold to this address i85cz2dmGu53RKwz1GW2tpvH1wekkhZned, and give me the tx and your character name.

Cool game  .

Can i buy gold in the game with iCash to?

The web player is real slow  . It works much better if you use telnet (windows) host:108.61.198.249 port:5555