Rebirth of the big era of online games

Chapter 4 MUD Game Servers

The Internet cafe they were looking for was at the back door of the administrative compound of the state-owned enterprise headquarters, a 10-minute walk away.

It was Fang Jie's request to choose this Internet cafe, because the Internet cafe is a self-operated Internet cafe in the telecom business hall of Shuanglu District. , the network speed can reach up to 20KB.

Of course, the cost is also high. The 6 yuan/hour internet fee can dissuade many student parties.

If it is an ordinary Internet cafe, that is, an Internet cafe upgraded from a computer room, the cost is 4 yuan/hour, but the network speed can be 56K. Can't get on QQ.

In fact, as long as you install a point-to-point PPP protocol in the network settings, you can solve the problem of QQ on the LAN computer, but Fang Jie is too troublesome to make extra troubles.

At this time, the number of QQ registered users is less than 10, that is to say, you can get a five-digit QQ number by simply registering now.

In later generations, the most rubbish five-digit number can also be sold for 1 or 2. If you register 1 five-digit numbers now, you can become a billionaire in ten years, than buying Wuliangye Moutai stock. Real estate speculation still makes money, the key is that there is no cost and no risk.

Anyway, there is gold everywhere now, it depends on whether Fang Jie is willing to pick it up.

Three computers were directly packaged. Fang Jie paid a direct deposit of 100 yuan for each computer. Li Yi and Li Qing were not polite. There is no need to be too polite.

At the moment, there is no management system or internet card in Internet cafes, so they all pay the deposit first, take a small notebook and write down the time.

I glanced at the situation of other people in the Internet cafe, and most of them are playing single-machine LAN games, such as "StarCraft", "Age of Empires", "Heroes", "Diablo I", etc., basically all old game.

Only a few people are seriously surfing the Internet, watching NetEase news or sending and receiving e-mails.

QQ is not used by anyone. During this period, if you want to chat with netizens, you basically go to the NetEase chat room to chat. Everyone has either never heard of QQ, or they sneered when they heard about it.

"Why isn't "Half-Life" installed on the computer..."

Li Yi, who was sitting on Fang Jie's left hand, couldn't help but muttered, and suddenly lost his interest in the game.

This is the true portrayal of the "popular lag theory" he just said.

In the capital city, "Half-Life", or CS, which was just launched half a year ago, has already gone crazy. The netizens in the provincial capital are just beginning to contact, and the Tongcheng side has not even installed the game, or even heard of it. ...

Looking at the screen on Fang Jie's side, Li Yi couldn't help but be stunned: "Do you know MUD games?"

MUD games, word online games, are the ancestors of all MMORPGs or role-playing online games.

The well-known first graphic online game "Network Genesis", "The King of Kings", "Online Three Kingdoms" to be launched at the end of this year, and "Fantasy Westward Journey" series developed by NetEase next year are all based on the MUD game framework. .

Fang Jie is indeed downloading the text online game MUD, and he is not downloading the client ZMUD, but the server side. He wants to set up his own MUD game station.

"What? Have you ever played?"

After Fang Jie asked a question, he suddenly realized that he was asking nonsense.

Li Yi majored in computer science and liked to play various games since he was a child. The key player is still from Beijing University. The earliest MUD game site in China is the martial arts text online game "Jing Da Xia Xing Xing", which must have been played.

Sure enough, Li Yi, who felt underestimated, immediately smiled proudly: "Nonsense! I am now the WIZ of the main station of "Jing Da Xia Xing Xing"!"

"Cut! It's just WIZ!" Fang Jie smiled disdainfully, but he was still quite shocked.

WIZ is the abbreviation of wizard, which means wizard, which is commonly understood as the GM in the text online game MUD.

But in MUD games, GMs are divided into many levels, and WIZ is only the GM with the least level of authority.

The highest level is GODS, the meaning of God or God. Whoever owns the game server is GOD. It is like the boss of a game company. No matter how powerful your GM is, it is no bigger than your own boss.

Followed by ADMIN, Tianshen, the actual administrator of the game, the owner of the highest authority of GM, in the game, except for the files under the server/LOG that cannot or are not allowed to be modified, they have all other game permissions.

