Nuclear War is a MUDD, or Multi-User Dungeon Domain based upon a
future where the world has experienced World War 3, and is just now returning to some sort of order.
20 march 2004. 450 million people were killed in the direct
attacks. The world enters the nuclear winter. Civilization comes to a standstill, if not a total fallback.
In the years 2005-2010, a total of around 2.5 billion people were estimated to have been killed as a direct, or indirect cause of the events of D-day. Former borders between countries had ceased to exist and all attempts at government were in vain.
The only organizations that existed, or rather, the only thought to
exist, were violent small gangs, consisting of 10-15 people, roaming around the ruins in search of food and valuables.
This was the situation unchanged for another 17 years.
This MUDD is definately a gaming environment first, above all
else. A message given to new players when they log on is roughly transcribed as follows: "this game is about advancement; those who come searching for love and warm scrunchy things might as w
ell leave."
The main purpose of adventuring on AbacusMUD is to acquire
experience
points. Generally this can be achieved either by killing various creatures and non-player characters that can be found throughout the mud, or by solving puzzles and tests. The amount of
experience awarded for such activities depends on the level of difficulty of the puzzle, or the creature you are attempting to kill.
That is why most of the rules in the game focus around battle or
fighting, whether it be the armour (not mispelled), weapon, and vitamin machine which is the key point of every tour, to showing newbies thier first weapons. Now this is not to say that
MUDDs still operate on the level of use they receive as a mere plaything. Three players, One Wild, Turin, and Sanitarium, all who had reached Scientist (similar to avatar ranking) were so advanced in comparaison to the rest of the game, that when they lo
gged on, they tended to lump themselves together in a room and talk for hours, for the distance that separated them was bridged neatly and inexpensively through the net. Another soul, named Varatall made this point for Internet-based adventure games:
I say: So why do you spend enough time on this game to kill over 2000
NPCs (Non Player Characters, or computer controlled monsters)?
Varatall says: how about "my girlfriend lives an hour away, and we are
both in high school, so the only times we can talk are on Saturdays or on the MUD?" sad but true...:(
I say: What school?
Varatall says: Oakland High in TN, and Tullahoma High in Coffee
County, TN
For Varatall, phone calls to his girlfriend are too expensive to be
made
everyday, but a local call to his Internet provider costs him next to nothing, and allows to talk to her for hours on end, until finally, as goes the end of each night, Nuclear War s
huts down to reboot. This is marked by much hooplah for about five minutes. Amidst the shouts and cries of characters around the game, many of whom have been on for several hours, the same messages begin to flash up on their screens:
Your sensitive mind notices a wildside north in the fabric of space.
A snake crawls away searching for it's master.
A speaker system screams: This is the end.
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**.***.*************@@@@*************.***.**
*** *********@@********* ***
*@****@@****@*
.* *****@@***** *.
*. *****@@***** .*
* . * ****@@**** * . *
*****@@*****
.****@@@@****
.**** *@@@@* ****.
.*.* .*.*@ ** @*.*. *.*.
** * * * *@ *..* @* * * * **
MudOS driver shouts: shutting down immediately.
Connection closed by foreign host.
joust%
And with that, the system bumps all players from its hold.
The community of this game is quite popularly balanced from the
responses of many members who log on. When a player first logs on to the game, they are dropped in front of the Tourguide Main Frame Computer. Here, after examing the various controls,
they are able to send out a call to all of the Tour Guides who are logged on to the game. The purpose of the Tour Guide is to team up with new players, lead them around several common landmarks of Nuked, procure for them a weapon and cash, and answer any
technical questions they might have. This feature was one thing that made me look past the one-sided hack-and-slash nature of Nuclear War. For all of its killing and point gathering, it is still a rather well though out program. Whereas most gaming
systems make players rely on themselves to gain insight into their surroundings, Nuclear War goes out of their war to give new players a boost during their first few attempts at play.
My first experience on Nuclear War, I was a bit overwhelmed by the
commands, for whatever I typed, all i would get was the pre-programmed message "Que?" (which was a light-hearted attempt to break up the english dominated environment, for although it was
an english-speaking MUDD, it still garnered itself a large number of "non-native speaking" players, including those from Japan, France, Spain, and Portugal, to name a few contries.) Then just when I thought I was going to quit and find another virtual
community, Rule Rat, and his NPC rat, contacted me on my commradio (basically a walkie-talkie where you could choose different frequencies and speak with anyone in any area of the game.) He causually asked if I was having any trouble, and from my pleas,
stopped what he was doing to come over and show me a few ropes. First he provided me with high level weaponry and armour, as well as a good chunk of cash. With these prizes in hand, he disappeared back to where he had come from, and continued to aid me
through my commradio. This act, as well as others from various members, invited me into this MUDD, despite its violence and depravity (for the first few games, all I could kill were young children and old men) still instilled a sense of belonging and
friendship, despite its soloplay. From this, I feel that play is not restricted to anyone; all are welcome, as long as they play within the rules. Personal status, money or location are all ignored when playing, and the only inhibitor seemed to be compu
ter
lag from those dialing in on modems.
Once you're in the game, structuring falls upon the player. I
witnessed groups of players that would never be apart; whenever I saw one, the rest of the band would trudge in after. These were traditionally fellow gang members, one of the few
organizational aspects of the game. At level six, a player was given a choice to become a member of a gang or to remain independent within the game. By joining a gang, a player gained special abilities, from special commands to heal, move faster, or to
fight
harder. But with these powers came a price, for loyalties were associated with rival gangs. Hackers and Jetscreamers, two warring gangs were not allowed to interact or to team up to gain experience. In fact, there was talk fo rsome time during my month
on
the net that the two should initiate raids and battles upon one another, much like the history of the game spoke of. In essence, history had been written that there had been a falling out between the two gangs, and the result had been a bitter blood bath
that lead to the murder of large numbers of players.
