33 replies to this topic

[Element]

This is directed towards JLH since he does not seem to respond to emails. I was wondering if you have thought about licensing the game server. This wouldn't be selling nightmist or anything to do with nightmist but simply the server and client code so a new game could be built on it by someone who would actually update a game and be involved.

It's clear you are totally done with this game but it must hold some value in your heart or you would have just put it down. If you sold a licence for the code (client and server) a new game could be built on it and nightmist could stay as is.

Anyways I'd be interested in buying a licence of you ever decide to sell one. This game was once great and I believe the framework is there for it to be great again but without gameplay updates and the playerbase split between 2 servers soon there will be no players it's already very close.

[Rodeo]

Good luck Randall!

[Exor]

I actually emailed JLH ages ago with an idea similar to this, except it was regarding the pre-reset Nightmist since I was told he has all that saved. But alas he never responded even after I sent a follow up email.

[Shaginator]

Its really sad that no one plays this game anymore. I used to thoroughly enjoy it. I have been meaning to log on for ages, but stay so busy. Finally found the time to do so today, and found one other person on the server aside from myself. Total. ;(

[Exor]

Its really sad that no one plays this game anymore. I used to thoroughly enjoy it. I have been meaning to log on for ages, but stay so busy. Finally found the time to do so today, and found one other person on the server aside from myself. Total. ;(

lol yeah. The game used to be so awesome in it's peak which was like over a decade ago now rofl

[Element]

Yea it really comes down to lack of development. There is still a market for these types of games so don't feed me the "this game is old no one wants MUDs anymore". People play pen and paper d&d just as much as ever. Fact of the matter by not updating and adding new content to the game JLH basically killed it. I understand he's moved on but just kind of sad to see.

[Rodeo]

I know quite of few ppl who play dnd on paper still(Joey) lawl

[Terron]

Pen(cil) and Paper Is the only way to play an actual RPG. with the right group of friends ofcourse, usually the group has to have more emphasis on the role playing than the statistics.  Otherwise you are left with a CPG(designed character playing game).  Rpgs are getting further and further from the root reason to even play one.  Even games like Skyrim , Fallout, etc are becoming more and more arcade like.  upon character creation you have choices to make on what skills abilities you want to use, but by midgame it ultimately doesn't matter you have 100 on every skill........Nice.

 

New content for Nightmist is easy lol.  

 

JLH to do list

1.attempt login ,

2.put in password

3.open codesource

4.unlock all race/class restrictions

 

thats a big one

 

5. create new races with every possible stat set  with starting stats of 17-22

-exclude total minimum/maximum statpoints lower than gnomes higher than elves

--should be around 38

6. outfit racial abilities for each area type at 5% and/or 2.5% comboed with 2.5% exp

7. have players and staff create 5 character classes derived from current ingame abilities.

8. have a vote and add the top 3

9.  have staff half the hps, damage and overall power of every monster ingame. ultimately making every character class more than adequate for the "majority" of ingame areas

10. have staff remove all level caps and classist restrictions of every area

11. have staff add all ingame items to a shoplist for atleast 1 shop

SWEET!!

 

 

 

 

12. make death permanent. HAHA j/k

[Exor]

Yea it really comes down to lack of development. There is still a market for these types of games so don't feed me the "this game is old no one wants MUDs anymore". People play pen and paper d&d just as much as ever. Fact of the matter by not updating and adding new content to the game JLH basically killed it. I understand he's moved on but just kind of sad to see.

Exactly. Nightmist could get some life again if JLH gave enough of a nuts. It would require a wipe though I hate to say. Some easy things would also need to be done like getting rid of the roller. That nuts is so dated and such a huge deterent to people. But yeah as we know it's never going to happen. It's just a shame JLH won't sell it or something. Oh well

[Adultery]

if JLH were to sell id very likely consider buying it, but id want all the rights to nightmist.

 

i wouldnt be the guy youd all like to see own the game. and i damn sure wouldnt be the guy operating the game. im just the man with the wallet. I believe in the few strong and proud who still call nightmist home. the staff of my selection would operate nightmist. promote it and enhance it. i would also offer compensation in terms of actual paymen for the work done. wouldnt be much. but at least stig would get something that isnt a Danny gummer. 

