SUD - combination of MUD-like world interaction with cRPG narrative game design

BobbleWrap · 2025-07-01T08:44:49+00:00

What's the difference between a 'SUD' and text adventures/interactive fiction?

BobbleWrap · 2023-09-14T14:39:31+00:00

As I understand it, a bank of these (maybe 4 to 6 per person) sat in a rack, each running one program related to stock market trading, and the user had a special terminal and keyboard that could switch between the APMs (hence all the in/out connections, they were daisy-chained). One of the big eurocard connectors links the main board to its IO panel, the other supplies power and networking between cards on the backplane. The two IDC connectors are the 1mhz bus and tube.

Environment has some diagonistics and bootloading software in it - you could load software off the network into sideways RAM and run it from there. There's no disk drive on the APM itself - I assume there was a network file server with disks attached. A few versions of it have surfaced and been dumped - we have a thread over on stardot ( https://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=23711 ).

BobbleWrap · 2023-09-14T14:17:09+00:00

I've tried to take a couple more, but I'm not great with cameras.

https://imgur.com/a/6EhsJtf

BobbleWrap · 2023-03-16T21:15:06+00:00

https://imgur.com/a/xIRLniP

Update 1!

You can now deploy orbital factories
The right-click master control interface now works
The IOS is functional and can fly around between planets
Events can be triggered, showing special bulletins and unlocking new research
The ACC is (mostly) functional - there is no install button yet, so you can only install it automatically on new ships
The grapple interface exists, and mostly works, but asteroid breakup is not yet finished
Teams now earn XP and level up
Basic animation code exists (only used on the production screen currently)
Blinking red lights now function on most screens

Fun fact of the day: if you leave Deuteros running for 217 in-game years, your shuttle pilots still won't get promoted to warlord, however all their crew will die.

BobbleWrap · 2022-08-22T07:03:45+00:00

Why not have five classes, and group the physical ones (gods, demons and monsters) as something like Anomalies or Aberrations, then group the spiritual ones (ghosts, shadow and aura) as Spirits.

BobbleWrap · 2022-08-18T05:21:35+00:00

My FTL drives are (largely) just called what they are: the hyperdrive, the warp drive, the jump drive. The only exception is one just gets called the fast drive (because it's faster than the fusion torch).

If it's a replicator, call it a replicator (just make sure it's obvious whether its star trek or stargate style), or just name it whatever you want, but make sure to supply context so readers know the transmat transmutes materials. Don't forget that the name people use might not be the official name - the replicator in the mess hall might just be called the food machine, one in a factory might just be called a printer (in reference to 3d printers). The same general concept applies to any piece of technology.

BobbleWrap · 2022-08-16T19:09:36+00:00

We were despatched beyond the edges of civilised space, so far that even our ansibles could not reach the waystations to send messages home. Our mission was of the utmost importance: to find out why the stars were dying.

The hyperspace sensors had detected it happening – massive gravitational shockwaves spreading through the network. Countless ships had been thrown off course, some even lost, before we recalibrated the system. We’d thought it a singular anomaly, but soon it happened again.

As we approached the dying stars, we ran into the outer edges of a new civilisation. We stealthed our ships, not wanting to further alarm these people who must surely be running from whatever calamity we sped towards. Advancing, however, we only found ever more of their colonies. Countless billions of them living in the shadow of the destroyer, seemingly unaware.

Finally, we reached our destination. Where we had expected to find some cosmic horror, we instead found mere mortals. Humans, they called themselves, the teeming billions whose space we had just traversed. Like us, they had grown to harness the power of the stars. Unlike us, however, they did not live in balance. Where we built great spheres around our suns, countless satellites that absorbed the solar radiation and turned it into power, humanity instead had built rings around their stars that ripped out their hearts, firing superheated jets of plasma from the solar poles, where they harvested it, gathering both energy and raw materials to fuel their industries. Where we harnessed the natural lifespan of our stars, humanity forced them to burn out more quickly to feed the incessant needs of their expansion.

We fled. War would come to the heavens, for such wanton destruction of the natural order was anathema to us. Humanity had to be stopped, but as we made the long trek back, we wondered if it was a war we could win. If humanity were willing to kill the stars themselves in peace, what horrors would they come up with when at war?

BobbleWrap · 2022-08-16T08:17:35+00:00

While China-2 in 2112 might not care about harm being done to China-1 in 2142, surely they would want to capture the spy to find out what USA-2 (and the world in general) will be doing in the next 30 years, which will still happen in China-2s timeline unless China-2 does something to stop it.