In charge of all of these many players were the programmers and
gurus. These characters earned the title Scientists, for it was their purpose to continue to rebuild and reshape the layout and features of Nuclear War. Players, when given enough time,
would eventually find loopholes in lines of code that they would extort to raise their levels and wealth up faster than normally possible. It was up to the Scis to insure that this sort of play was discougraged by offering these players a wealth of new
challenges to explore and conquer. These Scis were also given the power to adjust the code of player's stats and restrictions, so a befriended Sci could raise your physical characterisitcs to that of a god, or ban you from the game and retire your charac
ter
. Though these were powerful abilities, Scis were rare due to the amount of time that was neccesary to achieve them, so those who did make it tended to be trustworthy and true to the gaming spirit.
Besides Scis, located predominatnly around the center area of
Nuclear War's "city" there were message boards designed to take logs of gripes and complaints of characters ranging from beefs between individual players, all the way up to bugs in code and
rules that tended to act incorrectly for whatever reason. There were even smaller, lesser known areas where players could post penpal addresses, poetry, pleasantries, or curses. All types of ranting and raving were encouraged.
Communication on Nuclear War was quite simple. There were any
number of ways to contact a person: within a room, you could "say" your message; you could "shout" your message over the entire city (but htis required mental stamina which did not replenish
very quickly); you could "speak" into your commradio; even newbies had their own channel, "ntalk", which was simultaneously monitored by Tour Guides. And if that was not enough, you could whisper a private message to someone in the room, or members of gan
gs could converse directly to all those in their gang. That coupled with the tens of message and posting boards made for a well documented and connected community. Theree was even a sort of Nuclear War mini-email system where players had their own
mailboxes, but it was limited to messages sent from players posting within the game.
Communication in this game tends to revolve around the theme of
killing and advancement: where can I find a gun; who has the wooden spoon (this is a special object neccessary for someone to complete a mission, another way to gain experience); who's got a
vitamin strip (food that regains strength when injured); who wants wo "team up" (group together multiple characters, with the strongest player in "lead" where s/he takes all of the damage while anyone in the group has the chance to kill their opponent -
this is how most players raise in level quickly, piggy-backing experience off others.) It is also the subject of most message boards in the game:
A note titled: ARCHS, guns, lameness (Turin [10], Nov 4).
=============================================================
Now for you mortals who don't know whats going on, the arches took
pretty
much all useful powers away from the scis. Now all that scis have that mortals dont is a directory from which they can clone stuff and the mud editor (which is more of a curse than
a power). So, when you want toys or you want a room fixed, or a gun fixed cuz everything is so fucked around here, dont ask, escape, quit...do what ya gotta do. Anyhow, it seems that scis dont need the refresh command anyway. I mean, I seem to have
been reloading this gun I have here for 20 mins but thats ok. Why would I want a sci to fix my gun that has gotten fucked up by the still bugged guncode.
Turin is talking to "mortals" or low-level characters not yet to the
Scientist level or "arch" level, which is above Scis. An Arch has supreme control over the game, including player-character info, passwords, and other private information. Turin is
mad because as he says: "all useful powers" were taken away from the
Scientists by those in power (arches). Originally, Scis and other players
of "Legendary" status were given access to much of the code for Nuclear War allowing them to relieve the stress
from one or two people to maintain the sites. These players would have the confidence in klnowing they were in control of a small section of the Net. But as of late, that power has been usurped back to those who created the game. Turin finds this
upsetting due to the fact that some parts of the game (including the "guncode"
or rules for using firearms as weapons) has never been cleared of bugs, so consequently many players often are forced to discard their guns when they begun to malfunction, instead o
f
simply finding a Sci or Veteran to help them recode their "toys".
Personae and attitudes are lightly adhered to on much of Nuclear
War. These little virtual personalities are built
into the game through the use of preset entrance and exit phrases:
Joker lands on the ground.
Joker turns off his jet screamer.
Handsome looks you deep in the eyes and kisses you passionately.
KEBLAST!!! Handsome roars up his jet screamer.
Handsome holds you tight and tries to pull you south to have some fun.
Jocko looks out of touch for a moment.
The first four sentences are all entrance commands, written by the
characters to be printed on the screens of all those in the room they arrive in. The fifth statement is also preset, but depending on the direction Handsome goes, that is the direction he "pulls you to have some fun". The final sentence is a preset to
indicate Jocko is using a drug. Each drug, food,weapon, and gagdet in the game will flash a different message on the screen of those around you when you use it. It adds a bit of realism
to the game, as well as warns/explains to you what a person is doing
without them speaking. Another minor little part of the gaming interface
are the small actions you can make, anything from "dancing around happily"
to "headbutting" your friend on the forehead. Small things like that are
achieved with special codewords, like "dance" or "headbutt ".
These are quite popular, for typing "yeah" loses its appeal after the
killing a spider for the thousandth time. Little visual cues tend to spice up conversations that mainly include speech, and allow for personal diversity.
In comparaison to other rl communities, Nuclear War is far from
normal. Most of the time is measured through the minutes, hours, days,
and weeks spent on the Net, and right above it is a counter of your
"Confirmed Kills" for your entire life. First and
foremost, this is a game of death and mayhem, but it still finds room to breed friendship, friendly rivalries (through advanced rules such as player-killing, where liver characters can kill each other), and a great release of tension or hostility. As
far as living up to its mission statement, it's perfect. Great diversity
of
monsters, items, toys, and weapons, and a map that most veterans have not seen the entire stretch of. All in all, a great site to kick a little ass.
Nuclear War - nuked.astrakan.hgs.se 4080
reachable through "telnet nuked.astrakan.hgs.se 4080"
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