Swordsmith

Swordsmith is the working title of a new top-down 2D MMORPG system currently under development. This the placeholder index page for the project.

• The Wiki
• The Forum
• Frequently Asked Questions

It is both game generator and extensible code-base.

Design Statement

Most MUDs and other 'make your own game' tools are very cumbersome and difficult to modify. The intention of SwordSmith is to provide a rich game engine that can be used by anyone (including people with no programming experience) to develop their own interactive world. The world will be explorable in 2D space, fully skinnable in terms of how it should appear, and will provide a wealth of detail that can be altered by anyone who knows how to use a word processor.

However, there is little difference from world to world if this is all that can be done, and so the system is also designed to allow extreme customisation, from adding in new functionality to specialise the existing engine, or completely modifying base behaviour.

Target Audience

Anyone who wants to create their own MMORPG, really. It's for people who have no programming experience, and also for those who find existing codebases too cumbersome or restrictive. All the code has been written from the ground up with extensibility in mind.

It is also anticipated there is a real academic merit to providing such an easily developed world. Back when I worked at the University of Abertay, I pitched the idea of developing an in-house MUD to take advantage of the excellent learning opportunities they provide. I'll attach a couple of documents here to support this argument.

• The actual presentation I gave.
• And the handouts

I think this horse has legs...

Monkeys at Keyboards

Swordsmith is a Monkeys at Keyboards project.