Slashdot Mirror
Hall of Fame Game M.U.L.E. To Be Ported To PC
DebateUSA writes "If you ever played the game M.U.L.E. on the Atari or Commodore computer
systems in the early 1980's, there's a company producing a new version for
the PC.
" Ah, resource allocation.
If I recall, there was a version of MULE ported to the NES back in its heyday-- actually, I'm sure of it. It was one of the flagship 4-player titles for that system. Anyone play it?
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
M.U.L.E. is truly one of my favorite things in the universe. (Hopefully Dani is in one of the places in heaven reserved for true genius.) This could signal the appearance of a new black hole in my schedule. I just hope they keep the same music.
e x p e c t d e l a y . c o m
If you're gonna report a story about a port, then make sure it's actually a port, and not a remake. Remakes, even using the same title (re: Hasbro Asteroids) aren't the same as the original, they always monkey with it, and it's never the same.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
I have to wonder - why change the name, and the name of the resources? What was wrong with "Multi-Use Labor Element", chrystite, and smithore?
OK, I could understand if they changed the name of the planet (irata) for obvious reasons, but do they think the rest of the changes will protect them if EA decides to press the point?
www.eFax.com are spammers
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
... but the old game is avalable in a lot of places, like this. :)
Combined with vice, you can relive your childhood...
-- No sig today
Josh Cogliati is working on a reimplementation in Python called L.A.M.B. -- Land Access Mechanized Bot. There's still a lot of work to do, tough.
One thing that was putting me off from playing M.U.L.E on a PC (via emulation) was the lack of proper joysticks. I don't think the (analog) PC-joysticks are up to the job (they are unwieldy and don't have clearly defined directions), ideal would be an atari type joystick (i prefered the competition pro with microswitches for directions and metal contacts for the buttons), a game-pad would be the closest equivalent, but i find them too fiddly. There are some adapters out there to connect atari-type joysticks to a pc, and also some do-it-yourself-pages, but then i could just dig out my old C64 and see if it still works ...
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
don't worry, it's in the process. SDL + openGL and IRC-like networking layer under it. The IRC stuff is taking a bit longer than I thought it would. (Been working for almost a year @ 30kloc so far).
metric
M.U.L.E Theme
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
MULE was good, and I'm sure HoRSE will be even better, but personally I'm going to hold out until someone implements PLaTYPUS (Personalized Labor Tool Yeilding Previously Unavailable Smithore)!
Here is a link to a page that lists multiple clones, including the open source one.
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
This project is pointless unless it has the theme.
pooka-POOKA pooka-POOKA pooka-POOKA POOKA POOKA
It's actually better looking than I assumed it would be. I assumed a remake would be a 3-D RTS with FPS elements and first person perspective, featuring the voice acting talents of several third-rate and/or Star Trek actors.
First of all - M.U.L.E. is one of the best games in history, just like NetHack or Civilization.
You can find few clones in the net - but it's for DOS or Windows. I couldn't find any clone which will run in Linux. I thought about writing SDL clone myself, but this is a lot of work (the hardest parts for me is AI and drawing sprites) - and I am not sure if arcade parts should be still in game.
Do you know any Open Source M.U.L.E. project I could join?
To find information about game, and clones list enter page:
World of M.U.L.E
The official remake/sequel/port of MULE got canned because the company doing it insisted on adding weapons, and the author (thankfully!) wouldn't allow it. ( Source: Read in a game mag interview that I can't find now, and mentioned separately at Retrogaming Times )
But, if the original designer's new version had to be scrapped due to unacceptable monkeying with it, what are the odds of this knock-off *not* monkeying too much, especially given that sufficient monkeying might give them some legal protection? So, I'm not getting my hopes up.
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?
While I've often dreamed of an update to M.U.L.E. (or Archon), I question whether simply updating the graphics and adding new cutscenes can really enhance the excellent gameplay. M.U.L.E.'s gameplay was such that the random events every turn could throw off the balance of the game just enough to give any player the opportunity to take the lead within a couple turns (there were only 12 turns in the game, each representing a month). There's nothing quite like making the richest players pay over $200 per unit of food because they're starving. Besides that, it had arcade and strategic elements (try figuring out which plot of land you're going to grab at the beginning of each turn can be somewhat stressful) along with a certain 8-bit charm that probably won't translate very well to the modern PC.