[Element]

if JLH were to sell id very likely consider buying it, but id want all the rights to nightmist.
 
i wouldnt be the guy youd all like to see own the game. and i damn sure wouldnt be the guy operating the game. im just the man with the wallet. I believe in the few strong and proud who still call nightmist home. the staff of my selection would operate nightmist. promote it and enhance it. i would also offer compensation in terms of actual paymen for the work done. wouldnt be much. but at least stig would get something that isnt a Danny gummer. 

Yea it would be nice but I don't even think jlh looks at these forums anymore. If he does look at them it would be nice to get a yes or no answer on if this is even an option.

[Gaddy]

It seems ridiculous that all you haters want to blame JLH for Nightmist not growing while games like WoW and Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 came out. Not to mention things going from N64 to Xbox 360 to PS4 and whatever. You're tools.
The game has had development. Can you claim to have beaten the grandmaster bosses on Nightmist Main? Probably not...

And to buy licensing and open a server to condense playerbase? Nope. You just invented Nightmist 3, without upgrades.

Have you pulled in your friends for Nightmist, kept them interested, and helped populate the game with promotion? I sure as nuts haven't. I hide NM as my secret little nerdy game from decades past. My best friends make fun of me cause they know I must still be around on it. And that's fine.


Y'all are scapegoating to the man that has kept this game alive and free for over 15-years for me. So I don't like that approach. Donate and do your part to help.
Whining like the playerbase always does doesn't bode well for your idea to administer or run a MUD.

- Gaddy

[Terron]

the game has had development, yes.  areas and endgame equipment entirely designed for veterans and to hug and squeeze the same 20-25 players for as long as possible.

 

"kept this game alive and free for over 15-years for ME."

 

I think that hits it right on the head.

 

Secondly, these dilemmas, idea's, etc are brought up to staff multiple times.  Usually the reply is generally Staff scapegoating JLH or the game engine.

 

You can blame/scapegoat whatever you'd like for the downfall of nightmist.  New consoles, games, better muds with 1000 players(with the right attention Nightmist would be one of these, no doubt in my mind), crazed staff, obnoxious players, JLH, me, you, and/or anyone else. Doesn't matter.  At the current Nightmist is like a company with no manager, and it shows.

 Personally for me, it was a 20 alt cap (cap at  5 plz),  followed by berserkers and pacifists. basically made it a 20 player game you somehow play alone and just ruined it for me. So I quit.

1 alt rekindled my faith a bit, but I soon realized staff were going NSA on anything generally good.

Later realized that post 30 leveling/power of characters vs the average time people play that the game was going nowhere fast.

 

 

So here we are scarce of players and hindsight at 20/20.

[Tietsu]

You're tools.

Be that as it may, we are short a screw driver and sheetrock saw.

[Element]

@gaddy

I don't think anyone is blaming jlh for anything. He doesn't want to work on the game development wise so it died. There is still a ton of room for games like these but without any new features it's died. Don't blame it on better games there will always be better games yet pen and paper d&d is alive and thriving and that's about as old as it gets. Fact of the matter is the game stopped getting meaningful updates so it died. (New content is great but by just adding more areas a you are actually spreading out the player base anymore). Mmos are about player interaction having 1mil tiles to spread people out on isn't the way to go...


Anyways I'm not cursing him for stopping it's just clear he doesn't want to work on or care about the game anymore so I'm just wondering if he would license the game out to someone who would update the code and has a better idea of the current game industry.

Edited by Element, 29 June 2015 - 02:29 AM.

[Justice]

I really hate seeing this game dying out. Is there even enough players left to do anything outside of training? Bosses? Tokens? Anything?

[Exor]

It seems ridiculous that all you haters want to blame JLH for Nightmist not growing while games like WoW and Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 came out. Not to mention things going from N64 to Xbox 360 to PS4 and whatever. You're tools.
The game has had development. Can you claim to have beaten the grandmaster bosses on Nightmist Main? Probably not...

