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Stillborn - post-apocalyptic Lovecraftian MOO

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Sotla:
Hello all -- I've been working on a project for some time named Stillborn, a post-apocalyptic MOO with elements of Lovecraftian horror and cyberpunk fiction. I spend more time on working on the MOO than I do figuring out how to actually talk to people, so here goes nothing.

I noticed HellMOO/InfernoMOO both seemed to have been popular here at some point and I figured a mention of something similar might be appreciated. Stillborn is based on HellCore and so is extremely similar to HellMOO in lots of ways mostly concerning how basic stuff works, but is in no way the same world or setting and the core itself has been modified extensively and continues to get refined daily. (almost literally, i haven't slept in weeks.) If you've played HellMOO or a variant of it, almost everything will be familiar to you and it won't be hard to get started. If you haven't, Stillborn has a tutorial and (from what i've seen, i'd not like to say anything biased) a pretty newbie-friendly playerbase. Failing either of those, the admins (myself included) are as active as we can be in helping players out if they need assistance or if something's broken.

Stillborn is a MOO, which is a subtype of MUD, which is in simplest terms a text based virtual reality/text adventure that takes place in real time with other players. Movement works by typing in cardinal directions or the names of exits in a room, and mostly everything else is explained by help files, or through the usage of the 'examine' command, which prints out everything one can do with an object.

Screenshots can explain it all better than I can:






Stillborn generally has a more serious temperament than HellMOO's world does, and actually has a focus on roleplaying instead of shunning it, to an extent that roleplay is enforced with the minimum of at least remaining in-character. Typing long emotes isn't necessary, just playing the game is good enough 98% of the time.

The backstory is long and complicated, most of it hidden away in subtle references to it ingame. The gist of it can be read from the web frontend of the game, displaying the 'setting' help file.

The design of Stillborn is mostly based on the likes of games such as Cataclysm: DDA, Dwarf Fortress, NEO Scavenger, and some other sources like DUST/FROST for Fallout: New Vegas/Fallout 4. It has a hard survival focus that's proved to be a struggle even in more civilized locations like the starting city of Caldern, and features a 'permadeath' system. (Less 'permadeath' as in 'you can never roleplay this character again if you fail a climb skill roll and fall off of a cliff' and more forced rerolling if you run out of clone backups/resurrections.) The intent of all this is to make a more realistic and harsh environment where one has more to worry about than killing things endlessly, and to make death a learning experience.

The themes contained within Stillborn are extremely graphic and disturbing, including elements of sexual violence.

Stillborn's mostly in beta right now, but we've been adding and refining stuff on a daily basis and is more or less 100% 'playable' at it's core, thus the attempt of promoting it to bring in new testers so we can get more feedback.

Web frontend to read help files/mailing lists (ingame forums) from without needing to connect to the game

In order to play Stillborn you need a MUD client of some sort. I personally recommend MUSHclient.
The connection info for Stillborn is sabbath.online:666.


If I missed anything that may be important to note, please let me know.

Kagus:
Oh hey, I remember seeing the development thread for this and thinking it looked interesting. It's actually in a playable state now? Neat.

Are you planning on keeping the same kind of fully open PvP like Inferno has, or is the intention to restrict it like some of the other branches? Also, is there much thought/effort being put into keeping things screenreader-compatible?

Regardless, this does definitely look like an interesting take on the formula, and seems to be generally going in a thematic direction I've always kinda felt Hell should've aimed for.  Gonna keep an eye on this one.

quinnr:
Posting to watch! This looks pretty rad, I loved HellMOO for a while so I'll definitely check this out when I have time!

Sotla:

--- Quote from: Kagus on October 10, 2017, 08:31:56 pm ---Oh hey, I remember seeing the development thread for this and thinking it looked interesting. It's actually in a playable state now? Neat.

Are you planning on keeping the same kind of fully open PvP like Inferno has, or is the intention to restrict it like some of the other branches? Also, is there much thought/effort being put into keeping things screenreader-compatible?

Regardless, this does definitely look like an interesting take on the formula, and seems to be generally going in a thematic direction I've always kinda felt Hell should've aimed for.  Gonna keep an eye on this one.

--- End quote ---

i can respect the idea that HellMOO had with allowing players to opt-out but i don't think that there's a way to actually pull that off. PvP isn't restricted but people don't really do it much, and i think that's because of the fact that there's more important stuff to worry about instead of focusing on killing other players. we're working on stuff that people will actually have reasons to fight over (facilities, scarce resources) so i think nobody's going to straight up grief on average. we haven't observed anything like that so far, anyways

Donuts:
Poking in to drop a PTW and to say that this is sincerely a very nice-looking MOO, and things are actually going forwards at a pretty satisfying pace. The playerbase is also (so far, at least) really nice, saw maybe 1 less-than-pleasant person and that's about it.

Keep it up and this is probably gonna be one of the greatest in the genre, no joke.

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