The third is ARCH, the great wizard, which can be understood as the GM supervisor of a certain block of the game, and finally WIZ, who is responsible for the programming or development of a specific area, and has some player management rights.

However, in this era, those who can become GMs in the main station of "Jing Da Xia Xing Xing" have basically become big names in the industry in later generations, and they are the mainstays and even the bosses of various online game companies.

After carefully looking at the capacity of the file downloaded by Fang Jie, seeing that it was more than 200M, Li Yi guessed what he was going to do: "You want to build a MUD station by yourself and be the ADMIN yourself?"

Fang Jie did not deny it: "Make some money."

Perhaps knowing that Fang Jie is also a scholar, Li Yi did not doubt why the other party knew everything about MUD, but just smiled unreasonably: "This public version of the server side, although classic, but the game version has long been behind, you It is impossible to attract players to stay for a long time.

Fang Jie was about to explain, but Li Yi added: "You alone don't have that much energy to maintain and upgrade the game. I was only responsible for a small part of the game development and maintenance in "Jing Da Xia Xing Xing". And it’s still an obligation, and you can’t make money by doing this.”

"Just treat me as a stand-alone player." Fang Jie smiled, too lazy to explain.

Normally, MUD games do not make money, or in other words, there are no online games that can make money right now, and the charging model has not yet been determined, so how can you talk about making money?
But if you look at it from the perspective of future generations, MUD games are actually the ancestors of free games and the ancestors of private servers.

And free private server games, everyone understands.

It's just that the game administrators of this era, who can surf the Internet and program, are all highly qualified young people. Influenced by the spirit of Western chivalry, they simply consciously abide by various game rules and morals, and treat free games as free games. If you do, you won't make any money.

And Fang Jie doesn't have so many rules and regulations, he just wants to make a real "free" MUD, or a perverted suit of "one knife 9999", as long as he can make money without breaking the law, all kinds of routines can be used!

While waiting for the server to download, Fang Jie was not idle. He taught Li Qing how to surf the Internet, how to register and send him emails, how to register for QQ, how to add his friends, and how to type and chat with him.

In short, first open the future network channel between the two of them. Even if it is not convenient to meet frequently during the six months before the college entrance examination, there is still a way to keep in touch.

Although QQ is not a game, Li Qing also enjoys playing it, especially QQ chat is extremely novel to her.

"It's like a BB machine sending paging messages." Li Qing commented.

Fang Jie did not speak, but replied directly in his QQ chat window: "Well, your analogy is very appropriate. QQ was initially positioned as a network pager, and it will develop into a network instant messaging tool in the future."

Although there are already mobile phones and mobile phone text messages in this era, they have not been listed in China for a long time, and the prices are expensive, and they have not been widely popularized. For a cadre of state-owned enterprises like Fang Wanxing, the unit only gave him an Ericsson brick mobile phone this year. Don't expect too much.

Fang Jie is now using the Motorola BB machine that Fang Wanxing gave him. The market price of this thing was 2000 yuan when it first came on the market. Not to mention at that time, even now, it is already very popular among the classmates.

Therefore, the only metaphor Li Qing can think of is the BB machine, otherwise it would be more appropriate to describe it with mobile phone text messages.

After a while, Li Qing typed a line in QQ: "I really miss the carefree childhood. Now my brother is going to college, and you are about to graduate. I am the only one left at home..."

Fang Jie glanced at Li Qing out of the corner of the eye, and replied in QQ: "If you want, go to the provincial capital with me after graduation, and I will take you to fly when the time comes."

Internet chat is good at this point. If it is inconvenient to say it in person, it can be more natural to joke about it online.

This remark immediately made Li Qing cover her mouth and laugh. She also glanced at Fang Jie out of the corner of her eye and typed in the chat window: "I feel like you are a different person now, it's so interesting to talk... I also want to save it. City, but my family won’t agree. Besides, what can I do in the provincial capital?”

"I have a lot of ideas and plans to put into practice, and I need a caring person around me to help me." Fang Jie replied.

Li Qing blushed and replied, "But I don't know anything, how can I help you?"

In the past, Li Qing was very confident. After some beatings, her mentality gradually became inferior, especially in front of two academic bullies.

