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M.U.L.E. Is Back
jmp_nyc writes "The developers at Turborilla have remade the 1983 classic game M.U.L.E. The game is free, and has slightly updated graphics, but more or less the same gameplay as the original version. As with the original game, up to four players can play against each other (or fewer than four with AI players taking the other spots). Unlike the original version, the four players can play against each other online. For those of you not familiar with M.U.L.E., it was one of the earliest economic simulation games, revolving around the colonization of the fictitious planet Irata (Atari spelled backwards). I have fond memories of spending what seemed like days at a time playing the game, as it's quite addictive, with the gameplay seeming simpler than it turns out to be. I'm sure I'm not the only Slashdotter who had a nasty M.U.L.E. addiction back in the day and would like a dose of nostalgia every now and then."
Just downloaded it....COOL...but where's the intro and intro music??? It was 8-bit sweetness on the C=64.
Glad somebody did it though!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6L6MhSgpgo
Some of the best home computer music of the time. This song is the number 1 reason I fire up SIDplay (followed closely by many things by David Whittaker).
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
...not Dan Bunten. She made it clear.
Camping on quad since 1996.
I play the planetMule version of MULE, and I can confirm that is still a awesome game. MULE has this ability to make you play crazy in 2 turns, 3 turns... Is a deep game, and you meet different skills and ideas about how to play. The planetMULE version is both tryiing to make a faithfull version (and is a SUCCESS as that), and make tiny improvements that don't change the gameplay.
RECOMENDED!!!
-Woof woof woof!
http://www.codenautics.com/openmule/ ... although development appears to have stalled in 1997.
This was one of my favorite games in college on the C-64. I expected to find a slim flash game, instead it's a 36Mb installer (Win). A bit better on Max/Linux (16Mb), but still, WTF? I'm guessing these guys used to make printer drivers for HP.
Kudos to them for releasing it as freeware, as opposed to releasing it onto a DRM enabled platform like Steam or worse, Xbox Live.
Freedom is drinking a beer in the park when you're supposed to be at work.
MULE is a strategic economic simulator for 4 players. A long game (12 turns) take about 90 minutes.
The first thing you will see wen you join, is the surface of the planet. The surface is divided into "plots", that later can be taken by the players. You will put "mules" (multi use labor element robots) in these plots to craft raw metal (smithore), precious luxuries (cristite), energy or food. Your mules to work need energy, you need food or you will be unable to manage your mules.
First phase, a cursor move trough the planet, simply pressing space take a plot. The "river" plots are specially good for food, the desert for energy, and the mountains for smithore.
Next phase, the players move his character, and have the option to take a mule, and move it to a specialization house (energy, food, smithore...) then move that mule to his plot, and press space again to place the mule.
After all players have placed his mules, theres a "production" phase. You will produce based on your mule type, type of terrain, and some economy of scale bonus.
Next phase is selling/buying. You need to secure energy, if you don't have, and food, if you want to place mules.
The tournamente mode (somewhat like the 'full experience') is 12 complete turns of this. With some random bonus and malus events for the players.
The game is some sort of economic sandbox, most people "play to win", but is possible to "play to make the colony a success".
More info:
http://www.planetmule.com/forum?topic=379.0
-Woof woof woof!
Please make sure to get your facts straight on this sensible topic before condemming anyone...
First, at the time the game was made, it was credited to Dan Bunten and no one else,
so citing the original copyright, this may very well fit into the overall scheme of things as they were.
Second, the "new holders of Ozark Softscape" are not mere strangers nor disrespectful people:
These are Dan's children, foremost Dan's daugther Melanie, and she surely was born at the time the game hit the stores, although may have been to young to appreciate it back then!
As to the internal reasons the Bunten family may have, that should be their very own thing to be kept from the public,
but surely you can't condemn a game and its legacy when there is apparently no shred of evidence related to the new version to make cheap money out of it (it's for free without any catch) and be disrespectful to the true creator at that time: DAN Bunten. Thanks.
OK so maybe some aspects of the game are more plausible than others.
I played it on the C64. This game set the ground for turn-based strategy and sim games, and it is just incredible to learn that it never sold more than 30,000 copies. And yet, _everybody_ was playing it. Today's piracy 'problems' are nothing compared to that.
If Dani Bunten were still alive I'm sure lots of people would be glad to donate quite some amount of money to make up for lost and long time overdue revenue.
A World in a Grain of Sand / Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Infinity in the Palm of your Hand / And Eternity in an Hour.
