Dannic, The Prince of Cats

Posted by Dannic on August 16th, 2007 in General, Online Role Playing Games(ORPGS.com), Role Playing, The Broken Shard

The Broken Shard is a persistant browser based game.  What this means is that the game doesn’t end.  It will continue for as long as you would like to play.  You do not need any special software to play this game.  Just a Javascript enabled Browser.

The Broken Shard was originally started as a joint venture with a couple of other like interested people to create a MUD that was was more in liking to what we wanted.  The project had several starts.  Some of which were abruptly shut down with threats from a former game we played.

Originally we started with an MFC application with a Access backend for data storage.  This proved to be difficult to maintain and operate.  But it served as a learning point.

We then moved on to Python with a database backend.  Neither of which I knew and I had a difficult time understanding Python.  I’m sure it is a great programming language and it definately would have done what we wanted but the team I was with kind of just moved in different directions and the project never went anywhere.

While I was trying to grasp the concept of Python, I found DGD.  It was similiar to the MudOs driver that was popular at the time and it ran in windows.  This was something I could understand.
DGD quickly became my programming environment of choice.  It was similiar to C in many aspects and could be quickly set up and running in a matter of minutes.

Found a basic Mudlib that would work well under DGD.  It was called Melville.  One of the original authors of the TMI II mudlib wrote it for the DGD driver.  TMI II was not compatible with DGD and in order for it to work would have required some extensive reprogramming.

Unfortunately, this would not suit my need either since I wanted to be able to do some things that the license would limit.  In order to remove those limitations I would have had to purchase an annual license at the tune of $200k per year.  This was just not quite what I had in mind when I started working on this.  But I did get quite a bit of experience working with the code and learned quite a bit.

I stopped working on it in 2002.  Let it fall to the wayside in hopes that the creator of DGD would relax the license agreement a bit.  To this date, this still has not happened.

In the mean time, I have learned quite a bit about Php and Mysql.  I have also learned a little bit about Ajax through a project called Xajax.

The Broken Shard is an adaption of a mud in the form of a browser based game.  Hopefully the similarities will be evident and close enough that those who are familiar with muds will enjoy it and those who have never experienced a mud will know what they are about.

Whether you want to be a wizard, fighter, thief or cleric.  The possibilities of role playing should be unlimited when the game is completed.

It isn’t a graphical based game such as World of Warcraft or Guild Wars, but it should have its own unique qualities that keep players coming back for years.