A map editor for a MUD-like game
What's cooler than scratching your own itch? Helping a friend develop his game faster!
When you are in the middle of a development (it doesn’t matter if it’s a game, a desktop app or a website for a digital newspaper), you might end up fighting against the current for no reason.
My very first job as a software developer, 15 years ago, was building internal tools for a SEO company. Whenever I detected a repetitive task from one of my colleagues, my main mission was to automate it. I remember building tools for helping with Keyword Research, monitoring SERPs or automating the reports as much as possible.
It’s interesting that, unless the CEO of the company really wants to push automation through internal tools, the whole company will assume repetition is acceptable. That’s like seeing that a kitchen’s restaurant spends a lot of time cleaning dishes and not investing in a dishwasher.
A friend is developing a modern MUD game on his own, and I saw an opportunity to make his life easier.
What is a “MUD” btw?
MUDs (Multi-user dungeon) were a popular kind of video games when computer networks started to appear. They were text-based adventures where you could explore a virtual world, collect items, fight and solve enigmas.
While they are not that popular nowadays, nostalgia made this friend to create a modern MUD approach, trying to combine text-based experience but bringing some arts and graphics into the mix.
Creating a world to explore
While end users will play my friend’s game, I’ve developed a tool for helping him to create his own universe. Here is how the map editor looks like:
With this little tool, he can create islands, add “rooms” to the islands, or connect the islands between them. Just like if you were playing a role-playing game with a “Game Master”, whenever you enter a room in the game, you can ask the game to explore it, to see what’s around your player.
In my tool, if you press on one of these tiles, you can enter the description the end player will read, the non-player characters (NPCs) identifiers or if there is a door blocking the passage.
The world he’s creating is much bigger than above’s sample. There will be multiple islands, with hundreds of rooms to explore on each of them. Having a GUI to manage all this is making his life easier. Instead of having to think about 3D coordinates (yes! you can go up and down in the game), you can just focus on being creative.
After editing the map, he can just export it as a JSON file and import it into the game he’s developing.
If you are building something (it doesn’t have to be a game), try to think about the tasks that are holding you back.
Maybe you can create a tool for that!
Love this! Thanks for sharing. What language did you use to build your tool?