I personally did a port (download here) of an earlier rewrite (though the site I got it from is gone) back in 2005. It's a pretty decent version, as far as I can tell, though honestly I didn't play the original hardly at all. The main drawback is local multiplayer only...
"Why should I be content to simply live in this world, when I, as a human being, can CREATE it?" - Oertel
Copyright belongs to Person, not the name.. When people change their name (for whatever reason) they still own to that right and have rights. If Mule were released today (and she still lived) it would be copyrighted by Danielle Bunten.
What annoys me most is the way this "ozark softscape" page is made. It's quite obvious they want people to forget essential part of that person who made this game, yes she was also their father (and later mother) a lot longer than they want to let us know. She was a lot more than just designer/coder of MULE and I think she's entitled to be respected as a whole and not just some 20 years old pictures and copyright texts.
I have no idea why that page (and company behind of it) was made. Is it for respect or for trying to cash out the retro nostalgia, but the way the page is made tells me that they don't respect the Person.
Rose-Colored nostalgia, +1.
Yes, I played MULE. I also played Doom, and going before that I played Empire, Sword of Aragon, Ancient Art of War, Star Viking, Star Raiders, Wizardry, Ultima, and Oregon Trail (on a MECC line terminal) as well as a host of other games that are stored fondly in my nostalgia-vault as 'awesome games'.
But do you know what? My suggestion is DON'T PLAY THEM AGAIN. Like watching the original Star Wars, the memory of "greatness" is tied inextricably with context - the state of tech of the time, my age, and the whole novelty of the thing. They don't age very well.
Go to the abondonware sites, you can (thankfully) find all these games - play them, and then you can (if you're honest) admit "Meh, this is unappealing". Yes, diehards will whinge about 'gameplay over graphics' and to a point that's true; but ultimately that's not the whole story - there are a heck of a lot of advances in things other than graphics that go a LONG way toward making a game fun: credible AI that's not easily gamed, UI usability, ease of patching, online play, and (usually) a whole host of rationalizations that we accepted at the time because it was such a huge step forward from where we'd been, and it was cool just to be using a computer in the FIRST place.
I'm not saying that these games weren't great IN THEIR TIME. They were. But, like these ancient much-remembered games, just because my grandpa was cool doesn't mean I need to drag his corpse out and re-animate him today because I've got no ideas of my own.
-Styopa
That's all I have to say. One of the actual PURCHASED games I had for the C=64. Good Times.
Gotta go hunt down a Wumpus.
"A REAL computer has ONE speed and the only powersaving it permits is when you pull the power leads out of the back!"
Seeing as they are a SOFTWARE company, I believe they want people to concentrate on the actual GAME, and leave all the stupid arguments about gender out of it. So, way to fail. The only person that seems to have any issue with the gender change so far is you AC.
"But this one goes to 11!"
only slightly off topic, but if you ever come across the version of MULE released for the IBM PCjr, waaaay back when, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE make it available on the interwebnets. it is so incredibly rare and needs to be archived before it fades away forever.
On the contrary, I think that most if not all transgender people and those who appreciate transgender issues would have a problem with the way this is being handled.
The standard etiquette for referring to a transgender person is to use the name and pronouns they prefer, even when referring to the past. If you don't know the person's preference, use the pronouns that correspond to how they live publicly. This, as well as being the courteous and respectful thing to do, is also agreed upon by the Associated Press Stylebook.
It's the same courtesy we give anyone when they change their name, except that in these cases you're changing the pronouns, too. For example, everyone refers to Laura Bush as Laura Bush, not Laura Welch, even if you're talking about her childhood. If you need to clarify, you still treat the person's current name as the primary name, as in "Laura Bush (born Laura Welch) fell off the swing when she was 5."
The difference is that with transgender people, it's a bigger deal to disrespect their name and pronoun change. It's effectively saying "I don't care what gender you think you are, I know better than you." That's incredibly insulting, demeaning, and disempowering.
It's understandable to be confused the first time you encounter a transgender person, because in over 99% of the population, sex and gender match one-to-one, and they're static final. I mean, they don't ever change. (: So it's understandable to assume that it's a one-to-one unchanging relationship -- until you find a counterexample. At that point, how do you adjust your worldview? Do you dogmatically stick to your view that sex and gender must match one-to-one and must never change? Or do you expand your worldview to account for the counterexamples? It seems to me that both the scientific method and human kindness suggest the latter.
For idealists who want to change the world and are looking for a path with heart. http://connection-revolution.com