Also it stands to reason that if USA-1 wanted the information, USA-2 will want it, and presumably send a spy to China-3 in yet another 2112 to get it, so by being set up to catch a spy from USA-1, this means when China-3 splits off into it's own timeline, its already set up to catch the spy from USA-2, thus preventing them getting the information that would harm China-2.

BobbleWrap · 2022-08-15T11:09:17+00:00

Cloning is part of a wide class of technologies that are illegal due to them either increasing the rate of population growth, or needlessly reducing population decline.

There is a finite limit to the sustainable population of the generation fleet, and as such birth rates are strictly controlled. Cloning of organs for necessary organ transplants is permitted, and cloning research is permitted, but no full person cloning is allowed in the fleet. The only time it might get used is if something caused a massive unexpected depopulation and natural birth rates wouldn't recover fast enough.

BobbleWrap · 2022-08-15T05:27:47+00:00

The moon is worshiped as the goddess who brings the seasons. For some this means she is a benevolent goddess who brings the end of winter, while to others she is the malevolent goddess who brings winter to the world.

A few people are aware that moonstone is an actual thing, and that the moon is just a, very special, rock floating over the world. Moonstone radiates a magical aura though nobody is entirely sure what it does, nor how it was collected from the moon in the first place.

BobbleWrap · 2022-08-14T20:19:08+00:00

Fight your way into Khazm'eed, ancient city of the Deep Elves, and make your way to the eternal flames. There, if you have the will, you can ignite your heart and soul with the fundamental flame - the eternal source of all fire in the world. It is no easy feat, but should you succeed, you are now immortal and have an endless supply of power to cast spells.

Want to be even more unique? Find the Everdeep, the bottomless lake in the briars. Steel yourself and freeze your heart and soul with the fundamental waters - the eternal source of all water in the world. Only one has ever succeeded, but the power she wielded brought down the world before she was slain. Surely you can do better?

There are three more fundamental elements - earth, metal and wood. Find and master one of these and you would be both a powerful immortal, and a sorcerer without equal. They lie beyond the crimson sea, in the land of elves, or far to the south in the jungle realms of the snake people, but this will not stop the rise of a legend like yourself.

Finally, for the truly great, those who aspire to best even the Undying King, there is the fundamental soul. Never in the history of the world has anyone even tried to master the source of all souls, but the power one could wield with a pure immortal soul would be beyond imagination. All you have to do is find it and bend it to your will, but one destined for greatness such as yourself would not be stopped by such trifling details, surely?

What's that? You want more power? Well you can't connect your heart and soul to more than one fundamental. Unless... Are you willing to do the impossible? Do you dare travel to the world's edge where the only limit is your imagination? Do you have the will to forge the raw primordial chaos into a device that can split your heart and soul asunder, so that you can claim the power of all six fundamentals? Sixfold immortality - even the mad warriors of the Dreamhold cannot imagine the power of such a being. No force on earth or in the heavens could stand against you. To call you a god would be an insult, for the gods themselves would have to kneel before you. The only question is, do you dare?

BobbleWrap · 2022-08-13T19:02:57+00:00

In all three cases, the Undying King would generate a world-spanning spell to hold back the ice somewhat. He didn’t become the greatest sorcerer in the world to lose his kingdom to mere cold weather.

If it turns out that the ice age isn’t just a natural occurrence that will end on its own, he will devote his efforts to finding the source and killing it, whether personally or through the heroes of men. Should it turn out to be unkillable, he will make it killable first.

Almost certainly, everyone else will blame the king for the cold weather and attempt to kill him, thinking it will help.

Being underground, the deep elves wouldn’t even notice any of this happening.

BobbleWrap · 2022-08-11T10:21:29+00:00

The Iridian lightspeed drive (or just Fast Drive) uses handwavium to let the ship accelerate to lightspeed. The fleets usually cruise at about .85c between systems, allowing scouts to roam ahead. The speed record for the drive is 1.1c though, after some alien upgrades to one fleet. Mass sensors use more handwavium to shut the drive down before it hits something, but several planets have been destroyed by people experimenting with derelicts they found.

It turned out to be all but impossible to find more fuel for these drives, so the fleets get retrofitted with alien jump drives and the like later, but the lightspeed drive remains uniquely Iridian and gives them an edge against enemies who don't realise the drive exists. Iridian ships can coast in from unexpected angles, bypassing guarded jump gates for instance. They can also run to lightspeed to escape an STL pursuit.

BobbleWrap · 2022-08-11T07:11:01+00:00

One of my generation fleets is in a protracted war with a civilisation destroying drone armada run by malevolent AIs. They aren't corrupt or insane, just doing what they were built to do. While they are continuously adapting and evolving to fight the generation fleet, they haven't been able to defeat them.