And to buy licensing and open a server to condense playerbase? Nope. You just invented Nightmist 3, without upgrades.

Have you pulled in your friends for Nightmist, kept them interested, and helped populate the game with promotion? I sure as nuts haven't. I hide NM as my secret little nerdy game from decades past. My best friends make fun of me cause they know I must still be around on it. And that's fine.


Y'all are scapegoating to the man that has kept this game alive and free for over 15-years for me. So I don't like that approach. Donate and do your part to help.
Whining like the playerbase always does doesn't bode well for your idea to administer or run a MUD.

- Gaddy

 

I don't think anyone here is blaming JLH for the game not growing, or I certainly am not, lol. JLH owes the players NOTHING. He made a game we all had fun on for years. He doesn't have to do anything. However I don't think you can point to WoW, SC2, and Diablo 3 as reasons for Nightmist not getting played. There were other gigantic games back in Nightmist's peak too. The reason NM hasn't grown is because the mechanics are far too old. And I don't mean simply because its a text based game. It's just old.

 

But yeah you're right JLH deserves love not hate. The fact that the game is still up and running to this day is spectacular and I think it's very nice of him to keep it going. I actually wish he would come around here more I'd love to talk to him and actually thank him for all the fun he gave me as a kid.

 

<3 JLH <3 Gaddy (Even though I think you were calling me one of the tools <3)

 

Edit: I shouldn't have said what I said in an earlier post. About JLH not giving a nuts anymore. It sounded bad, and I didn't mean it in a bad way. He does of course give a nuts about the game or it wouldn't be running.

Edited by Exor, 01 July 2015 - 04:36 AM.

[Angelus]

It's obvious none of you asking have much experience in programming. The Nightmist code is so dated, that it would need a total overhaul if you wanted to make some worthwhile changes, meaning you can toss about 99% of it. There is nothing dynamic about it. Which is also one of the reasons that he stopped implementing, what would seem to be simple, features. Furthermore it was coded on the fly by two people, who had no reason to document any of it or have any of their code reviewed. So without his help, you wouldn't even be able to read it, let alone able to rewrite (which I said, is already pointless).

 

The leaps programming, in general, has made since back when NM was built is incredible. What Nightmist still has to offer you is nostalgia, which consists of grid info, monster info, and item info. Everything else you can build properly using new techniques and libraries which already give you the better part of the needed code. If you're just a player, you can crawl the wiki for monster and item info, and run around the map letting a small program log everything you encounter. If you're staff it's even easier, since you can macro /tp from square 1 to xxxx and log all the grid info, which holds all the connections to other grids as well as monsters and so on. 

 

As far as legality of it, all those things come from creative writing done by staff, including me, Nightmist is not the owner of that. Not more so than IP Board (this forum) is the owner of this post I've just written.

 

In any case, all that is holding you back is you.

Edited by Angelus, 02 July 2015 - 01:49 PM.

[Xlithan]

Or just let Nightmist be as it is and work on something new. Develop a new game for players. Here are my 2 options...

 

Nightmist 2D:

https://www.youtube....h?v=j8TOlbXiaAU

 

Final Saga MUD:

[Gaddy]

Element and Exor just wrote the most reasonable responses to me poking back at people that I have ever seen on Nightmist's forum. Maybe we are all growing up...

[Element]

Or just let Nightmist be as it is and work on something new. Develop a new game for players. Here are my 2 options...
 
Nightmist 2D:
https://www.youtube....h?v=j8TOlbXiaAU
 
Final Saga MUD:

The final saga looks good if you showed development progress and that you were into it as a developer (what nightmist lacks) I can see players from here and more so rok checking it out for sure.

@gaddy yea I think everyone still around here cares about the game and jlh a ton so this post wasn't anything against them.

[Exor]

Element and Exor just wrote the most reasonable responses to me poking back at people that I have ever seen on Nightmist's forum. Maybe we are all growing up...

Haha I know right? I look back at my old posts on here and I'm truthfully embarrassed by most of them. Ahhh cheers to growing up.