Fang Jie replied: "Didn't you already learn to surf the Internet and use QQ? If you practice your typing speed, you can help me!"

"Oh." Li Qing only replied one word, still feeling very confused.

Fang Jie didn't explain anything. He looked at Li Yi's side and found that the other party might not be able to play CS, so he simply downloaded a ZMUD client and entered the "Jing Da Xia Xing Xing" MUD to play.

It's not actually playing, it's working.

As a game GM, he is writing and improving the novice instructions in the game, which can be updated to the server in real time through the network.

The threshold of MUD games is relatively high, at least you need to know a little English, because every step of the operation of the game character needs to be executed by typing English instructions.

If you can program a little bit better, you can make your own "robot" script through the client, which is equivalent to making a plug-in program yourself. A master of MUD games is often a master of programming.

Therefore, such games are very unfriendly to novice players, and MUD has not been able to develop, which has a lot to do with it.

In order to attract more players to adapt to such a game, the game administrators will write a variety of detailed instructions for beginners to facilitate everyone to get started.

But not eggs.

If you have to read a lot of novice instructions before playing a game, and you need to recite hundreds of English word instructions, and then if you want to play well, you have to learn robot scripting... This can at least dissuade more than 90% of the novice players .

Therefore, players who can play MUD now generally have good academic performance. At least they are people who can accept new things and love to study, and their family conditions must be good. Otherwise, where will the money come from the Internet, especially GM.

This is also the fundamental reason why many MUD players and wizards can become bigwigs in various industries in the future. With the comprehensive quality in all aspects, of course they will be more successful than ordinary people.

After watching it for a while, Fang Jie couldn't help but say, "Actually, I don't think it's necessary to write such complicated instructions for beginners, or it shouldn't be written in such an unfriendly format."

While typing the code in the client, Li Yi said, "I understand what you mean. We have also discussed countless times within the wizard team, considering that we can gradually master the gameplay in the form of novice tasks. But not everyone is like us. In this way, the memory is excellent, the novice tasks are completed, and the game instructions they just learned will be forgotten when they turn their heads, so they still have to have the novice instructions."

Academic bullies are generally very conceited and arrogant people. The conceited Li Yi can't understand Fang Jie's thoughts, and the equally conceited Fang Jie is too lazy to continue to explain, let's see the real chapter under our hands!

More than an hour had passed by the time the server-side file of more than 200 M was downloaded. Fang Jie was also very helpless about such a network speed. Li Yi was right about one thing - the current Internet environment is really bad.

No matter how good the game is, if the internet speed can’t keep up, you can’t play it, which is why Fang Jie chose to start with word-based online games.

If you take out the chicken-and-tower game of later generations... No, even if you take out "Stone Age" in the first half of next year or "Legend" in the second half of the year, it will not work now.

The problem of internet speed is a flaw, which can only be solved at the national level. For a country that claims to be an infrastructure maniac, he really can no longer ask for higher luxury. Now he can only adapt to the present and follow the steps.

Unzip the file, set up the server, open the client at the same time, enter the game to register an ordinary account to log in, and then add the account as an ADMIN account in the relevant directory file on the server side.

Finally, update the account in the client, without restarting the server, it becomes the GM account with the highest game authority.

I used this account to walk around in the game, filling up various skills, duplicating various props, testing all kinds of flying in the sky, and repeatedly returning to the server side to make some modifications to the relevant files.

Due to the limited time and energy, the changes are not big, mainly three.

1. All game quest rewards have been increased by 100 times, so that you can quickly gain experience and potential rewards, but game coins such as silver and gold keep the original output.

2. Added a shopping mall system, which temporarily sells two items, one is game currency, RMB is exchanged for gold at a ratio of 1:100, the other is 50/50 durable flying boots, 10 taels of gold/pair, After wearing it, you can teleport to any NPC.

3. Added a recharge instruction, players will see it at first sight when they enter the game, which is matched with the newly created QQ player group. After the online banking transfer, send a screenshot to the QQ group, and GM will issue the corresponding game currency after confirmation. .

In short, the routine is not deep, and even everything is primitive and simple. At present, the conditions are limited and we can only do this temporarily.

The next step is to do publicity and attract players to come in and experience this perverted suit.

(End of this chapter)