a text-based adventure by John Hoeksema, Sabin Litchfield, and Carlos Murillo
retro MUD for Hackers in the Bazaar
- ensure your computer has a gcc compiler
- run the command
git clone https://github.com/jhoeksem/zombie_mazeto clone the repo - run the command
maketo compile the executable - run the command
./mainto run the program
This project is a single-player text-based adventure game. It follows in the footsteps of games like Zork, which was first commercially released in 1980. We chose a fantasy world for our own game; fantasy is a common theme in MUDs and role-playing games. These adventure games allowed players to move around a map, interact with NPCs, and use objects in a relatively non-linear storyline. This combination of world building, player freedom, and high interactivity paved the way for role-playing games like D&D to flourish in the future.
Real-time 2D sprite graphic games matured in the 70s, but computer graphics were still quite limited in what they could do. This naturally led to a smaller emphasis being placed on visual content, and most of the programming effort being put towards building out the type of game a computer could do really well: computation and memory. These games had minimal graphics if any, but had massive worlds loaded into the system for the player to explore. They also kept track of important stats like health and strength to quickly calculate the effects of combat.
While we chose not to implement this in our game, many of these early text-based games were multiplayer. Adventure, created in 1975, was an example of this, and also included many features later used in D&D. Modern MMORPGS include Eve Online and World of Warcraft 2. More broadly, online multiplayer gaming has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry, featuring big-name games such as League of Legends, Hearthstone, and CS:GO, with each game having its own international tournaments.