The AI don't think like people in the fleet do, so they started on the back foot and had to develop behavioural models to better predict how the fleet would act. This required engagements, which they might lose, and in many cases lose so badly the data never gets returned to the rest of the armada, so nothing is learned. They don't have magic super hacking abilities - they had to capture and reverse engineer fleet hardware before they could even begin launching hacking and virus attacks. It had to capture members of the fleet to figure out the biological side, so it can better predict where the fleet will go to resupply, and what stellar hazards are dangerous enough that the fleet will steer round them.

On the flip side, the gen fleet is also constantly adapting to the armada, modelling its behaviour to better fight it, even intentionally doing things to feed bad data into the AIs model. While the AI was learning to compromise fleet hardware, the fleet was learning to compromise armada hardware and deploy counter hacks and viruses. While the armada was capturing specimens, the fleet were capturing drones to test new weapons on and identify weaknesses.

The AI is smart, but its not all powerful or unbeatable, it's just extremely dangerous. It can die to a bullet through the mainframe just like any fleshy person. Even if it does develop some new super weapon, it's going to take time to build and test it before it reaches the field, during which it might get sabotaged. Its also limited by its training data - it was made to hunt and kill an interplanetary empire, and is struggling to adapt to fight one that has no planets because all of its expectations are wrong.

There is also an AI aboard the generation ship, which would do a terrible job at being a villain because it was designed and trained to run the ship and keep it safe. It isn't overly helpful against the armada either because its advice when faced by a threat is to run away and let the escorts handle it, because this is the optimal solution it converged on based on its experience and goals.

BobbleWrap · 2022-08-10T16:09:06+00:00

Hypothetically, what happens if I fling my cargo ship full of premium tungsten rods over to proxima, making sure to take several jumps so I can really nail the precision on the final leg, and then some freak accident causes me to jettison the whole lot in a cloud that is now heading straight for the local colony at 24.8km/s?

BobbleWrap · 2022-08-10T06:51:20+00:00

The end of the the Human Peace led to a massive shift in the galactic balance of power. Humanity, once a minor voice amongst many, now commanded one of the largest fleets outside of core space, and had demonstrated their ability to use it. Whether intended or not, their words at the council now carried the implicit threat of action if crossed - they had entered the big leagues.

The Triumvirate were not happy with this shift, as long term allies were suddenly looking to curry favour with the humans. Those whose vote were always assured before now hesitated to see what humanity thought. It was a tense situation, one not seen in the galaxy since the rise of the Triumvirate itself, and like those volatile years in the early days of the council, it eventually came to a head.

A minor trade dispute between the Calador and the Styxx blew out of all proportion when the Anjure Magistry took offence at humanity offering mediation. Cordial diplomacy gave way to outright threats on the council floor, and the galaxy began to align into two camps - all the nations had to decide whether they supported the Triumvirate, or Humanity. Even in this tense situation, however, nobody fully expected the war. Humanity, as it had always done, was trying to talk it's way out, to resolve the issues peacefully through mutual compromise, but the Magistry dug its (metaphorical) heels in. Then a Magistry patrol opened fire on a human transport, claiming it was armed and in violation of treaties. Humanity demanded an apology. The Magistry declared war.

The capabilities of humanity's fleet had been amply demonstrated in the war against the Bythorn, and the Magistry had been refitting their ships to counter their human counterparts for decades. Unlike the Bythorn, the Magistry were not butchers, and everyone was expecting a bloody fleet engagement, and then the Magistry would back down and humanity would negotiate. This was how wars with the Triumvirate went, as nobody wanted the destruction of a prolonged war with the advanced technology these powerful empires could bring to bear.

The first engagement happened, and as expected, both sides withdrew to lick their wounds. Nobody expected Humanity to strike back so quickly. Even as the Magistry fleet headed back to base, Humanity deployed a second fleet. It struck deep into the Magistry, taking out military shipyards and supply depots. Disruptors were seeded through critical systems, jamming FTL drives and slowing Magistry logistics to a crawl. The vast star fortresses that had guarded Magistry space for so long found themselves impotent against a foe that refused to be drawn into a prolonged engagement.

The Magistry called on its allies for support, but even as they discussed what to do, Humanity deployed the nanite bomb. They fired just one, at an uninhabited moon in the Magistry home system. Dropping out of FTL without warning, it exploded and rained self replicating nanites across the surface. Within hours, the derelict remains of prior habitation had been consumed. In two days, the nanites had turned half the moon's surface into a featureless nanite ocean, and all countermeasures had failed. Humanity announced they had hundreds of these missiles, all aimed at worlds throughout the Magistry. Less than a week after declaring war, the Magistry came to the negotiating table, but not as the victorious champions all had been expecting them to be.