I'll definitely grab the demo, but that's only if EA doesn't sue them out of existence first...
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
My friends and I were addicted to M.U.L.E. for quite a while. To me, what it had going for it was:
I'm sure I'm looking back at it through rose colored glasses, but if it has network multiplayer, I may lose my job :-)
-- stream of did I lock the front door consciousness
You make a good point-- for all the nostalgia being thrown around on the topic of old computer games, it might be nice once in a while for someone to summarize for those of us who weren't there.
MULE, however, was a game I recall from my childhood. Both the idea and the execution were quite simple-- the premise was that you were part of a 4-person colony on a distant planet called "Irata." (Get it?) The game proceeded in 12 rounds-- each round began with a land grab, in which each player would select a parcel of land on the planet's surface, although some parcels were more desirable (and thus, more contentiously sought after) because of the natural resources they contained. Once the land grab was completed, each player would have the opportunity to exploit the resources on his or her plots of land by purchasing, equipping, and deploying MULEs ("multiple use labor elements"-- i.e. robots). Each parcel could be used to either grow food, generate energy, or mine Smithore.
After each player had his or her turn to deploy MULEs, the game yielded a harvest on each parcel, depending on the suitability of each parcel for the use it was put to, various economies of scale, and random events that increased or decreased the production of certain goods planetwide or on a local level. Phase 2 of the round-- the auction-- then began.
Each commodity was placed up for auction, and a player could either elect to buy or sell that commodity in that round. Thus, if you produced only food, you'd need to buy energy during the auction, since you need energy to run your MULEs. While the colony maintained a store which bought or sold excess quantities of each commodity at fairly reasonable prices, because of supply and demand, predatory buying or selling, or a disaster at the store, players would often find that the store was out of stock and their fellow competitors were the only source of necessary commodities. Consequently, you would wind up paying exorbitant prices demanded by the monopolist with the goods. In this regard, the game rewarded, at least on the surface, highly cutthroat play. I say "on the surface," because the game also required the players to achieve a colony-wide level of success by the end of the game, and a player who extorted his fellows might become the richest player in the game, but the colony might be declared a failure overall, making the victory phyrric.
That's the general outline of the game, although there were lots of little touches that made it more complicated. The reason most people recall t fondly was because it was because it was a game that required some critical (and fast) thinking, but was designed to support lots of different strategic approaches-- you could be a land baron, keeping other players from obtaining important parcels, even though you never developed them yourself; you could focus your strategy on one commodity and hope to control the market; you could play a balanced approach; you could screw people surreptitiously, etc. The game was simple to learn, and primitive in its execution, but was conceptually rich and rewarded those who planned ahead. It also introduced a lot of interesting competitive economic concepts like economies of scale, supply and demand, monopolies, etc., that had not been incorporated into computer games before. And although the graphics were primitive, the characters involved had a whimsical feel to them and it had a funky little theme song that was catchy.
There's a story about Dani that I know contains an element of slander, but it's too good to pass up: (I'll try to correct the slander afterwards)
At one point Dani was negotiating to do a new version of M.U.L.E. At the same time, she was also in the middle of her transformation, which, of course, included the surgery, and everyone who knew her well was secretly wondering about it. Soon afterwards, at some industry function or another, Russell Sipe, then publisher of Computer Gaming World, came up to her. "Well?" he asked. "Did you go through with it?" "No," Dani said. "I decided not to."
Russell was taken aback. "Really! Why not?"
"Well, they wanted to put guns and bombs in there, and I just didn't want that."
"WHAT??!!!!!" said Russell, utterly flabbergasted.
Of course it was all straightened out a moment later. Russell had been thinking about the life- changing, utterly irrevocable business of losing one's genitals.
Dani, characteristically, had been thinking about game design.