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Those crazy bastards
Apr. 1st, 2012 04:57 pmThey appear to have totally updated Cryosphere to version 2.6, more than six years in the making. It doesn't yet have the web interface that I wrote 2 years ago installed on it. But this will happen.
This is quite weird.
Writing new MUDs was a perfectly reasonable habit when we started in the late 1990s. MUDs are tailor-made for bored students to write (none of this stuff with needing artwork, we were perfectly capable of writing adequate prose and good code) and perfect for them to play, being low-bandwidth. It had become a bit more eccentric in the early 2000s, when we did the big scenario rewrite and world-building. But there was a certain community out there. Now? Well, it's basically retrogaming, isn't it? Except not the fashionable sort. No 16-colour sprites for us, you see. As we hurtle through our 30s, Cryosphere is still there. Our hosting has gone from an account at CSLib to now a server somewhere in Germany that none of us have ever seen, and which we share with ElvenMUD. The same people log in from day to day, and for whatever reason use it to coordinate social activities with each other. There doesn't seem likely to ever be a mass inrush of players, even if one day we finish the world and the trading aspect of the game. It's reached a steady state.
We're having a 15th anniversary party in the autumn. In 2015 it will have existed for half my life. Will it still be there in 2022? Will our children and grand-children maintain it as a curiosity?
This is quite weird.
Writing new MUDs was a perfectly reasonable habit when we started in the late 1990s. MUDs are tailor-made for bored students to write (none of this stuff with needing artwork, we were perfectly capable of writing adequate prose and good code) and perfect for them to play, being low-bandwidth. It had become a bit more eccentric in the early 2000s, when we did the big scenario rewrite and world-building. But there was a certain community out there. Now? Well, it's basically retrogaming, isn't it? Except not the fashionable sort. No 16-colour sprites for us, you see. As we hurtle through our 30s, Cryosphere is still there. Our hosting has gone from an account at CSLib to now a server somewhere in Germany that none of us have ever seen, and which we share with ElvenMUD. The same people log in from day to day, and for whatever reason use it to coordinate social activities with each other. There doesn't seem likely to ever be a mass inrush of players, even if one day we finish the world and the trading aspect of the game. It's reached a steady state.
We're having a 15th anniversary party in the autumn. In 2015 it will have existed for half my life. Will it still be there in 2022? Will our children and grand-children maintain it as a curiosity?