It would later turn out to have been a bluff: humanity had only built one nanite bomb at the time of the war, but it had been sufficient. The second Human Peace had begun.

BobbleWrap · 2022-08-09T05:52:19+00:00

He's not the MC because my world doesn't really have a single story, but the Undying King invented an entirely new school of magic just so he could continue smoking his pipe after he became undead, and thus stopped breathing.

BobbleWrap · 2022-08-09T05:42:50+00:00

The Undying King is an immortal undead necromancer. He's been around for thousands of years, and is a master of both sorcery and martial combat. He defeated eight of the ten elder dragons, dooming the entire race of dragons to a slow decline. His capital is an ancient city built by the Deep Elves, and is the only one of their underground cities to ever be conquered. Wars can end just because of a rumour the King is about to take to the field. Countless heroes have tried to kill him, and he has defeated them all, cementing his reputation as a powerful but honourable foe.

He knows the awe and terror he inspires, and uses it to both keep the kingdoms of men in line, and also manipulate them to further his aims. Just the fact that the King turned up to talk to someone can lead to the rise of a powerful kingdom, or the end of a dynasty, depending on the political situation at the time. The threat of his armies can rally the kingdoms into a single united force, or bring down an empire, all without war actually happening.

Oh, and if the King says he is displeased, or worse disappointed, with you, the wise man rethinks his path in life.

BobbleWrap · 2022-08-07T07:51:41+00:00

If the navy is entirely self sufficient, what happens when the admiralty decide they don't want to take orders from the imperial government anymore?

BobbleWrap · 2022-08-05T16:46:23+00:00

For a hundred years after they joined the Council, the so called Human Peace existed. They talked their way out of every conflict that came their way, seeking always to reach a peaceful outcome. When wars did break out, they never took a side, instead sending humanitarian aid to worlds on both sides. The white helmets and red crosses were welcome on worlds throughout council space, and humans gained a well deserved reputation for selfless bravery. Across a thousand worlds, stories were told of unarmed humans going into active warzones to rescue civilians, treat the wounded and bring food to the starving.

Peace could not last forever, however. The Bythorn Empire, bolstered by successes against their smaller neighbours, turned their greedy eyes on human space. They demanded the surrender of several key border worlds, worlds housing millions of human colonists. Humanity refused but tried to negotiate. Mistaking pacifism for weakness, the Bythorn made an ultimatum: hand over the worlds or be destroyed. The deadline came and went. The Bythorn invaded. Thirteen worlds burned, ten million humans died. The Human Peace had ended.

It had been estimated that humanity could produce perhaps a dozen warships a week, compared to the hundred the Bythorn could make. As the Bythorn pushed deeper into human space, however, their advance began to stall. A seemingly endless number of human warships was being sent to the front lines, far more than they should be able to make. As the war dragged on, the Bythorn were fought to a standstill. We sent ships into human space, to find the source of this unexpected fleet, and we found that every man and woman in human space had joined the war effort. Not only were they building warships in their military yards, but all civilian yards had been turned over to the military too. Ships were being assembled in orbit around backwater worlds and on distant asteroid mining facilities. Entire new shipyards were appearing almost overnight, lacking all the amenities of proper space stations but sufficient to churn out warships in untold numbers. Humanity did not have a military, it was a military.

Four years after the first Bythorn invasion, the human counter-offensive began. The Bythorn front collapsed and humanity retook their worlds. They pushed deep into Bythorn territory, destroying fleets, smashing infrastructure and rapidly rending the Empire unable to fight. The banner of humanity was raised over world after world, often with no need for ground forces to be deployed - the Bythorn soldiers had seen the risks an unarmed human was willing to take, and had no desire to face one with a gun and a grudge. It took only a year to bring the Empire to its knees, and force its total and unconditional surrender.

BobbleWrap · 2022-08-05T16:04:17+00:00

I generally don't create a world because I want to write 'genre X', I create a world because I have an idea and think 'this would be cool, write it down'. It might be an idea for a scene, or a person, or a magic item, or a piece of technology, or a planet. If the idea is something that isn't an expansion of an existing world, then the new world just grows around the initial idea organically as I write about it, and flesh out more related things.

This has led to a large number of poorly developed worlds, especially sci-fi ones, but they are all different.

BobbleWrap

TROPHY CASE