Yeah, but that collapsed due to a rapture-licensing snafu.

I grew disinterested in MUDs in general, but a sci-fi one would be cool. I might check it out.

I know it's going to have credits, what about affliction-based combat? Any official confirmation?

I wish him great luck with this. I know he's had issues in the past before but it looks like this is his baby, so he's in charge, and it looks like he'll have a framework to implement his own ideas. He had some good ideas, making NPCs afflictable, for instance, and giving players the ability to create and destroy their own communities.

I wonder how many people will leave the "big 4" realms for that one. There are always a band of people who want the "fresh new MUD smell", and he has his own fans. However, Science-Fiction is not fantasy--there's a reason Fantasy RPGs are more popular than the S-F ones. If they can get a lot of people outside of the "IRE jumper" that will be key.

My key concern would be how to implement space travel. I think the key concern I have with Aetherspace here and probably with ships or the Wilderness map in general is that the MUDs don't use ANSI codes to refresh the screen in a square. This leads to the "scrollable map" which is spammy and makes combat/navigation less fun. I hope they find a way to prevent that problem, because usually with SF settings you think space travel, otherwise most people will be planet/station bound.

I'm really hoping their space system turns out to be non-horrible. Aetherspace and wilderness maps are freakin' nightmarishly spammy and a huge pain in the arse to use.

It's confirmed to have 3D space maps and some degree of autopilot with upgradable AI. Doesn't sound like the wilderness system.

I dunno, it could just be a case of aetherships + burrowing elevations.

The autopilot could just be a matter of autowalking - without much in the way of obstacles (I noticed one guy talking about running into suns all the time with it though) it's just a matter of adjusting the coordinates until you hit the right coordinates. Nothing special.

No, but it's probably based on the rapture dynamic map system, which represents things as ASCII characters. It's normally 2D but I think you could be creative and combine data. Either that, or this is something they whipped up on their own.

So far, IRE doesn't yet have a MUD that uses the ANSI Escape Codes that allow you to set control over the character based window, for instance, place character N at coordiates X,Y on an 80 column x 25 row screen. The current implementation is while they support color codes, they don't try to reformat your screen using this technique. In my opinion, if you want such a game to be easy to use, you'll have to start supporting these items. (But they might have to update Nexus to do so, if it doesn't already support this--most MUD clients have this support). If they don't, they'll have a hard time convincing people to participate in space travel.

If ToP can do this, I'll bet other IRE Muds will follow suit for the WP/Ships/Aetherspace. Heck, if they could start doing more of this "in general" I think combat would be much more enjoyable, although that would be a lot more work and disrupt various combat systems. But I think they absolutely have to have this for any sort of "map-based" travel/combat to work.

That sounds like a good idea, but are you sure that's even possible?

Why wouldn't it be? This is a standard that has been around for over 3 decades. The system apparently uses ANSI codes to get those 16 background-foreground colors. Rapture could handle it, at least on the server side.

I think the only thing preventing it could be (1) the Nexus Java client might not support it, and (2) they might be thinking of the poor guy with a Telnet client that doesn't support it, but to be honest, I don't see (2) as being a problem anymore.

Why so sure that there even is going to be a visual representation of space in this MUD? If you ask me, the most elegant way to solve such things is a coordinate-based map.

You are at 83.100.02
There is an alien spaceship at 80.100.03
(Oh crap, run!)
<>goto 100.100.02

I hope you get my drift here.

On other news, the less generically IRE-like this MUD will be, the higher the chances I will play it. The sci-fi premise is something not to be wasted - I want really original stuff, and not Achaea In Space.

he said its x,y,z based.

Orone had really good maps for traveling. Its got a new name now, but I can't remember it. Not too spammy cause it only updated when you looked at it, but still huge and usueable.

Nerf Space Bards

Yeah, I saw that too. Two thoughts that entered my head: "Woot, IRE space MUD!" and "Woot, Joe's back!"

Nerf Space-Richter

http://forums.tearsofpolaris.com/index.php...dpost&p=257

Join usss.....

For some reason, I'm having trouble visiting the forums, and on an unrelated note, also having problems with visiting the Lusternian Website...

There are a couple MUDs out there (mostly SW-based ones in LPC) that come to mind that have absolutely excellent non-virtualmap 3D coordinate systems. It's not all that far-fetched that Polaris would go that route, rather than trying to force a 3d feel out of a 2d virtual map.

You know what makes me VERY nervous about this game? I mean it sounds great and Joe's awesome, but this Anansi character...

Some poor player-to-be was curious about how it'd compare to Lusternia's requirement to have near-omni-trans to be a decent combatant:

http://forums.tearsofpolaris.com/index.php?showtopic=55

Anansi's response was pretty much the epitome of unhelpful and crass:

"Go read Kunin's post on our skill system, if you haven't already. Go ahead, I'll wait. Done? Good."

And the guy still didn't get it. I donno, but those kind of responses are VERY similar to responses I've seen here that I don't think the administration should be making.

I'm waiting to see how Anansi turns out as an admin, but to be fair I don't think I read the post quite the same way as you. It seemed like friendly conversation to me.

Gotta agree with Shiri. It didn't sound very malicious in my ears, and he (or is it a she?) made a longer explanation after that statement. The explanation, by the way, makes me really happy. It seems Haja is implementing some features that he was going to put in his old MUD.

By the way, I find that quote from Yahtzee's review of the Witcher hilarious, even if I don't really agree with Yahtzee on the game (I like it a lot, not boring at all).