[Pandilex]

Do you think there's a market for this kind of game anymore?

 

Obviously I've had a stab at creating one myself, but without the push of someone keen to build with the tools I created and without the pull of players keen to jump in and tear an alpha version apart, it never really got anywhere.

 

Over the years my development skills have improved dramatically, and I now work as a software development contractor and thus have periods of time when I am not working, so I could develop something pretty quick, and I've been looking for a project/hobby for a while. It'd never happen without someone in the role I played while developing Nightmist (driving JLH to develop and add features by constantly building things with them) but I am curious nevertheless.

[Rodeo]

Table top dnd is still huge so there is your answer bro.

[PureMourning]

I think the market is niche, but still a market nonetheless.  We're obviously FAR from the good ole' telnet days, but... I would say we're also far from the stand-alone client days, too (not counting AAA PC games).  There's actually some pretty successful, old-school text adventure games that are doing well on the Android/iOS marketplace-- further proving that there's still players out there.

 

If someone (Simon ) takes on this effort,  I strongly recommend doing it as a web project:  HTML5, maybe with some JavaScript/AJAX mixed in there as well.  I would imagine that accessibility would be a top priority for the project.

[Terron]

just invent a tablet that does .exe's and you'll be as rich as my nightmist characters.

 

on a more serious note, games like this one which have little to no options, need relevant content that affects the entire playerbase.  whether it's a new race/class now and then or even sub-races, un-restricting current race/classes or even a set time limit between server wipe/resets to keep the content used in endless cycle..

whatever it is has to target more than a single group of players.  things like level 40 equip are helping almost no-one. I understand in the long term these items/areas were needed but not at the cost of everyone and everything else.

 

 implementing for 4 players while the other 26 twiddle their thumbs waiting to hopefully be selected for the next 4 person update is what really killed this game.  funniest part of it is, staff created most of these dilemmas for themselves through nerfing, and going anti-pk.  Might aswell have left it 2 clans of 30, 55 thieves and a sparatic druid and mage killin each other in endless hatred and level ending exp loss.  Because there was 2 clans of 30  instead of 1 clan of 2-3.

[Pandilex]

Running Nightmist on a tablet wouldn't be too difficult but I don't think it would be very playable. I rooted my kindle and installed some text adventure games on it and they're tricky to type the commands on, especially quickly. If you want a tablet that runs exes, you can pick up a surface pro quite cheap

 

Browser client would make sense. As do your comments about content.

 

I think if I were to do something it'd be a small stand alone project, at least to begin with. But it's interesting to speculate on whether there is still a demand for MUDs.

[Terron]

I play other muds that range in players from hundreds to roughly 1100 daily players.  Most of the players are not british or american tho.  

 

You should target social media.  a mud like nm with its ranking system could draw tens of thousands of users on something like facebook.

[Element]

Do you think there's a market for this kind of game anymore?
 
Obviously I've had a stab at creating one myself, but without the push of someone keen to build with the tools I created and without the pull of players keen to jump in and tear an alpha version apart, it never really got anywhere.
 
Over the years my development skills have improved dramatically, and I now work as a software development contractor and thus have periods of time when I am not working, so I could develop something pretty quick, and I've been looking for a project/hobby for a while. It'd never happen without someone in the role I played while developing Nightmist (driving JLH to develop and add features by constantly building things with them) but I am curious nevertheless.

It would be hard to not get 100 downloads a day on the App Store. My offline simple rpg pixel game (adventure to fate) got around 4000 on its first day and still averages around 100 every day. There is for sure a market and the App Store makes the game easy to find even if people are not looking for it. If you are serious about making something I'd be glad to do the front end I just don't know the backend or have time to learn all that when I can create offline games and still make a living off those.

Edited by Element, 27 August 2015 - 05:12 PM.

[Pandilex]

No Android version?

 

That does look pretty good, well done for publishing a successful app store game.

 

I don't think Nightmist with all its typing is really suited to phones and tablets, but perhaps some subset of the game is possible to spin off.

 

I have some ideas and my work contract finishes today, so I'll have some time off to think.