The AIME project is a mud creation project started by Slate and Marty.
The code is being designed to be a flexible mud engine capable of allowing
builders to express their creative minds fully. It will provide players
a complex world that will be fairly straightforward to get into but allow
for increasing complexity as the player progresses.
Slate and Marty met on Eradicated Worlds (now called Darkscapes), an
aber-style mud when Slate was looking for a mudcode base to learn C
coding with. Using the Pdirt abermud code largely modified by Marty,
Slate began his mudcoding career. From about 1996 to 1997, Slate
ran a mud called Solstice while Marty ran Darkscapes and they often
shared ideas and notes on the mudcode. In 1997, they both worked on
a new compiler for the pdirt code that would replace the non-robust and
often unreliable zone compiler on the old abermud code. They created
the pdirt area compiler which worked much better and allowed for
psuedu-code specials to be written. With that project done, Slate and
Marty began looking for a new project. Looking
at the somewhat inflexible and hard to read aber-code, they began
thinking about modifying the code to improve it. Given the amount of
modifications that it would require, that idea was eventually discarded
and they looked towards creating an entirely new mud from scratch. Hence,
AIME was started.
It was originally started as an engine for a mud they were planning on
building. However, building a proper world is an enormous task and it
took time away from coding, so Slate decided to abandon the plan of
building a mud and concentrate all efforts towards the codebase.
The code of the mud is being designed to allow for wide flexibility. Using
an object oriented design, many varying types of mudobjects are being
created ranging from locations to mobiles (non-players that wander the
game and interact with players) and weapons to armor. Each object is
being designed in a way to provide great flexibility for the builder
to create exactly what they see in their heads. For instance, doors have
different descriptions on the inside and outside, and allow the builder
to provide a different brief (the line that shows up in the room when
you look, for example: "You see a locked door here") based on the status
of the door (open, closed, locked). Mobiles will reply to communications
and allow you to gain information from them. If you ask a baker about bread,
they may respond with "My bread is the best in the land!" or something
to that effect.
The following ideas were ones created for the development of the mud, before the idea was scrapped. Much of the code went in support of these ideas. We wanted to create a game that was close to how things would work in real life. In real life, bankers are not born bankers, and insurance salesmen are not born insurance salesmen. So why would you limit someone to a certain skill like warrior, mage, or thief right when they start the game? The philosophies of the mud were that the player will decide the path that their character will take based on their actions, rather than setting their future in stone using some menus when they first create their character. Each player will start out exactly the same right when they first log in. They will have a certain amount of "learning points" that they can use to develop themselves. If someone wants to become the most powerful mage possible, they will use all their learning points to mage-related skills. If they want to attain the highest level of fighter, they will use all their learning points towards warrior-related skills. If they use half their points for mage skills and half for warrior, they will be a pretty good mage and a pretty good fighter, but not as great a fighter or mage if they had stuck solely with one discipline. However, mages and fighters are not the only paths one can take. There will be healers, rangers, thiefs, death mages (mages with an emphasis on spells that manipulate the dead) and any others we can think of. Also, fighters can specialize in swords, bows, axes, or any other weapon class we can think of. The possibilities for how a player can develop themselves are limited only by our imagination. The idea is to let the player develop themselves.
The world would also be a place to allow for roleplaying. By creating a highly dynamic code base, events could occur driven by the imps. One such example would be a horde of creatures attacks a town and it is up to the players to defend the town. If the players should fail, the town gets occupied by creatures until such a time as the players organize an attack on that town to reclaim it. Also, it will be somewhat of a capitalistic society, relying on trade to earn a living. How this will be best implimented is still to be determined, but we can see that a person could integrate themselves into the society, making a living supplying some service and earning money for supplies that way. Most things will cost money, so finding ways of earning it will help the player out greatly.
Over time, the code has transformed into what it is now based on user input. The major driving concept is flexibility. Every effort has been made to add a rich assortment of features, but allow most features to be turned off or not used if the imps deem necessary. The features have been designed in a way to provide an environment for developing rich worlds. This is not an engine to support your 2 million room hack and slash, cut and paste world (though it will work for that). It is better suited for the 1000-5000 room mud with well-written descriptions and well-thought out puzzles and situations in the game.